Background
Back in October 2009 and November 2009 I had written 2 blog posts about the powertools I have been using. There have been some additions to those tools off late. I thought of listing them down for my own future reference.
Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Edition
With the release of Visual Studio 2010, I have upgraded my development IDE from Visual Studio 2008 to the 2010 Ultimate edition. I love the extensions manager feature along with the performance enhancements done by Visual Studio team. Instead of mixing all the extensions that I use for Visual Studio 2010 in this post, I’ll leave it for a dedicated blog post in itself.
Resharper (VS Add in)
Resharper is indispensible tool for developers. It helps in improving the productivity of developers by many folds. I have been using it for past few months. I am making an attempt not to touch the mouse for any development related tasks. With Resharper you can almost get there. I like the features of this add in like real time code analysis. In my opinion it’s a must for every developer.
Apart from the basic Reshaper add in there are supplementary ones which work along with Reshaper like StyleCop for Resharper. It’s a treat when you have both of them working together within VS IDE. I love TDD and try as much as possible to implement Agile methodology. Resharper is a great tool for refactoring and building software using TDD.
Tweetdeck (Twitter client)
Over the past few years social media has become a very integral part of everyone's lives. I use tweetdeck which is a twitter client. It also has integration with other social media sites like facebook, linkedin, foursquare etc.
Sesmic Desktop (Twitter client)
Along with TweetDeck, I also tend to use Sesmic Desktop once in a while. One thing I don’t like about Tweetdeck is the size of the columns. Its kind of fixed. If I use Sesmic Desktops single column view I get a nice full screen updates for any of the accounts that I have set up with Sesmic. In terms of capabilities both these twitter clients are almost similar.
Windows Live Writer 2011 (Blog publisher)
For quite some time I was using the Windows Liver Writer 2009 version. After upgrading my hard disc recently, I upgraded to the latest version of the Windows Liver Writer 2011. Its bit surprising that this is in production before 2011 
RocketDeck (Desktop / window manager)
This is a nice little utility to manage the taskbar items. It hides all the active programs into a dock and gives a Mac like menus and feel to a Windows desktop. We can drag and drop the commonly used files and program shortcuts onto the dock. This leaves the desktop much more cleaner and gives a very elegant look.
iTunes 10 (Music playlists)
I have been using iTunes to manage the playlists for my iPod. Even when I am not using iPod, I tend to listen to music on my laptop. I like the simple user interface of iTunes. I also prefer to use the smart playlist feature of iTunes.
Skype (Communication / Video Chat)
I have tried various chat clients including Yahoo messenger, MSN messenger, gTalk and still continue to use them. But compared to all those I like Skype. Ability to store previous chat history is one feature which I find very helpful. I have tried video chat with Yahoo messenger, gtalk and Skype. In skype it seems to be very clear and audio quality is also good compared to others.
Conclusion
I am sure many of you would be using the same utilities. There might be some utilities which are better than the ones I am using. I would like to hear about them. Until next time Happy Programming
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