Besides from Simple DNS Plus my favorite software is:
Software Development:
- Visual Basic.NET / Visual Studio 2008 - http://www.microsoft.com/vstudio
The new VB language features (especially type inference and lambdas) and the VS IDE are just awesome.
- Help & Manual - http://www.helpandmanual.com
Great tool for authoring software help files and documentation.
- Advanced Installer - http://www.caphyon.com
Nice MSI installer builder at a reasonable price.
Easily beats Wyse and InstallShield both on features and price.
- Visual Build Professional - http://www.kinook.com
Great tool for automating software builds. This just saves us so much time.
- Dotfuscator - http://www.preemptive.com
For obfuscating .NET code. I especially like the ability to translate obfuscated stack traces back to original symbols.
It is rather expensive but I don't know of any good alternatives.
- Smart Paster - see this blog post
Paste text from the Windows clipboard into the Visual Studio source code editor formatted as a comment, quoted string, or string builder code.
Software testing / optimizing:
- VMware Workstation - http://www.vmware.com
Amazing virtual machine software. Can't imagine testing software without it.
- Reflector - http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet
Fantastic tool for finding out what the .NET compilers actually do to your code.
- dotTrace Profiler - http://www.jetbrains.com
Very nice for profiling/optimizing .NET code.
I actually won a license for this software in a "drop your business card" contest at TechEd Barcelona 2006.
- Hexago / go6 client - http://www.go6.net
Great for testing IPv6 Internet applications when your ISP doesn't offer IPv6 yet.
Graphics / icons:
Other deskop software:
- Mozy - http://www.mozy.com
Continuous remote backup of irreplaceable files.
- SyncBackSE - http://www.2brightsparks.com
For synchronizing folders and uploading websites.
- The Bat - http://www.ritlabs.com
Great template driven e-mail client software - automates a lot of typing when answering support e-mails.
- Windows Live Writer - http://get.live.com/writer/overview
Nice software to write blogs - especially like the word style squiggly-line spell-checking.
- Kaspersky Anti-Virus - http://www.kaspersky.com
One nice thing about this is that it includes a command line scanning tool which is easy to include in our automated software build process.
Server software:
- MDaemon - http://www.mdeamon.com
I have been using this e-mail server software since 1998. Keeps getting better.
- Copernic Enterprise Search - http://www.copernic.com
This is a great search engine which powers the search function on our web-sites.
Unfortunately the company now only makes desktop search software, and no longer offers this server version.
- blogengine.net - http://www.dotnetblogengine.net
Just started using this for this web-site (replacing DasBlog).
Components:
- SandDock - http://www.divelements.co.uk
Great .NET windows docking component that actually works on all platforms including 64 bit.
- FreeTextBox - http://freetextbox.com
Very nice ASP.NET HTML editor component.
It is not free if you want the "pro" features - but it is well worth the $49.
We use this for a many different web applications.
- DynamicPDF - http://www.dynamicpdf.com
Great for creating PDF documents on the fly.
We primarily use it for automatic on-line invoice creation.
I have tried many different tools in all these categories over the years, and I can highly recommend all of the above over any competitors that I know of.
Of course if you know of any better alternatives please do let me know and I might reconsider.