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- HoeKey* - Make use of that Windows key and many other key combos. Here are my keys combinations.
- PureText* (Strips away formating when you paste using Winkey-V) As there is no install,
- Copy to the directory of your choice
- Start the program and it will appear as a PT icon on your system tray
- Right click the icon and choose options
- Check the box to "Automatically run PureText each time...."
- Araxis Merge 64-bit - Best diff tool I have ever found. (disable Ribbon Interface, check do not show splash window, add folder filter to ignore .svn folders and make the default encoding UTF-8 No BOM). DetalWalker looks promising and cheaper.
- Metapad* - almost as tiny and fast as notepad but with unlimited undo's and a couple of other nice features
- Quick SFV 64-bit (use md5 or sfv files to ensure integrity during transport of files)
- EMEditor (good with distinguishing and using UTF-8, ISO sect.. fast, light with text highlighting)
- WinRar 64-bit - better than winzip (does all the same stuff with zip files) plus allows you to create self-extracting splittable files and has a superior compression format called rar.
- Erase - with a right-click you can securely delete or move confidential file
- Disable running of scheduled tasks
- VMWare Workstation - allows you to virtualize operating systems. If you do not know what this means you are missing out.
- Any Password - centralize your passwords. Now I am looking at an open source alternative called KeePass which I can hopefully hook up to an application server and make online. Even more ideal, I can perhaps hook up KeePass with a java web app with 2-Factor authentication.
- AntiVirus I use different ones on different computers. As a power user I disable the on the fly scanning to conserve cpu and memory.
- Avira Personal Edition - has highest detection rate but has pop-up advertisement. Though it can be disabled, I actually recommend buying a license.
- Avast Home Edition - Recommended by Dickson. Very good but I don't like having to renew my keys every once in a while.
- AVG - Free version does not check for malware.
- Telnet - you actually have to go into Windows 7 and install this manually.
- KeePass* - a central place to keep your important data with one master password or master key file.
Communication Utilities
- Kitty* - Takes the actual Putty code base and improves the interface with the following key features. For a quick setup you can download my personalized kitty setup which contains a configuration file and adjustments to the defaults per my note on Putty. Here are the details of my personal configuration file,
- Portable option - instead of Windows Registry saves to local file in the directory
- Transparent Windows (CTRL-Up Arror and CTRL-Down Arrow)
- CTRL-F7 Pin Window to always be on top (useful with Transparency and especially with second or third monitor)
- Improved sizeable session manager, but still not as good as Putty Connection Manager
- Putty - I find this to be the most reliable compatible and universal. However, the interface is dated and Kitty is much better. I now package this as part of Putty Connection Manager. Generally I adjust the defaults to:
- Window - Columns = 100, Lines of scrollback to 2000
- Window, Translation - Received data assumed to be in which character set: UTF-8
- Putty Connection Manager* - An updated tabbed and tree based listing interface to Putty (no install, though it does use the registry consider talking to this developers about not doing this)
- For convenience I create a manual package. Just download the manual package and unzip to a directory of your choice and then execute puttycm.exe.
- ExpandDrive (create a map drive over SSH for easy development)
- BitVise Tunnelier
- No Putty Integration (console included is not as universally compatible)
- GUI for tunneling
- Hides in System tray
- Does not support drag and drop from desktop
- Firefox US version for compatibility + plugins,
- Highlighter by Terry Yen - My favourite highlighter but it no longer works with Firefox 3.6.3. Update, the latest working version is now at http://netticat.ath.cx/MyAddons/MyAddons.htm
- Highlighter TexMarker Go - The simplest alternative I found (I don't like the other ones that might slow down my system
- MM3-ProxySwitch - Simple UI for switching proxies but still a bit too complicated for novices.
- After install Right click on white space beside the help and choose Customize
- Scroll down and look for the mm3 icon
- Drag icon to where you want on the browser, I put it on the right of my address bar
- Spell checking in forms will only be enabled unless if you have a dictionary. Right-click on a form field and Add Dictionaries...
- Disable anti-virus scanning on downloads
- about:config
- browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone
- New Tab Homepage - show homepage on new tab create.
- English Canadian dictionary or whatever dictionary you want and change it to the default.
- TCP View (Systernal utility to watch all open connections, good for network troubleshooting).
- Proxy Switcher Lite - only free decent utility to quickly proxy switch in IE.
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