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What’s In Your Toolbox?

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It’s going to be a long weekend…

With the help of my good friend Keith Crawford, I plan on reformatting my primary development machine today and doing a clean install of Windows 7. This project is long overdue, I can’t remember the last time I reformatted my drive, in fact this SATA drive that I am using now initially ran XP and then VISTA before I upgraded to WINDOWS 7 last year.  Fortunately I am pretty diligent when it comes to backups, so the project isn’t as daunting as it could be.

Where to Start Reloading Software??

While preparing my plan of action last night I went through my list of installed software to see what I would need to reinstall once I got the OS reloaded.  After going over the list I realized that I don’t use half of the programs that are installed on my machine.  This got me to thinking, what else is out there that I might be missing out on? What tools / software do you use to develop client projects?

Here’s a list of the software and desktop applications that I use, please leave me a comment and let me know what you are using and if there is something on the market that I need to look at…

  • Microsoft Outlook (Productivity) – Email, Calendars, Tasks, Notes, etc.
  • Evernote Desktop (Productivity) – Notes.
  • Microsoft Office Ultimate (Productivity) – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.
  • Microsoft Live Writer (Blogging) – WYSIWYG Blog Editor.
  • Jasc Paintshop Pro (Graphics) – Lightweight compared to PS and faster for some jobs.
  • Adobe Photoshop (Graphics) – All of the Bells & Whistles for Graphics.
  • Adobe Illustrator (Vector) – I haven’t found anything else that compares for Illustrations.
  • Adobe Dreamweaver (Code Editor / WYSIWYG) – My favorite WYSIWYG editor.
  • Notepad++ (Code Editor) – Probably my favorite straight up code editor.
  • Eclipse (Code Editor / IDE) – Rarely do I use this anymore.
  • Xlinesoft PHPRunner (Code Editor / IDE / Generator) – Saves a ton of time
  • Microsoft Expression Web (Code Editor / WYSIWYG) – Rarely do I use this anymore.
  • Coda (Code Editor / WYSIWYG / CSS Editor) – Very nice but only works on my MacBook.
  • TopStyle Pro (CSS Editor) – I haven’t found anything that compares
  • IPSwitch WS-FTP Professional (FTP) – All of the Bells & Whistles for FTP
  • Filezilla (FTP) – Fewer features than WS-FTP but a lot faster.
  • Camtasia (Screen Capturing / Recording) – I haven’t found anything that compares.
  • SwishMax (Flash / Vector Animation) – A lot faster than Flash to work with .SWF files.
  • Audacity (Audio Editing / Recording) – I haven’t found anything that compares.
  • Garage Band (Audio Editing / Recording) – Only works on my MacBook
  • EZ Audio CD Ripper (Audio Editing / Ripping) – Fastest CD to MP3 Ripper I have found.
  • Skype (Communications) – My favorite chat, voice, video conferencing app.
  • RingCentral Call Controller (Communications) – Ties into our corporate phone system.
  • SSH Explorer (SSH) – Rarely do I have to use this anymore because we have an admin.
  • MySQL Administrator (Database) – I occasionally use this to connect to databases.
  • TJPing (Ping) – I sometimes use this instead of command line.
  • PuTTy (SSH, Telnet) – Rarely do I use this anymore because we have an admin.

Comments

  1. Depending on your extent of database usage, MySQL Workbench is key for anyone who needs to keep control of the architecture of a DB. Is cross-platform, and extends MySQL Administrator with Data Modeling – which is why I have used this in the past.
    Other than that, I am a Linux power user, so Windows seems foreign to me now – good luck with the reformat!

  3. I know you Note++ for coding, have you thought of Netscape? It isn't a Javan IDE anymore. It does c++, php, ruby and … Although it seems like a heavy weight, you don't have to pull down everything. I hope the reformat went well.

  5. Nice collection and good information, they lots of social networking sites are there. its really helpful internet users, thanks for your awesome collection.

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