Fresh Install List

Noah — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 02:43:04 GMT

My laptop has not been behaving lately and I figured it’s time for a wipe & a fresh install. I was compiling a list of all the apps I need to install and figured I’d share it with the world. My current feeling is that anything not on this list will have to be installed on a VM, but we’ll see how long that lasts. I really just want my new install to be clean and tidy.

Development

Visual Studio 2008

Expression Studio 3

SQL Server 2008

CodeRush & Refactor! Pro – you’d have to be a masochist not to use some sort of code assistance plugin

TortoiseSVN

VisualSVN – integrates SVN (runs on top of TortoiseSVN) straight into Visual Studio. $49 and worth every penny!

WinMerge – it’s free and so much better than WinDiff

Fiddler2 – a terrific web debugging proxy. It’s free and worth every penny (and then some)

Communication

Pidgin – my officemates use AIM (and probably Win95 too), but I use GTalk for everything else. 1 (free) app is better than 2

uTorrent – I was an Azureus guy until they turned into Vuze and increased their bloat exponentially. uTorrent does the job, and does it well.

Windows Live Writer – it’s actually a great blogging software. Seriously!
- CodeSnippet plugin

TweetDeck – my twitter client of choice

Tools

Notepad++ – because notepad sucks

VirtualBox – really great Virtualization software, and it’s free

Paint.NET – comes in handy way more than I thought

PeaZip – open source, handles tons of file formats, and it’s prettier than 7zip

Virtual CloneDrive – freeware tool to mount ISO and other images. Don’t ask me why Windows doesn’t come with this!

Firefox Plugins

Firebug

YSlow

Adblock Plus

Windows Media Player Plugin