Scott Hanselman has become legendary in the .NET developer world for his lists, most notable I think, is his long and detailed list of must-have tools/utilities.
Since I have a few productivity tools that make me sigh gratefully every time I use them, I wanted to share my own very short list.
1. PureText. PureText let's you strip out encoding from text that has been copied to your clipboard before pasting it. So if you are copying something from html and you don't want the html coding: 1)copy, 2) click on PureText (in the notification area) and then 3) paste and you get just the text. The worst encoding offender I have encountered is Microsoft Word. PureText is a huge help when trying to extract text from a Word doc. It's a dream to copy and paste getting only the text. I probably use this more for blogging than anything else, but considering the frequency with which I blog, that's a lot! PureText is free and one of the many brilliant apps from Steve Miller.
2. SnagIt. SnagIt is a screen capture utility from TechSmith. (I'm also a huge fan of their screen recorder, Camtasia). Just google SnagIt and you will find many people singing it's praises. I had been using PaintShopPro just to grab screen shots for years. This is so much simpler, more intuitive and sticking with the time. It also has a great editing tool that is part of the bundle. Love it love it. Scott Watermasysk (of dotText and now Community Server fame) just wrote a post about SnagIt integration with Flickr. Now that is what I call leading edge! I use SnagIt for my blogs, articles, discussions with clients and conference presentations.
3. ImageResizer. This is one of the WindowsXP PowerToys. It has changed my life when it comes to dealing with photos from my digital camera. It has also changed my father's life and those of the many people to whom he was sending piles of 1MB images of their dogs in email. My parents are on dialup so he felt the pain, too. I had my dad install ImageResizer (it took a minute) and he went to town, right clicking on images in Windows Explorer and instantly resizing them to an appropriate size for emails. Why this isn't built in to Windows Vista, I will never understand! Here are some screenshots of image resizer (taken with SnagIt, of course!).
This is one of those tools you try to let everyone (Windows users) know about! Much in the same way, Kate Gregory reminds us to educate our clients on the little things that might make their jobs easier.
4. Open Command Window Here. Another Windows XP PowerToy which lets you point to a folder in Windows Explorer, right click, choose Open Command Window and voila, I'm in a command window in that exact folder!. I don't need this daily, but when I do, I'm happy to have the tool.. Before this, I had to copy the path from windows explorer, open a command window, make sure I was on the right drive, then paste the path. This is a dreamy alternative!
5. Personal Timeclock. I feel like Goldilocks finding that porridge, chair and bed that were just right. It's the perfect little tool for me to log my time on a great variety of projects throughout the day and print out reports that make it easy for me to create invoices for my clients. (I do that part in Quickbooks.) It is easy enough to use that I was able to make a habit of it. $25, too and worth a lot more. I have been using it for a few years now with no problems.
6. MSN Windows Desktop Search. Remember the old days when people complained that it takes less time to find something anywhere in the world online than it does to find something on your one little computer's hard drive? Not any more. This tool, the testbed for a key built in feature of Vista, helps me find a needle in the haystack that is my Outook emails and documents. One of these days I'm going to incorporate my code folders into there also so I can find stuff that I kinda remember writing once on some project or other. I use it constantly to find old emails.
7. Copy File Name to clipboard. I want this so badly but have never found a simple utility to do it. It's buit into a number of larger file management programs. I just want one little option on my context menu. Someday I hope to add such a tool to this list. (Note: I know how to Google. I'm looking for a tool that someone I know and trust can recommend because they have been using it!
[update - upon Scott Isaacs' recommendation, I'm going to check out Clipname since he has been using it]
[almost forgot!!]
8. My fingerprint reader! I have the Microsoft one that also serves as the port for my wireless mouse. Never look up your web logins again. Love it love it love it.