File Explorer
Xplorer2 Lite: Finally found a great little file explorer that gives me tabs (Tabs really are your friends). Its memory footprint is a fraction of the regular Windows Explorer and its packed with all kinds of goodies on its menus. Just lovely.
Text Editor
TextPad: New Winner as of Aug 2006. Reason: RegExp search-and-replace that works on multiple documents at one time, plus, deeply flexible macro recording and shortcut assignments. (Thanks Serge)
PSPad: After hours of searching and reviewing. I declare PSPad the winner! It has all my required features: RegExp Search, Document Tabs, FTP Client, Column Mode, Customizable Tab Size, Syntax Highlighting, Code Explorer .... I can even type in a URL and have it open up the HTML right in the editor. And of course, it's Free.
Another highly worthy contender is the Crimson Editor.
Desktop
DeskView: This tiny program make your desktop actually usable. It turns those awful icons (that take up way too much space and doesn't show you the full filename), into a wonderfully pratical "list" view. I can't track down the original author. But I am oh-so-very-grateful.
Screen Capture and Edit
FastStone Screen Capture and Photobie: I'm a fan of software that does a boat-load on tiny footprint. These two programs combined are less than 2MB installed. Use FastStone to capture the screenshot, then drop it into Photobie to do quick annotations.
System Maintenance
CCleaner: This great tool shows me how much junk all those uninstallers leave behind. It cleans. It's fast.
Website Stats
StatCounter: Shows refers and extracts search engine keywords that directed traffic to your site.
System Monitoring
FileMon: Monitors file system activities.
ProcessMon: Way better than your good'ol Windows Task Manager
Hats off to all the amazing developers who put these tools together. You make software cool.
Audio Recorder and Editor
Audacity: Record audio right from your PC mic input. Can record and edit multiple tracks and host of other features.
Bless the freeware developers!
