January 16th, 2007

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18 Must Have Software Tools for the PC

For Christmas this year from work I got a DELL D820, Intel Core 2 T7400 @ 2.16Ghz, 2 Gigs of RAM and 100 Gig Hard Drive. It is sweet. Any how, I had to move computers which can be a pain. Here is the list of must have software tools I have installed. If you develop web applications, this is a must have list.

  1. CrapCleaner - A must have to easily keep your PC running smooothly and not letting crappy temp files cog your memory.

  2. HomeSite - My HTML/PHP editor of choice. I only wish Macromedia/Adobe had never bought them. Macromedia/Adobe have basically stopped development of this once fine product, but I haven’t found anything better.

  3. UltraEdit - My Text editor of choice. This thing can do almost anything and best of all it handles huge (over 100mb) text files without a problem.

  4. Visual Studio 2005 - I do all my .NET work out of here, I also just installed SP 1 and have found it to speed things up.

  5. SQL Server & Management Studio 2005 - It took a little bit to get use to it vs Query Anaylizer/Enterprise Manager but I like it now so much better.

  6. FireFox 2.0 - My default Web Browser for so many reasons (most of them are extensions listed below)

    • Extensions for FireFox:

    • FasterFox - Speeds up FireFox by changing some default settings

    • FireBug - A must have for debugging web applicatons

    • iFox - My theme

    • ColorZilla - A great tool to get HEX values of colors.

  7. Proccess Tamer - This keeps any wild proccess under control

  8. Gaim - I have an AOL account but this thing is so much nicer and less resource intense

  9. SlickRun - My quick launcher of choice. I blow the font up so this thing is pretty big on my machine

  10. FireWorks - I’ve never found Photoshop to be intuitive, I much prefer FireWorks for web work in terms of how things are cut

  11. Navicat - A mysql admin tool. I have a lot of issues with Navicat (definitely a future post) but it does have its advantages, like its upload ability and user management set up.

  12. SSH Client- A must have for PC users that work on Unix boxes.

  13. Surround SCM - Our version control.

  14. TestTrack Studio - Our defect tracking and test case management tool.

  15. Zune Theme for XP - I have Vista as a dual boot but when I am in XP I prefer for it to look this way.

  16. Google Desktop - I’m finding I use this less and less by keeping my mail cleaner on a daily basis. I use it strictly for search, their sidebar stuff is god awful. This tool might be dropping off the list soon.

  17. FileZilla - Simple and clean FTP client.

  18. VNC - I manage MC OS X machines. OS X makes it easier to manage things thru their GUI sometimes. The same can not be said for any of the Linux builds.

Written by Tim on January 16th, 2007 with 14 comments.
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