With a nod to John Lam and Shawn Wildermuth for the inspiration, here is a rundown of the things I use on a daily basis to develop software. This includes hardware, software and online resources.
Hardware
Personal Desktop
- Dell Dimension e521
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
- 4GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM
- Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 Video Card
- System HDD – 300GB Seagate Barracuda SATAII Drive
- Data/Media HDD – SATAII RAID1 Mirrored Set of 750GB WD Drives
- Creative Fatal1ty 1010 Mouse
- 20” Widescreen Dell LCD
Work Laptop
- IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T60 15”
- Intel Core Duo T2500 / 2GHz CPU
- 2GB RAM
- ATI Mobility Radeon X1400
- 100GB 7200rpm HDD
- Logitech Cordless TrackMan Optical
- 2nd Monitor: ViewSonic 19” Widescreen LCD
Operating System and Productivity Tools
I run Windows Vista Business (32-bit) on my machines. I don’t currently run Vista Sidebar or any launcher/toolbar applications. I have been getting along well by simply organizing the folders in my Start Menu and putting the items I use frequently in my Favorite Programs section.
Firefox 3 is my default browser, but I’m thinking of giving IE8 Beta 2 a shot at daily use. I have it installed, and it looks quite promising. My must-have Firefox extensions include Adblock Plus, Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures, Download Helper, FFClickOnce, Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer and Greasemonkey.
At the office, I use Outlook 2007 for email, contacts, calendar and tasks. I am beginning to use OneNote 2007 for meeting notes and other task organization & mind mapping activities. Outside of my day job, my email and contacts are in Gmail. I use both Presdo and Upcoming for calendar / scheduling.
I use Windows Live Writer to post to my WordPress blog. It’s simply the best blogging tool for Windows, with tons of great plug-ins available.
MediaMonkey is my media management tool of choice. It’s great for maintaining large MP3 libraries and podcast subscriptions.
I am giving Sysinternals Desktops 1.0 a try to manage multiple desktops on my laptop. I tried another tool a few months ago, but docking/undocking with the second monitor was freaking it out. So far so good with Desktops 1.0.
Developer Tools
I use both Visual Studio 2005 Team Developer SP1 and Visual Studio 2008 Team Developer SP1 using a custom vssettings file I created on Ryan Lanciaux’ Visual Studio Theme Generator online tool. My must-have Visual Studio plug-ins are ReSharper 4.0, GhostDoc and StyleCop. My company uses TFS for feature/bug tracking and source control, MSUnit for unit testing, and CruiseControl.NET for our continuous and daily builds.
My text editor of choice is Notepad++, and I use Paint.NET for all my image editing needs. BeyondCompare is fantastic for comparing files & folders. My group uses it for code reviews as well.
Here is a quick rundown of some other handy tools to keep around, most of which I use quite frequently:
The Cloud
How About You?
That’s enough about me. Let’s hear what you use on a daily basis to make yourself a more productive developer.
