Pidgin is a chat program which lets you log in to accounts on multiple chat networks simultaneously. Pidgin is a GTK+ instant messaging application for Windows and Unix. It supports AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE and more. See http://pidgin.im/about for more information.

Chocolatey - think executables/application packages (like apt-get for Windows), not library packages. This is what the Chocolatey NuGet goodness is for. Chocolatey allows you to install application nuggets and run executables from anywhere. ======= Executable Nuggets ======= For example, say you have an executable in the tools folder of your pack... More information

Vagrant is a tool for building complete development environments using virtual machines. With an easy-to-use workflow and focus on automation, Vagrant lowers development environment setup time, increases development/production parity, and makes the "works on my machine" excuse a relic of the past.

UltraDefrag is a powerful Open Source Defragmentation tool for the Windows Platform. It can defragment any system files including registry hives and paging file. Also one of the main goals of UltraDefrag is doing the job as fast and reliable as possible.

LINQPad lets you interactively query databases in a modern query language: LINQ. LINQPad supports everything in C# 4.0 and Framework 4.0 (LINQ to Objects, SQL, EF, XML, Parallel LINQ, etc.). It also supports OData, Azure, and a lot more. LINQPad is also a great way to learn LINQ: it comes loaded with 500 examples from the book, C# 4.0 in a Nutshe... More information

libjpeg-turbo is a derivative of libjpeg that uses SIMD instructions (MMX, SSE2, NEON) to accelerate baseline JPEG compression and decompression on x86, x86-64, and ARM systems. On such systems, libjpeg-turbo is generally 2-4x as fast as the unmodified version of libjpeg, all else being equal. libjpeg-turbo was originally based on libjpeg/SIMD by ... More information

Set's the chocolatey_bin_root environment variable to a default value of 'bin' if not already set. This allows packages such as Ruby, Python etc. to install in \bin instead of the system root.

Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License. Based on the powerful editing component Scintilla, Notepad++ is written in C++ and uses pure Win32 API and STL which ensures a ... More information

Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License. Based on the powerful editing component Scintilla, Notepad++ is written in C++ and uses pure Win32 API and STL which ensures a ... More information

Vagrant is a tool for building and distributing virtualized development environments

If you need to convert files from one markup format into another, pandoc is your swiss-army knife. Pandoc can convert documents in markdown, reStructuredText, textile, HTML, DocBook, or LaTeX

Batte.LoadOuts.Dev is a .NET developer workstation loadout, including Visual Studio 2012 Professional, ReSharper 7, and more.

ChocolateyGUI is a nice GUI on top of the chocolatey commanline tool. It let's you install, upgrade and uninstall packages. It shows you the available packages and it shows the installed packeges. It shows all the information about a package. Due to a dependency on the Windows Management Framework, this package will only work correctly on Window... More information

Python is a programming language that lets you work more quickly and integrate your systems more effectively. You can learn to use Python and see almost immediate gains in productivity and lower maintenance costs.

Console2 is a Windows console window enhancement. Console features include: multiple tabs, text editor-like text selection, different background types, alpha and color-key transparency, configurable font, different window styles

Node JS - Evented I/O for v8 JavaScript. Node's goal is to provide an easy way to build scalable network programs. This package is an alias for the nodejs.commandline package, which simply installs Node.exe to the Chocolatey folder. Does not include NPM.

From Wikipedia on 2013-04-18: Jitsi (formerly SIP Communicator) is a free and open source multiplatform voice (VoIP), videoconferencing and instant messaging application for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. It supports several popular instant messaging and telephony protocols, including open recognised encryption protocols for chat (OTR) and voice/vide... More information

Fiddler is a Web Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP(S) traffic between your computer and the Internet. Fiddler allows you to inspect all HTTP(S) traffic, set breakpoints, and "fiddle" with incoming or outgoing data. Fiddler includes a powerful event-based scripting subsystem, and can be extended using any .NET language. Fiddler is freeware and ca... More information

PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Windows and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator. | Please install with chocolatey (http://nuget.org/List/Packages/chocolatey).

These are the utilities I install on a fresh Windows dev machine. I recommend you set a user environment variable of "chocolatey_bin_root" with a value of "bin" or "tools" etc. This prevents packages like Ruby from installing in the root of C:. The easiest way to set chocolatey_bin_root is to execute cinst binroot, then open a new con... More information