I thought before I move to Windows 7 Ultimate and blow away Vista 32, I'd make a note of all the utilities I use the most (as a reminder to install them on the new OS!):
- All SysInternal Applications (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb795535.aspx), especially Process Monitor - to find out which processes are locking which files, what registry entries are used by an application. Autoruns is also one of my favourites.
- Tera Copy (allows resume if you file copy fails) - http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.php
- Fullshot Image Capture (http://www.inbit.com/fullshot.html) - I use this every day at work.
- Scooter Beyond Compare (http://www.scootersoftware.com/)
- ImgBurn - For all image burning needs e.g. Techned ISO images when installing Windows 7 (http://www.imgburn.com/)
- Lutz Roeder's .NET Reflector (http://www.red-gate.com/products/reflector/)
- Avast Antivirus - I've found this to pick up viruses that Norton misses on corporate networks (http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html)
- VLC - Video Lan (http://www.videolan.org/) - wave your codec issues goodbye.
- HighJackThis (Antispyware) - http://free.antivirus.com/hijackthis/
- SpyBot Search and Destroy (Antispyware) - http://www.spybot.info/
- Firefox Mozilla, with Firebug and Download Helper and PDF download Addons
- Microsoft Virtual PC
- Microsoft Expression Studio
- Visual Studio 2008
- Type Mock
- NUnit
- MyGeneration (free code generation tool)
- Eclipse
- WinRAR
- uTorrent
- PowerISO - for mounting ISO images
- WSP Builder (for SharePoint deployment)
- CCleaner (aka Crap Cleaner)
- Visual Color Picker 2.0
- Notepad++ (as notepad replacement) - I hate having no undo!
- Paint .NET
- GIMP (another great free image manipulation program)
- Filezilla FTP Client
- Quest Toad for SQL Server
- Windows Live Messenger
- SharePoint branding tool http://brandingtool.codeplex.com/. This helps with the re-application of themes across existing sites as described here http://www.heathersolomon.com/blog/archive/2008/01/30/SharePoint-2007-Design-Tip-Import-your-CSS-for-SharePoint-Themes.aspx
I'm sure I've forgotten a few - but that will have to do for now!
