JAJAH Development Blog

A couple of weeks ago I got a new computer and after spending quite a while setting it up and collecting all the different programs and little tweaks I like I figured it’s a good idea to make a list of it all.

at the end there’s a bonus!

Programs:

.Net Development:

1. Resourcer - Enables looking at what’s inside .Net’s binary resource files. - Link
2. Reflector - Enables looking at assemblies wether they are the .Net assemblies or your own. can be very useful - Link
3. Guidance Explorer - Contains different guidance lines in regards to .Net development. - Link
4. TailXP - this is not really geared solely on .Net, this is a tool used to watch a certain text file for changes, this is very useful when watching a text log file change in real time. - Link

General purpose:

1. Notepad++ - An excellent free text editor. - Link
2. 7zip - A free zip\rar\7zip(their own) compression\decompression program. - Link
3. Paint.NET - An open-source photo editing program written in .Net - Link
4. CDBurnerXP - A very nice program for burning different CD’s\DVD’s.(FREE!) - Link
5. SharpKeys - I used this little program to change some keys behavior on my laptop’s keyboard. you can use it to change the behavior of most keys on most keyboards - Link
6. foobar2000 - A music player. The reason I use this music player and not Winamp\Windows media player\ITunes\Whatever are both that it’s FREE and that uses virtually no memory once minimized(in today’s scale). - Link
7. Firefox - Of course - Link
8. SyncBack - A very good program for synching different locations including FTP servers.(there’s a free version) - Link
9. CCleaner - Cleans all temporary locations on your computer and fixes some registry issues. free and very good. - Link
10. Daemon Tools - A free CD\DVD drive emulation, very useful when downloading an install CD you don’t want to really burn. - Link
11. WinSCP - Useful for accessing SFTP\FTP servers. - Link
12. Putty - Simple SSH client - Link
13. VLC - Good media player(I use it solely for video though it supports audio playback as well) - Link
14. Gimp - If you are looking for a more professional alternative to Paint.NET but don’t want to pay for Photoshop, The Gimp might be for you - Link
15. Windows Live Writer - The software I am using to write this posts. - Link
16. Picasa - My choice for photo organizing. -

Windows tweaks:

1. You know it when some program crashes(all do eventually) and you get that annoying "Send\Don’t send" message? well, you can set it up so it just shows the error and a close button. This way you won’t click the send by accident.
   Right click My Computer->Properties->Advanced->Error Reporting(at bottom)->Disable Error Reporting. Leave the mark as it is.
2. Some times you have a simple file you wish to open with Notepad but Windows doesn’t recognize the file type and won’t do this by default, yes, you can fix it manually but that will only help this file type. what I like to do(or at least liked[better idea coming up]) is to add a shortcut to Notepad on the "Send To" list.
   Start menu->Run-> write "sendto"->right click the empty space->new->shortcut->write "notepad.exe"->Next->write "Notepad"->Finish
   And your done! now you can just right click a file and choose sendto->notepad and it will open up with notepad.
3. A new way I found of doing the previous mentioned tweak is to have a "Open with Notepad" context menu item so you don’t need to go to "send to" the How to is detailed here: Link
   You are probably wondering why then have I wrote here the previous one, the answer is that i think the previous tweak is quite useful for many different usages even if just to remove useless links from the sendto list.
4. Most people look into choosing a nice desktop wallpaper and a nice screen saver, what they forget about is looking through the power options and setting them to they’re liking. it can be a real pain to leave your computer on at night for a big download and come back the next day to find out it turned itself off after a couple of hours.
   Right click on the desktop->properties->Screen Saver->Power…(at the bottom)
   Go through all the options and choose what’s best for you, if you don’t know what something means leave it as it is.
5. Using hibernation - If you wish to shut-down your computer but you want it to boot back to the same exact situation that you left it in you can put your computer in hibernation. what windows does when you do this is copy all your current RAM(memory) to the hard-drive and then restore it the next time you boot. I found this most useful with laptops mainly as it shortens boot-up time quite drastically.
   Go to Power as before->Hibernate(tab)->Mark Enable Hibernation(if it’s not already marked).
   If you are using the old\server style of the shut down screen then you have a list view when you choose "Shut down" from the start menu. If this is the case then you will see the hibernation option at the bottom of the list. if you are using the default XP shut down view then you will need to hold down the "Shift" button while viewing the screen and then the standby button will change into hibernate.

   If you are experiencing problems with the boot up after hibernation you can rapidly click a few times on the F8 key just before Windows start loading(right after the BOIS screen is gone). This will open up the boot option screen for windows, you can choose here to boot normally and not from the hibernation data created earlier.

   I would also recommend rebooting the computer the old fashion way at least once every 3-5 days, this is Windows were talking about after all…

Hope you found at least one cool thing here. If there is anything you want me to try and find out for you just say so in the comments and I will give it my best.

Cheers,
Nadav

Ow right… the bonus! - just a free nice game, very cool indeed. - Link
and if you are into shooters and such look into F.E.A.R(I will leave this one for you to find, the multi-player should be free).