Brian Hartsock's Blog

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).