No Long Days

Yes people it is finally that time. After running Windows 7 Release Candidate on my new PC (that's another blog entry) it was time to install the final release version (RTM) and all it's goodness.

I figured I would document here all the "essential" stuff that I install on it, and the order I follow.

Add to the domain After Windows7 Professional is installed the first thing to do is add it to the company domain. After it is joined to the domain I choose to not restart it. Then I go an add my domain user account into the local administrator group. Don't install anything when logged in with the local account created during the install because it will all be in the wrong profile. (At least if you work logged into your domain account.) After this is done, restart the machine and log in with your domain credentials.

IE8 The first thing to do is run IE8 and set it up. Make sure to do a custom start so you can select your search provider, Google of course, and I personally turn of the accelerators. The the first place I go to in mozilla.com and download FireFox. After that I only use IE8 for the ASP.Net app we develop.

FireFox Yes, this is one of my most used programs. Once FireFox is up and running I install the few add-ins that I use:

RoboForm This is both an add-in install and a stand alone install. RoboForm is a password manager. I need to check RoboForm on another machine or make sure to write down my RoboForm Online password (before paving). But, after roboform is installed you set it up to sync with RoboForm online. RoboForm Online is currently in beta and free. Prior to RoboForm Online I was using DropBox to sync the passwords, and it worked very well. If RoboForm Online starts being a paid service I will probably go back to using DropBox again. Once I have this installed and synced I have access to all my passwords. I don't "know" any of my passwords save my gmail password and my RoboForm master password. It does all the work for me to generate and remember my passwords which are unique for every web site I use. I have about 170 passwords in RoboForm.

XMarks This is an add-in that stores all your bookmarks in the cloud and sycns them with any other machines you happen to have. After installing it I pull my password out of RoboForm and tell XMarks to sync all my bookmarks deleting local and using all on the server. This way I don't get any of the "starter bookmarks" Firefox gives you to have to clean out.

Yes, RoboForm, XMarks and Gmail pretty much make moving to a new machine fairly simple. I don't have to worry about syncing data or moving essential stuff like that to my new machine.

Ad-Block Plus Don't travel the tubes without it.

DownThemAll A really cool download manager and also provides and easy way to d/l "All" the stuff on a web page.

Next I start installing productivity software that I need/use to do my job as a .Net developer. Many of these tools are free and open source. In install them in this order because sometimes I rely on one to get or configure the next.

Office 2007 (Yes I know.. corporate standard.) Outlook 2007 is actually nice in that it finds and connects to the Exchange server all on its own. I don't have to write down or bother someone to tell me what the exchange servers host name is.

TortoiseSVN - open source client for subversion

NotePad++ - open source programmers text editor

7-Zip - open source zip, rar tool

Magic DISK - open source ISO mounting tool. (you can't mount ISO's nativity in windows FAIL! Even my Mac can mount ISOs)

Beyond Compare The premier comparison tool. Compares file listings and file contents.

Visual Studio 2008 Visual Studio 2008 SP1

Code Rush / Refactor! - if your a .Net developer you should know what this is. Either that or your are a resarper person. If you don't know what Code Rush is, go find it and get the demo.

SQL Server 2008 SQL Server 2008 SP1

DbGhost - an indispensable tool to manage SQL Server change management.

(I would put links, but you can find these open source tools with google quickly enough.)

Once all this is installed I think I have the basics covered. I'm sure I will install alot more in the coming weeks. I will need to copy all of "My Documents" on this PC. Then there is InstallShield, Xheo, etc.

Well... that's about it for now. Talk to you all soon.