Tools that I use

I've listed some of them in the past here, but this is a more complete and up-to-date list. Update: I've dropped the "2011" from the title, as I've kept this list more or less up-to-date every time I change a computer.

For iOS/Android and web apps, look at this second list

Other than Visual Studio, Photoshop (with NVidia dxt plugin), Office&Outlook (or OpenOffice), 3dsMax and Perforce (or whatever else your studio uses) these are the tools that I always have installed on my development computer. 

A good way of reinstalling software that I've found is to use Ninite, it's GREAT. I don't use OSX for development at all, but I use it almost exclusively at home for photography and general computer stuff... so I included a few OSX tools too, even if you won't find much for programming.

• File tools
• Beyond Compare and Araxis Merge (or winMerge...)
• Everything and Agent Ransack (and limiting windows search indexing options only to the start menu and email)
• Nowadays I'm working more across workstations it's handy to have a faster file copier over the network, I use FastCopy (see http://www.raymond.cc/blog/12-file-copy-software-tested-for-fastest-transfer-speed/) so I can sync Perforce depots (and then use p4 flush) on both machines without going through the p4 server (also, if you have HDD space, use a local p4 proxy, it's nifty!)
• TreeSize or similar, but as I don't really need it often, I just get the portable version as needed.
• 7-Zip
• Coding
• MetalScroll or, for VS2010, the Enhanced Scrollbar from the Productivity Power Tools which are in general, very cool...
• Random other extensions for VS, from the gallery, like this Colour theme editor  Microsoft's own Power Commands and Visual Studio Achievements :) 
• Visual Assist X (plus I disable Intellisense especially if I'm not on VS2010)
• NotePad++ for almost everything (with this HLSL syntax add-on by Pettineo), Sublime Text is very nifty too but it's a bit young.
• Markdown editors - I still write a lot of plain .txt files, and using markdown gets you some formatting for free (one day I'll experiment to see if LTeX is doable too). WriteMonkey is good. Texts is better (OSX too)
• OSX Alternatives: TextWrangler, NotationalVelocity
• IDEs... Of course, Visual Studio, but you might need stuff for other languages
• Lua: Decoda is a great (now opensource!) IDE if you need one for Lua (which you probably shouldn't). ZeroBrane Studio is good too and integrates a number of game engines (mostly 2d and indie-ish, like Love, Moai, Corona) with a limited "livecoding" support (change of constant parameters)
• For most other things, JetBrains has an IDE. ObjectiveC, JavaScript, Python, Ruby... ActiveState maintains free Komodo Edit (a version of the Komodo IDE without debugging and some other important features) which is also good for JS, Phyton, Ruby and such...
• Some other little development tools like: Local History, Include files dependency watcher, Dependency walker and the Sysinternals suite
• I install also SharpDevelop I the VS version the company is using does not support the latest C#. ILSpy is great too, as it is NDepend but I use them rarely as I'm not dealing usually with large C# projects.
• Everybody is on P4, but the outside world likes GIT too. TortoiseGIT is good but young, SourceTree is better, also works on OSX
• Sometimes, C++ analysis software like Lattix and VisualC++Depend sometimes, compiler/compilers like Antlr, but this is not really part of my daily routine nor of my "default" install.
• Graphics and rendering
• IrfanView, also Picturenaut and Luminance HDR for HDR images...
• OSX Alternatives: Xee
• FXComposer 2.5 and 1.8, OpenCL studio... Also I download the Nvidia CUDA toolkit, the GPU computing toolkit (nowadays it has been discontinued, you'll need to download an older version, the website says it's part of the CUDA one but there will be no dx11 compute demos there), and their DirectX11 graphics one.
• I still find Pix to be usable (the external one, not the VS12 graphic debugger horror) but nowadays Intel's GPA is the top of the crop when it comes to PC graphics debugging.
• Sometimes, for no real good reason, I prototype some filters in Paint.net or Pixel Bender...
• VideoLan
• Also for screen captures! I just use the desktop capture device and encode a mp4. For smaller things GifCam is neat too, all other video capture programs I've found either are insane crapware or depend on proprietary codecs that you have to distribute...
• Sketchup if I happen to really hate the DCC app the studio uses (and I'm not talking about 3dsMax, I managed to sort of accept that. I'm talking about Maya :D). I also sometimes find handy to have a copy of TopMod and MeshLab. Nowadays, Autodesk 123D stuff can also be useful.
• Processing, for prototyping algorithms and ideas. I also usually have VVVV but I don't really end up using it.
• For some prototyping stuff, I use SlimDX (or SharpDX which is very similar, by design).
• Desktop
• I guess anyone working on Win8 is using ClassicShell... Interestingly, no one sent me a message about this fundamental tool, so I guess no one (as of 4/2/2013) is using win 8 among my videogame developer friends :)
• I pin down the Win7 Snipping Tool (and configure it not to prompt when closed), or go with Greenshot which is even better. Very useful to copy'n'paste pieces of the screen into emails.
• Launchy (when I'm not on Win7 - which nowadays means never)
• OSX Alternatives: Quicksilver (which was the "inspiration for Launchy really, and works way way better) and a few others these days.
• Acrobat Reader (even if I should probably prefer the less bloated SumatraPDF, that does not annoy the user with endless updates)
• ProcrastiTracker
• Unlocker (you can avoid this using the Sysinternals tools, that you should get installed anyways, but it's nifty to have Unlocker as it's faster)
• SharpKeys if I need to remap some of my keyboard keys. On my Apple Italian wired keyboard I swap the cmd and alt keys to behave like all the other keyboards which have the alt keys right next to the spacebar, for that the current SharpKeys fails though, the only program which was flexible enough to recognize the weird scancodes this keyboard outputs is KeyTweak
• Synergy for keyboard/mouse sharing across computers.
• CCleaner
• Monitor management
• My own bugfixed version of AnAppADay Jedi Concentrate (a Windows clone of the OSX Think). WindowFX 4 does the same too (and much more)
• F.Lux (even if recently I had to disable it, as it does not work well with my monitor calibration software)
• There are a lot of other tools that look nifty but I didn't end up using them often... Displayfusion looks neat but I didn't try it yet, the most interesting feature for me is placing a second taskbar with only the applications used on the second monitor there, MultiMon does it for free. A tiling window manager is good if you have a lot of screen space, like WinSplit (OSX alternative: SizeUP)
• Networking
• Firefox and/or Chrome (most often the latter actually)
• DropBox
• Google Calendar Sync
• Microsoft Live Messenger (well, Skype now...)
• For home at least I use a free LogMeIn account
• Math
• PowerToy Calculator (patched to install on Win7/Vista)
• Mathematica if the studio has a license for it (or I make them buy one!), Maxima or Sage and SciLab if not (and that usually is bad as my MatLab days are long over and I've never really learned any other CAS than Mathematica and a bit of Maple)