Monday, June 23, 2008
Upgrading to Vista 64
Posted on Monday, June 23, 2008 5:02:30 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)  Comments [9] | 
Categories: Devt Tools | General

vista I was running into a LOT of weirdness with my Windows Xp installation, so I figured I'd upgrade to Vista 64 instead of futzing with another re-do of Xp.

I've been running Vista on my notebook an home workstation for about 6 months with no issues, and with my MSDN subscription, so it's a no-cost thing - just grab the disk and an authorization code, and let 'er rip.

Hardware Compatibility is one of the first things you should be concerned about when jumping to the 64-bit platform, but we had pre-planned this to some extent. When we built out our development boxes, we followed the "CodingHorror Ultimate Developer Rig" parts list. So other than the quad core CPU, I've got exactly the same box. Since Scott Hanselman has been running Vista 64 for a long time, with few issues (here's a link to his podcast on the Vista 64 Developer Experience) this should go pretty smoothly.

One nice thing about re-paving a machine is you get to clean out all the crud that accumulates over time. So, as I re-built things, I created a list of all the stuff I could not live without.

Vista Components:

  • IIS w/ IIS 6 compatibility
  • Disable User Access Control - secure, but a hassle

Development Tools:

Productivity:

  • Office Enterprise 2007
  • Visio 2007
  • Slickrun  - launcher goodness
  • FolderShare - sync folders across multiple systems
  • Notepad++ - notepad with tabs and syntax hilighting
  • FireFox
    • FireBug - must have for Ajax development
    • FoxMarks - sync bookmarks across multiple systems
    • IETab - runs IE inside FireFox - good for SharePoint

GIS:

  • ArcGIS Desktop (Editor) 9.3 Beta
  • uDig

 

So, .NET developers - what other tools do you install on a fresh box?

Monday, June 23, 2008 6:35:30 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)
Your list is good! Maybe also:
Resharper
SQL Server
Silverlight SDK
Photoshop
Expression Studio (Deep Zoom Composer)
Windows Live Suite
Skype
Witty
SmartFTP
Virtual PC
John
Monday, June 23, 2008 8:58:37 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)
Fiddler
Filezilla
FWTools
Windows Live Suite
Matt Priour
Tuesday, June 24, 2008 8:43:43 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)
All of the above (save the GIS ingredients) + iTunes/Rhapsody... tunes == happiness.

I've been running on Vista 64 at home since January with no problems. In fact the only compatibility issue I ran into was with Rhapsody and they just released their 64 bit support, so it's no longer an issue. It's nice that the box sees all my RAM too, instead of just the first 3GB. I'm not much of a hardware guy, but it's noticeably faster at 4GB of RAM than the 3GB I have on my government supplied day-box.
Nick Kirkes
Tuesday, June 24, 2008 9:03:08 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)
Web Developer (Add-on For FireFox)
DAEMON Tools
SnagIt
IE6 Simulator (http://www.askdavetaylor.com/run_internet_explorer_ie6_and_ie7_on_same_machine.html)
Adobe Fireworks
Max
Tuesday, June 24, 2008 11:15:56 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)
I'd add an editor I saw one of the presenters from ESRI using at last year's UC Komodo Edit (the free version of their full-strength Komodo IDE).

It's a little overkill as an editor, but it's really nice for working on scripts. They just released an upgrade today.
August
Tuesday, June 24, 2008 11:24:48 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)
Good list!
I'd add:
Process Explorer (haven't tested on 64bit, has anyone?)
Ankhsvn
TortoiseSVN
ArcEngine SDK
ArcGIS Desktop SDK
ftp voyager (or equivalent)
Sql Server 2008 RC0
GoTo Meeting (or equivalent)
Kirk
Tuesday, June 24, 2008 6:20:04 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)
Process explorer works in Vista64 according to the horses mouth.

I'll have to check out Slickrun, I've been using Launchy (and Gnome Do on a laptop) as alternatives.

To contribute:
Supercopier2 - assuming it works with Vista
Ultramon - Good dual view multimonitor support
PrintKey - Basically like SnagIt
Foobar - Highly customizable music player
VLC - For video of any kind
Diskeeper - Good defrag/computer maintenance program
NOD32 - Best, lowest resource virus scanner I've seen (cheap on Newegg)
Firefox addons: NoScript, Download Statusbar, Taboo, searchOnTab, Tabs Open Relative (mimics how IE opens tabs - adjacent to the focused tab).


Ben R.
Monday, June 30, 2008 6:19:10 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)
Most of what I use daily has already been listed, but here's a few more:
* Code Rush
* Fiddler
* IE Developer's Toolbar
* UltraEdit
* Virtual PC
David @ softwhere
Tuesday, July 08, 2008 6:26:35 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)
Definitely get Firebug extension for Firefox.

Gives you lots of nifty de-bugging tools for javascript/Ajax and so on.
ChrisW
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