My gotta-have software

It’s been a little over a week since I installed Windows 7. I tried the upgrade route, failed, and re-formatted the whole machine (every now and again you need to give your PC a good scrubbing). The real question is, what software did I put on the machine?

  • Chrome – Chrome is the new Firefox. It is fast, and the UI is just phenomenal. What sucks about it? Extensibility, which leads to…
  • Firefox – Developers still need Firefox. There are so many awesome tools out there, you need Firefox to develop.
  • Flash – The web doesn’t work without Flash anymore. Enough said.
  • 7zip – One archive utility to rule them all. Works with every file type and integrates with Explorer.
  • Zune – The Zune app is my new music player. With a Zune pass, I get access to all the music I want. Plus, it doubles as a screen saver the UI is so cool looking.
  • Skype – It’s how you video chat over the web.
  • SnagIt – This puppy from Techsmith allows me to capture my screen in a bunch of different ways. If you want to be a pro-blogger (which I do, and I realize I am not), you need this.
  • Windows Live Writer – Nice desktop app that integrates with my WordPress blog. I like having it on the desktop for the sole purpose it is faster and has an awesome editor/preview mode.
  • Visual Studio 2008 – The de-facto .NET IDE.
  • Visual Studio 2010 Beta – I need to see what my future looks like. I haven’t decided yet.
  • OpenOffice – Free office. MS Office 2007 is pretty awesome, but for a developer like me, I don’t really need it.
  • JungleDisk Desktop – Last but not least, JungleDisk is my harddrive. I backup all my data to the cloud, and with the new version I am going to sync my data between machines.

To give credit where credit is due, I was inspired to do this by Hanselman’s post on the same topic (also, you have to check out his tool list).

4 thoughts on “My gotta-have software

  1. I actually don’t use IM outside of work. At work, I use Pidgin though (although I don’t really like it).

  2. Mainly Visual Studio, but one of my teams uses NetBeans IDE for Ruby/Cucumber as well.