Back in 2009 I assembled a list of useful tools and utilities into an e-mail which I shared with a number of colleagues at the time. Five years later in 2014 one person at least still refers to the list and uses a couple of the tools I highlighted. So, now that I have this site as a useful resource for this kind of thing, here is that list:
File Compression: 7-Zip http://www.7-zip.org/, http://sourceforge.net/projects/sevenzip/
File Editor: Notepad++ http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm, http://sourceforge.net/projects/notepad-plus/
File Comparison: WinMerge http://winmerge.org/, http://sourceforge.net/projects/winmerge/
Hard Disk Usage: WinDirStat https://windirstat.net/, http://sourceforge.net/projects/windirstat/
XML Editor: firstobject XML Editor: http://www.firstobject.com/dn_editor.htm
Remote Control: UltraVNC http://www.uvnc.com/, http://sourceforge.net/projects/ultravnc/
CD Burning: ImgBurn http://www.imgburn.com/
PDF Creation: PDFCreator http://www.pdfforge.org/, http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
Password Storage: PasswordSafe http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/, http://sourceforge.net/projects/passwordsafe/
Virtual Machines: Oracle's Virtual Box http://www.virtualbox.org/
Web Browser: Mozilla Firefox http://www.firefox.com/
Web Browser: Google Chrome http://www.google.co.uk/chrome?hl=en&brand=CHMI, http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/chrome/beta/ (Beta version), http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel (Dev build which I use)
E-Mail: Mozilla Thunderbird http://www.getthunderbird.com/
Scripting: Python http://www.python.org
System Tools: Microsoft SysInternals http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx, specifically PS Tools, Process Explorer, Process Monitor
Dev Tools: BareGrep and BareTail http://www.baremetalsoft.com/
FTP: FileZilla http://filezilla-project.org/, http://sourceforge.net/projects/filezilla/
Some of these tools are referenced elsewhere on this site but it seemed a good idea to construct this page and I might well add to it.