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:

• Visual Studio 2008
• Aptana Studio - Javascript / Ajax IDE
• MyGeneration - free code generation tool
• MbUnit - unit testing on crack
• TestDriven.net - Unit Testing harness for Visual Studio
• GhostDoc - why write your own Xml comments?

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?