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My question, expanded, is what tool/program/utility could you not do your job without? What has made your life easier as a professional at work? What was the best purchase you made for your company? All those could be answered with one thing, but if you have more than one please share! Thanks!

Google, for all the answers that the manufacturers/developers/authors/OEMs fail to provide.

Logmein ignition, to allow me to socialise without worry whilst on call.

vSphere/Workstation/Fusion

For me, the nod would have to go to the combination of Ubuntu/Debian Linux and Oracle VirtualBox. I run Ubuntu on my desktop, and the Software Engineering servers run Debian. Anything that either can't be done natively in Linux or requires a different/older/newer Linux distro gets shoved into a VirtualBox VM. I've got VMs set up for 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows XP, 64-bit Windows 7, and multiple versions of Ubuntu and Debian. For someone who needs to support a Linux-based product plus developers/users/customers running different OSes, this setup is a godsend.

We also use VirtualBox VMs to set up the build environment for our product. This ensures that everyone has an identical build environment, regardless of the native OS installed on their desktop (we have a mix of Windows XP, Windows 7, and Linux desktops).

Broadband.

this: http://www.spiceworks.com/

I don't really consider broadband to be a tool/program/utility, but yeah... if we're counting infrastructure like that, broadband would need to be on the list.

Electricity would need to be pretty high on the list too.

Besides all the cheesy answers, the first thing on the list for me would be VMWare + SAN and all the amazing reliability you can have with it.

Software that I use for hours every day at work: RDTabs. Best RDP client ever! And free!
.Net languages also would have to be on the list

Beyond compare, VS 2010, .Net - I'm more of a programmer than an IT guy though I do love to tinker and play with hardware.

Remote Desktop, PuTTy, Gig-E, Network Attached Storage, 2TB+ hard drives, eSATA, virtual machines, disk imaging, Windows, ADS, wireless, IP networking, Apache web server, Google web search, Internet, ...

Take away any single one of those and life gets substantially worse....

The console. Any console.

Cuisinart 10 cup Grind-N-Brew coffee maker.

just brew it! wrote:

I don't really consider broadband to be a tool/program/utility, but yeah... if we're counting infrastructure like that, broadband would need to be on the list.

Electricity would need to be pretty high on the list too.

In which case I nominate the humble screwdriver


It is interesting just how quickly BB has become a standard bit of infrastructure though. Its got to be one of the fastest adopted technologies ever, faster than electricity, telephones, fax, mobile phones. I suppose that's got to be largely down to a general increase in tech being adopted faster but it's impressive none the less.

Mind you if we're excluding infrastructure we should probably exclude Google and associated services like mail and docs.

Sticking to the spirit of the thread then, for me it's probably python. I've used a modest number of languages over the years but some Python is the one that's stuck for me and even though I wouldn't call myself a programmer there's hardly a day goes by without me either running a script, writing a script or thinking to myself "I could do that with a script".

Acronis Imaging software, VNC & RDP, VPN access.

Forgot to added some "un-named" Live Boot CDs/DVDs for trouble shooting.

Dposcorp wrote:

Acronis Imaging software, VNC & RDP, VPN access. Forgot to added some "un-named" Live Boot CDs/DVDs for trouble shooting.

I believe Acronis to be astoundingly overrated.

flip-mode wrote:

Dposcorp wrote:

Acronis Imaging software, VNC & RDP, VPN access. Forgot to added some "un-named" Live Boot CDs/DVDs for trouble shooting.

I believe Acronis to be astoundingly overrated.

Make it generic then, for ANY imaging software. I cut my teeth on Ghost, now I use Zenworks Imaging. I can have a machine with a dead hard drive back in service in under 2 hours.


USB drives, Firefox, and Imaging software for me.

Notepad++
PuTTy
Visual Studio
PowerGUI (I can live without this but it makes management so much easier)

PuTTy/ssh
RDP
Notepad++
OpenWRT
VS Express 2010 (which I will be using long past it's due date if Microsoft continues it's current path)

highlandr wrote:

Make it generic then, for ANY imaging software.

Yep, I did in the list in my other post.

Job related
SQL Server Management Studio, though saying so is kind of cheating. DBArtisan is very nice too for when I play with Oracle
Putty is essential.
I'm a big vi/vim guy, even on windows ,though I'll also use Notepad++ a lot
Xming
I use a Das Keyboard Ultimate at work, and the fact no one's complained about it is very useful to me
Dual monitors (esp with my other monitor being an old Dell I-SPS screen, with my laptop's 1600x900 res supplimenting it well)
Perl, Python, and Java for any time i need to hack something together
Virtual clonedrive (overlaps with below)

Home use/local tech support geek/cowboy coder related
Clonedrive again
Knoppix
vim / notepad++ again
Mechanical keyboards
Prime95
Memtest86+
VirtualBox
Logmein.com / Logmein Ignition
Java again for hacking things together
Speedfan

From something that's not mentioned - Sysinternals Suite: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysi ... 42062.aspx

Also, "Scanner" from this site - http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/ (although I am am too scared to use it in commercial environment, unknown software and stuff)

WinDbg is high on the list too.

In Linux - "apt-get".

A knife to help me unbox cool ****.

A school degree.

A sense of humour.

Time off, though my boss doesn't agree there.

My knife and my dog.