Tool

Usage

Camtasia Studio

Greatest tool ever on the face of the earth for recording your screen, making videos of your screen, etc.

http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp

CCleaner

One of the best applications out there to tune your system (registry,temp files, and other unused files that are lingering in your system)

http://www.ccleaner.com/

CodeSmith

Not free, but in my opinion one of the best Code Generator tools out there.  I prefer it over the open source MyGeneration because it has better documentation and just a better overall UI in general as well as provides several additional features that are highly effective making this tool a pretty flexible code generation tool

http://www.codesmithtools.com/

Commit Monitor

I personally use this as a nice complement with Tortoise SVN Source Control.  It's a nice little tool that runs in your taskbar that shows you when the subversion source code repository has been updated by someone (check-ins by fellow teammates)

http://tools.tortoisesvn.net/CommitMonitor

Cute PDF Writer

Nice free PDF generator

http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp

FileZilla

Excellent Free Open Source FTP UI

http://filezilla-project.org/

GhostDoc

A better XML based Documentation tool for Visual Studio.  It's a free add-in to VS.  It is a smarter documentation tool than the "so-so" built-in Visual Studio XML comments and just better functionality overall to save you time when commenting your methods and other members in OOP code.  Lets you create MSDN style documentation

http://www.roland-weigelt.de/ghostdoc/

IISAdmin.NET

This has been around a long, long time.  It lets you get to IIS faster, and allows you as a developer to really manage IIS much faster, much easier and best of all in Windows XP, lets you create more than one website instance in IIS which you cannot do with the out-of-box Windows XP IIS tool !

IISAdmin.NEThas been recently moved to CodePlex.com as well as you can now run it in Windows Vista for those of you who do like Vista and using it such as myself

http://www.codeplex.com/iisadmin

Fiddler

Everyone know this one.  HTTP debugging tool and much more.  Figure out what's going across the wire (http requests to the server or back) in your web pages to troubleshoot issue or look at performance and heck of a lot more

http://www.fiddlertool.com/fiddler/

Logmein

A free tool, the best I've ever used to remote to my home PC from work.  And best of all your session is completely secure and encrypted over the network!

https://secure.logmein.com/home.asp?originid=978&utpk=logmein&lang=en

O&O Defrag

Not free, but one of the best defrag tools hands down for my developer laptop

http://www.oo-software.com/home/en/

Resharper

Smarter Intellisense for Visual Studio, best practice code suggestions, and many other helpers while you code to save you valuable time as a developer.  If your team does not have this tool, shame on you as a manager :(.  This is a MUST HAVE for any development team period who wants to be more productive

Note:  It's gotten a bad wrap in the past for being slow however when using in in VS 2008 with Resharper 4.0 or above, it flies and is no longer an issue!  Try it to believe me

http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

Reflector

Again, this one most developers know.  A free tool to allow you to disassemble (browse) assembly code. It was recently bought out by Red Gate and now on CodePlex.com which means we'll see new releases and improvements going forward!   Why would you want to use this?  For many reasons.  One is to be able to look at the source code in assemblies that otherwise you can't see unless you have this tool.  For example, lets say you wanted to see the actual code in some .NET namespaces.  This tool lets you browse those assemblies or any other for that matter and check obfuscation of your code.

There are also a TON of free add-ons found in CodePlex for Reflector to make this tool even more powerful

The tool:

http://www.red-gate.com/products/reflector/index.htm

The Add-ons:

http://www.codeplex.com/reflectoraddins

SQL Prompt

Adds intellisense to SQL Server Management Studio or the old Query Analyzer.

Not free, however you could technically still find the old version.

http://www.red-gate.com/Products/SQL_Prompt/index.htm

SQL Digger

Perform keyword searches through all your stored procs, views, and more.  Especially useful for those horrible development shops who have a big pile/mess of those horrible unorganized 500 line stored procs (no standards)  ;)

http://sqldigger.bdsweb.be/

Paint .NET

A free paint tool (created with the .NET framework) when your company won't buy you Photoshop (understandably unless you are a graphic artist).  While I definitely do prefer PhotoShop over this for those little things at work, hey this is free and pretty powerful.  Just doesn't render in the quality I wish it would for formats such as JPEGs but otherwise it's pretty ok for simple low-quality buttons, etc.

http://www.getpaint.net/

SimpPro

A chat encryption software for your every day chat clients at work or home

(supports gtalk, trillian, pidgin, msn, and many more clients)

http://www.secway.fr/us/products/simplite_msn/home.php

PowerISO

Create or mount ISO images (files) and much more

http://www.poweriso.com/

Startup Manager

Open Source Startup Manager tool.  Stop certain programs from running in your taskbar to speed up your PC while at work.  What I like best is the UI and how it lists the items and the options available to you in how you want to manage the processes as compared to other comparable programs out there

http://sourceforge.net/projects/st-m/

Tortoise Subversion

One of the best source control tools around hands down.  Some like it better than TFS..I sure do!  Works great for Builds, much better than using TFS for builds!  Now if your organization is really for using the TFS management functionality, then you're probably stuck with TFS, but if not, use this instead,  you'll love it!

http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/

Unlocker

For use with Windows XP.  Have you ever had a file you could not delete because it was locked down by "some process" and you couldn't figure out which process it was through other various techniques to try to pinpoint the lock?  Well, this will do the trick and break whatever is locking that file on your file system saving you a lot of pains

http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

VisionApp Remote Desktop

One of the best free Server Remote tools out there and it's free!  Remote many instances and see them all running in one pane along with other great functions that save you time!

http://www.visionapp.com/freeware.html

WinGrep

This app has been around for ages.  Search text in files, very powerful when searching for text in code when you don't want to use the built-in Visual Studio search box or if you want to search any files on your PC whatsoever for specific within files

http://www.wingrep.com/

WinMerge

One of the best developer tools for merging code files and to see differentials between 2 files

http://www.winmerge.org/

Zune Desktop

Some developers like a nice dull boring gray windows 2000-like desktop. 

Some developers like just a little more excitement and color in their lives as they are a bit more creative.  And they also want a lightweight skin that can do this.  Well here is one that won't bog down your PC, and makes your entire environment very slick and easy on the eyes.  I love the orange and black theme

This was created by Microsoft so therefore  it's NOT some unknown heavy theme that you can't trust or fear performance issues as a developer

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=75078

YouSendIt

Send huge files to people, and use their server to store them instead of yours!   Also has a very slick desktop UI that allows you to simply right-click a file or folder on your system and send it quickly to yousendit.com and emails of your choice.

http://www.yousendit.com/

7zip

One of the most effective open source compression tools out there today.

"well what's wrong with winzip".  My friend, WinZip does not compress nearly as much as a rar or this!  I'm sorry to break your bubble but this thing compresses so much better than not only winzip but winrar, rar, etc.

And remember you can still open and create zip files from this tool so there is no need for WinZip anymore. 

Get rid of WinZip, WinRar, etc. and just use this, it's great.

http://www.7-zip.org/

Windows Installer Cleanup Utility

Very useful when .NET installations fail and you can't fix them simply by uninstalling and reinstalling whatever .NET framework is corrupted.  Use this to wipe away certain windows installs that just seem to keep giving you troubles after you have tried the standard add/remove!

For example, we had an issue where the Network Admin created an image with a bad .NET 2.0 install.  When installing other applications and even Visual Studio, they would fail.  The problem was a corrup .NET framework install that the network admin put on the developer image at the time that I was using.  And uninstalling and reinstallling all the .NET frameworks in add/remove did not resolve the issue.  That's where this tool came in handy.  You can wipe away any single .NET framework and just reinstall them again and you're back in business because this does a complete cleanup of an MS related install that's corrupt

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

Norton Ghost

Um, when I don't trust my Network Admin, or better yet, when I don't want to hear him wine when the "developer has a another problem with the PC" because "developers should never have trouble right?", I just create my own image just in case just because it's good to have in an extreme case (while this rarely happens) where you don't have the network admin at your disposal to reimage a PC

And it's just good to create an image of your home PCs anyway, so it's worth the money here to invest in Norton Ghost in my opinion

http://www.symantec.com/redirects/norton/norton_com/

Windows Server 2003 Administration Tools Pack

Server management tools

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=c16ae515-c8f4-47ef-a1e4-a8dcbacff8e3&displaylang=en

NUnit

Great free Unit Test software

http://www.nunit.org/index.php

TestDriven.NET

Nice Plugin for use with NUnit or other unit test tools.  Gives you excellent integration into Visual Studio in that you now have a nice right-click context menu to start your unit tests with rather than having to keep jumping back and fourth all the time between VS and your source control tool.  See the results of your tests in the VS Output window instantly!

http://www.testdriven.net/

Process Explorer

Much better than the lousy Windows Task Manager.  Really see what processes are running on your PC and more

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

TextPad

One of the best text editors that has been around a long time

http://www.textpad.com/

Google Reader

If you are not using RSS to keep up on what's going on in the Internet, then you better start!  This is one of the best ways to keep yourself abreast with news, trends, and more.   One of the best ways to learn new things whether it's code, food, or whatever subject you are interested in

http://www.google.com/reader/view/

Digsby

Chat UI that lets you chat with multiple chat clients (I like it better than Pidgin now).  Also has some nice icons at the bottom for most of your email so you can quickly see if you have new email

http://www.digsby.com/

MagicISO

Another good ISO creator and mounting software

http://www.magiciso.com/

ElephantDrive

Unlimited offsite backups to their servers for only $10 a month!  Has a decent mapped drive plug-in and desktop UI

http://www.elephantdrive.com/

CPorts

Free application to check what ports are open or being used and by what processes

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/cports.html

FireBug

Essential FireFox add-on for debugging JavaScript, and more.  The ultimate developer toolbar!

http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843/

Team Foundation System  2008 Power Tools

New power tools for anyone that has to touch any part of TFS Administration

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/tfs2008/bb980963.aspx