Noah Coad

These are my all time favorite apps.  Most all are free and many are open source.  These are what I consider the best-in-class apps after much research that I’ve used now for years.

The Staples

All-time favorite utilities. The first set of apps I install on a new machine.

	Google Chrome What a fantastically simple, clean, and elegant web browser.
	DropBox Simple and clean file sharing, backup, remote access, syncronizing, and more. (my review)
	SlickRun There are many command launchers out there, this is my favorite for its simplicity (my review).
	Take Command A replacement for cmd.exe with 80+ additional commands, native FTP/HTTP support, and much more, there is a free version but this is one well worth paying for the full version. I’ve used this app now for 20+ years, longer than Windows, Word, or any other app (my review).
	AutoHotKey Easy Windows automation scripting and hotkeys (my review).
	Notepad2 Sure there are plenty of text editors out there, but Notepad2 is just so simple, easy, fast, and does 95% of what I need in a text editor.
	ClipX A “clipboard ring” that lets you press Ctrl+Shift+V to paste previous items in the clipboard.
	Jing Lovely and easy screen capturing of image or video w easy posting online (my review).
	7zip Compression tool for .zip .7z .iso .img .tar and many more. Has the best compression rates today, open source, and includes self-extracting wrapper.
	doPDF Let’s you print from any application to a PDF file.

Other General Tools

• Microsoft OneNote, for quickly taking notes, one of the best Office products, and now with an iPhone app (blogged: Hotkeys to OneNote Pages, Capturing One’s “Stream of Consciousness” in OneNote
• CopyTo Synchronizer, syncs files between directories
• FileZilla FTP Client, when it comes to a straight up FTP client it doesn’t get better than the simplicity and easy of this open source client
• UltraEdit, powerful text editor with tons of features such as built-in Open/Save from/to FTP, file tabs, HTML builder, hex mode, macro recording, command launching, etc
• CCleaner, used to be called ‘crap cleaner’ it’s the standard now for removing temp files, caches, and other crap from the computer, best when combined with other cleanup techniques as in my post Master Config Your PC
• Sun VirtualBox, and impressively powerful client virtual PC client with snap-shotting and more features than Microsoft Virtual PC
• MS Virtual PC, still a standard for virtual images with simple integration with Windows
• Google Talk, everyone has a Google Account so why not just use an IM client that is clean, simple, functional.  I’m tired of messing with multi-protocol clients like Digsby and Pidgin, let’s just all get along and use Google Talk
• Windows Live Writer, best in class blog writing tool
• PowerShell, built into Windows a command prompt built on .NET with incredible data piping between commands

Online Cloud Tools

Tools that used to be installed locally are moving more and more to the cloud. Many are even better than their classic local equivalent.

• Diagramming
  these are all easier and more fun to use than Microsoft Visio
  • Web Sequence Diagrams, create sequence diagrams using a text syntax
  • Lucid Chart, diagrams and flow charts
  • Balsamiq, create user interface mockups
• Google Reader, pure awesome RSS feed reader
• WhatTheFont!, detects fonts from uploaded images

Web & Server Development

Little web dev toolkit.

• openssl, useful to working with SSL certs and used by other tools
• cURL, a command line HTTP(S) tool very helpful for testing web services, trying REST APIs, scripting HTTP calls, simple web automated testing, etc
• Apache, the open source web server
• FireFox, got to have the browsers
• IIS7 Manager, remote management of your IIS server
• Windows Server Remote Admin for Win7, if you’re going to be using Windows Servers it helps to have the remote tools on your main PC to be able to remotely administer the machines, a necessity if you’re using Windows 2008 Server R2 Core
• gpg4win, an open source implementation of OpenPGP using PKI for encrypting files and email
• soapUI, java based UI for creating SOAP XML calls
• Fiddler, simply clean HTTP traffic analysis
• Wireshark, more complex full-featured network protocal analysis

Working with Media

Discs, images, video, etc

• Paint.NET, an impressively powerful (for a free app) image manipulator
• VLC Player, a media player with just about every codec under the sun built in instead of having to install separate video/audio codecs
• Image2Ico, makes converting a normal image to a Windows .ico file a breeze
• VSO Image Resizer, makes resizing images a snap with presets, right-click from Windows Explorer and more
• DAEMON Tools Light, a free and simple CD/DVD emulator that lets you mount .iso disc images
• DVD Decrypter, makes .iso images from CDs and DVD, not officially supported anymore (it was too good) but still very handy

Google Chrome Extensions

Favorite plugins to Google Chrome

• AdBlock, blocks pesty advertisements on pages
• autocomplete = on, lets Chrome remember passwords to websites that try to disable password recall
• Bookmarks Menu Button, replace the long bookmarks bar with just one little icon
• Google Reader RSS Subscription, shows an RSS subscription button when it detects a feed on a page
• goo.gl URL Shortener, makes the current URL tiny and auto-copies to the clipboard
• amazon.com Wishlist, add a product on any page to an amazon.com wishlist
• Delicious, quickly bookmark a page on delicious
• StumbleUpon, toggles the SumbleUpon toolbar, warning: highly addictive!
• Email Link, creates a gmail with the active link
• JSONView, formats JSON objects to look nice
• Aside, flags a page for reading later with Read It Later (now called Pocket)
• Web of Trust, indicates the reliability of websites

Software Development

This is my standard toolkit for dev.

• Microsoft Related
  • SQL Express 2008 Management Studio, so you’ve got SQL Express 2008 installed as part of Visual Studio, that’s great, now get the rest of the UI tools
  • NUnit, let’s face it, even if you’re mostly using VS and MSTest for unit testing, you’re still going to be encountering plenty of code with NUnit tests (besides, it really does rock)
  • TestDriven.NET, and if you’re using NUnit this VS plugin makes it rock louder
  • TortoiseSVN, subversion integration with Windows Explorer FTW
• RegexBuddy, makes working with regular expressions easy and quick with testing, matching, replacing, a reference and build tools.  A paid app, but well worth it.
• Mono, hey its got a REPL implementation of C# called gsharp which is just cool for quick little C# scripting
• Git, gotta get on the git wave, any my fav for local SCC
• Collabnet Subversion SVN, gotta get ya the subversion
• VisualSVN, a subversion plugin for VS (paid app)
• Eclipse, open source IDE for the masses for Java, C/C++, Perl, Python, and much more
• AdventureWorks DB, a good sample database for working against
• ActiveState Perl, a good simple easy Perl for Windows

Electronics

When working with the interaction of bits and atoms and measuring electrons, dig these.

• ExpressPCB/SCH, free schematic drawing and PCB board layout apps
• Arduino, dev env for programming the ever popular Arduinos
• Microchip PICs
  • Microchip MPLAB, the interactive IDE and debugging environment for programming PICs
  • Microchip PICKit 2, handy little set of dev tools for the PICKit programmer
  • Microchip C18 Compiler, a free C compiler for mid-range PICs
  • Microchip Low Pin USB Kit, great intro board with samples
  • Microchip App Library, sample code, libraries, and applications
  • Great Cow BASIC, open source BASIC compiler for 8-bit PICs
  • GNU PIC Utilities, open source utilities for PICs
• Atmel AVRs
  • Atmel FLIP, in-circuit programmer
  • WinAVR, open source interactive development environment (IDE)
  • Atmel AVR Studio, Atmel’s IDE

Other Tool Lists

Other people’s tools listings worth checking out:

• Scott Hanselman’s Ultimate Tools List