In the UK I am the technical editor for the MSDN Flash. This weeks edition was a special focused on free software. I gathered together some of the best downloads based on recommendations from friends, colleagues and customers (which in case you were wondering is an overlapping group of individuals) plus a few of my personal favourites. I have tried to get something for everyone. From fairly generic utilities such as Free Download Manager and Unlocker, specialist tools such as SketchPath for XPath and Script# for JavaScript, to full blown approaches to development such as MbUnit and Rhino.Mocks. There were loads more great candidates to choose from which is why I've included two excellent resources – Windows Developer Power Tools which accompanies the book of the same name and Scott Hanselman’s tools list

Bigger Lists than this to browse!

• Windows Developer Power Tools
  An even better list than this one to accompany the book, mostly free.
• Scott Hanselmans tools list
  A very comprehensive list of great tools, many free.

General

• Free Download Manager
  Great open source tool for downloading everything else!
• WinMerge differencing and merging
  Open Source differencing and merging tool.
• Unlocker for sharing violations
  Solve the “File in use by another program” category of problems.
• Cropper for point and shoot screen captures
  Screen grabber utility with plug-ins.
• Foxit PDF Reader
  Light weight and quick.
• ISORecorder CD/DVD burner
  Burn CDs/DVDs from ISO image files.
• Daemon Tools to mount those ISOs
  Why not mount instead of burn?
• Ultimate Boot CD
  Never leave home without it!
• SysInternals file, disk, process and network utilities
  Loads of good stuff including Process Explorer.

Development utilities

• Code Project Browser add-in for Visual Studio
  Browse the goodness that is on Code Project.
• SnippetEditor for Visual Basic 2008
  Create Visual Studio code snippets easily.
• Xaml editor for WPF and Silverlight 2
  A must have tool for Xaml development.
• .NET Reflector
  Explore, browse and analyze .NET assemblies.
• .NET Reflector Add-Ins
  30 Add-Ins available for free.
• LINQPad query tool for LINQ
  Explore and learn LINQ.
• Notepad2 text editor
  Great replacement for Notepad.
• Notepad++ text editor
  Another great replacement for Notepad.
• Regulator for regular expressions
  Regular expression testing tool.
• Regular Expression Designer
  Learn, develop and test Regular Expressions.
• Sketchpath for XML
  XPath Editor and XML analysis and testing tool.
• XPathBuilder for XPath
  Another great XPath tool.
• Fiddler HTTP debugging proxy
  Great for debugging http(s) communications.
• Code:Keep for Visual Studio
  Manage thousands of code snippets.
• Write JavaScript using C# with Script#
  And get productive!
• Coding standards for C# and VB.NET
  Not strictly software but very handy to have.
• C# coding standard from IDesign plus plenty more!
  IDesign have plenty of other useful downloads.

Large frameworks and tools

• Microsoft Web Platform Installer 1.0
  A simple tool to install Microsoft’s entire web platform.
• Express editions of Visual Studio and SQL Server
  Free versions of Visual Studio 2008 & SQL Server 2008.
• MbUnit testing tool
  Advanced unit testing.
• Rhino.Mocks mocking tool
  Mock object framework to simplify testing.