I recently picked up a new laptop.  After getting Vista installed, I made list of everything I'd need to get started.  Most were from my head as I use many of these things daily, while others I noticed from my work machine, after I had made the list.

Software

  • Camtasia Studio - I use this for my screencasts now.  I love this program.
  • Daemon Tools Lite - ISO support is always needed, especially around installing time.
  • Digsby - This is my IM client of choice these days.  I wish the twitter support was better though.
  • FireFox - Do I need to say anything else?  This has its own section below.
  • FoxIt Reader - Much nicer than Adobe Acrobat Reader for my needs.
  • Guild Wars - One game to rule them all...
  • Live Writer - The best blogging tool I've seen yet.
  • NotePad++ - My text editor of choice these days.
  • Office - Word, Excel, PowerPoint,... you know the drill.
  • Paint.NET - A great free .NET based graphics program.
  • PDF Creator - Great for making PDFs.
  • Skype - IM and Voice chat.  A must have tool these days.
  • SQL Server - It is an occupational hazard.
  • UltraMon - Multi-monitor support at its best.
  • Visual Studio - Both 2005 and 2008 installed.
  • VMWare Workstation - I prefer it to Virtual PC.
  • Window Clippings - A nice little screenshot maker.
  • WinZip - I know there are lots of others but this is what I'm using.  With all the other new stuff on my box, you can consider this my "comfort food" software.
  • Witty - My Twitter client of the day.  The current beta works fine or me, but I'm not completely sold yet.  It is .NET based and open source, so I could look into the changes I'd like to see, I guess.

Development Specific Things

  • ASP.NET MVC - An alternative to ASP.NET Web Forms in its current state.
  • MbUnit - Unit Testing Framework of choice.  (I'm interested in trying xUnit, but I haven't yet.)
  • Ragnarok Grey (VS Theme) - My current favorite Visual Studio theme.  Both for VS2005 and VS2008
  • ReSharper - A awesome tool.  I've been using the early 4.0 with 2008.  So far, so good.
  • Rhino Mocks- Mock objects anyone? While it doesn't need installed per se, I like to have the files in a known place.
  • SVN Bridge - The only way to use Subversion at CodePlex.
  • TestDriven.NET - Great testing add in
  • Tortoise SVN - Great Subversion Client
  • Visual SVN - TortoiseSVN that works perfectly inside Visual Studio
  • WinMerge - Nice Comparison Utility

Browser Specific things

Well, that is what I've downloaded and setup to start.  I have a lot more stuff installed elsewhere, but I decided to start with the basics and add things as I need them.  I'm sure there will be plenty of adding over the next few weeks.  If I've completely missed something that I shouldn't be living without, you can let me know in the comments.

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