as I prepare to get a new dev machine at work, I write the things I am going to install on it, before writing the first line of code on that machine:

Control Freak Tools:

1. Everything Search Engine – a free and amazingly fast search engine for files all over your machine. (just file names, not inside files). This is so fast I use it almost as a replacement for my start menu, but it’s also great for finding those files that get hidden and tucked away in dark places on my system. Ever had a situation where you needed to see exactly how many copies of X.dll were hiding on your machine and where? this tool is perfect for that.
2. Google Chrome. It’s just fast. very fast. and Firefox has become the IE of alternative browsers in terms of speed and memory. Don’t even get me started on IE.
3. TweetDeck – get a complete view of what’s up on twitter
4. Total Commander – my still favorite file manager, over five years now.
5. KatMouse – will scroll any window your hovering on, even if it’s not an active window, when you use scroll the wheel on it.
6. PowerIso or Daemon Tools – for loading up ISO images of discs
7. LogMeIn Ignition – quick access to your LogMeIn computers
8. for online Backup: JungleDisk or BackBlaze
9. KeePass – save important passwords
10. MS Security Essentials – free anti virus that’s quoest and doesn’t make a mess of your system.
11. for home: uTorrent – a torrent client that can read rss feeds (like the ones from ezrss.it )
12. Camtasia Studio and SnagIt – for recording and capturing the screen, and then adding cool effects on top.
13. Foxit PDF Reader – much faster that adove reader.
14. Toddler Keys (for home) – for when your baby wants to play with your keyboard.
15. Live Writer – for writing blog posts
16. for Lenovo ThinkPads – Lenovo System Update – if you have a “custom” system instead of the one that came built in, this will keep all your lenovo drivers up to date.
17. FileZilla – for FTP stuff
18. All the utils from sysinternals, (or try the live-links) especially: AutoRuns for deciding what’s really going to load at startup, procmon to see what’s really going on with processes in your system

Developer stuff:

1. Reflector. Pure magic. Time saver. See source code of any compiled assembly.
2. Resharper. Great for productivity and navigation across your source code
3. FinalBuilder – a commercial build automation tool. Love it. much better than any xml based time hog out there.
4. TeamCity – a great visual and friendly server to manage continuous integration. powerful features.
5. Test Lint – a free addin for vs 2010 I helped create, that checks your unit tests for possible problems and hints you about it.
6. TestDriven.NET – a great test runner for vs 2008 and 2010 with some powerful features.
7. VisualSVN – a commercial tool if you use subversion. very reliable addin for vs 2008 and 2010
8. Beyond Compare – a powerful file and directory comparison tool. I love the fact that you can right click in windows exporer on any file and select “select left side to compare”, then right click on another file and select “compare with left side”. Great usability thought!
9. PostSharp 2.0 – for addind system wide concepts into your code (tracing, exception management). Goes great hand in hand with..
10. SmartInspect – a powerful framework and viewer for tracing for your application. lots of hidden features.
11. Crypto Obfuscator – a relatively new obfuscation tool for .NET that seems to do the job very well.
12. Crypto Licensing – from the same company –finally a licensing solution that seems to really fit what I needed. And it works.
13. Fiddler 2 – great for debugging and tracing http traffic to and from your app.
14. Debugging Tools for Windows and DebugDiag  - great for debugging scenarios.

still wanting more?

I think this should keep you busy for a while.

1. Regulator and Regulazy – for testing and generating regular expressions
2. Notepad 2 – for quick editing and viewing with syntax highlighting