These are my favorite software utilities for development and life in general. Everything listed here is free.

Notepad2 (Florian Balmer) – This is a notepad replacement that adds some nice features, like syntax highlighting, the ability to open large files, and many more. It’s not a whole friggin’ IDE, though, so it retains the lightness of the original notepad. There are also instructions on how to replace notepad (be sure to look at the first comment if you’re running Vista 64 bit).

Regular Expression Designer (Rad Software) – This is a utility to test .NET regular expressions. There are many such utilities out there, but unlike some, this one you can actually figure out how to use it by just looking at it. There’s also a handy reference in the right pane. 

More to come…