In construction you can tell a lot about a tradesman by looking at their tools, and I believe the same is true with technology.  When you look at my tools you'll see some that are leading edge and others that are...well....old school (or at least perceived that way by some...)

One of the greatest 'tools' in my toolbox are my monitors. If you've never worked with multiple monitors, you should.  If you've worked with two or three and like it, you should try more, especially if you are a programmer. I'm up to 6 off one laptop with ability to expand although I believe I've finally reached the optimal number for me.
 

Development Environment

Lenovo T520 Laptop, I7 quad core, 2.4ghz, 16MB RAM Windows 7 Professional, 64 bit 6 monitors -  (primary plus 5 external monitors running off 'one laptop') Dell Vostro i5 secondary laptop

Video Drivers for External Monitors

Lenovo T520 has dual video cards (Intel/Nvidia 4200) with Optimus Technology which supports total of 4 monitors (dock required) Display Link External Video Cards for additional external monitors (high speed processors needed) Matrox Triple Head to Go Digital (4 monitor solution used since ~2005 with laptops that only support 1 external monitor)

Protection Systems

Microsoft Security Essentials Malware Bytes Windows auto updates

Backup Systems

Cavalry Retriever -  hard drive cloned monthly and stored off site  CrashPlan - backups to local drive and cloud every 2 hours.  Exceptional product. Windows Backup - monthly Windows Restore Points - Implemented custom code to run daily (default is weekly or on system changes) Spanning Backup - Daily Prior Experience:  SpiderOak, GDrive and Dropbox

Printer

Brother MFC J4410DW - wireless multifunction that works...love it

Scanner

Scan Snap S510 and S1500 (worth every penny...)

Fax

RCFax - online fax service

Remote Access

LogMeIn LogMeIn Ignition - (can log in to pc with 6 monitors via iphone)

Email

Google Apps for business (my domain - Used google conversion tool to convert gmail accounts to google apps, tricky but worked perfect) Gmail Outlook (migrated from Outlook in 2010 after 14+ years, best move ever...) Dedicated Linux SMTP server for my outbound webmail

FTP

Filezilla Ipswitch FTP Pro - (until I got turned onto Filezilla for free)

Hosting

Arvixe - discount web hosting (shared hosting, reseller hosting, business class hosting, and VPS Hyper-v) Arvixe is ranked #1 for discount hosting and in Fortune top 250 fastest growing companies.  That said, discount hosting is not for week of heart.....I've been utilizing discount hosting for 12 years...I've always recovered from issues...but having personal recovery plan is critical (or just pay for more expensive hosting)

VPS Server

Hyper-V Windows 2012 Server RDP Access DotNetPanel Access/Management Windows Task Scheduler

Web-based Programming(emphasis in business sytems)

Html expert Html5 just some new tags and features, some of which are useful and others which aren't Html-Frames expert Classic ASP-VBScript expert Classic ASP-ADO expert Classic ASP-ADOX highly proficient CSS expert XML highly proficient Javascript expert Html DOM expert ASP.net Im so glad I didn't chase MS down that very ugly path years ago. Maybe okay for big business with big budgets, but like using sledge hammer vs scalpel.  (for small to medium apps at least...) PHP can read and follow code. No practical experience RubyOnRails have yet to see it... SQL expert

Credit Card Processing

Merchant Account Originator/Reseller Internet Gateway services via web for clients Payment processing against my own merchant accounts from shopping carts Payment Processing against my own merchant accounts via virtual terminals and wireless terminals Payment processing via Square Payment processing via Paypal Payment requests Developer of Tsys certified payment gateway solution pre PCI compliance days, and first and only system at the time where majority of gateway functionality was in scripting language (non-compiled code) One of the first commercial clients to implement TCP/IP processing with Vital/VisaNet  and(Late 1990's, prior to this we were using 2400 baud modems in webservers?!?) One of the first developers to pass TCP/IP Transactions commercially to Bank of America (ironic if you see what I got tangled up with them in in 2015)

Databases

Microsoft Access (Expert) SQL Server (proficient years ago, Hardest part is picking a flavor for a development machine and getting it loaded, just like I remember from 2003, and exactly what the MySql CEO was stating not so long ago...) MySql on Windows (checking it out...)

Website Editing

Front Page - the most brilliant text editor and simple gui design tool ever invented.  Too bad they tried to market it as a web dev product instead of just as a text editor on super steroids.  If you know how to use it, what to use it for, and most importantly what not to use it for and what to ignore...if you don't use any proprietary Front Page technology and you can ignore the extra folders it creates in various directories, its hands down the best text editor going for business systems development because I can do tremendous amounts of table manipulation and graphics manipulation via the gui without messing up  blended html and vbscript...that's what makes it superior to regular text editors as well as Dreamweaver for business system development.  I've been doing this since 1996...I can't make this stuff up... DreamWeaver - I've figured out how to run FrontPage and DreamWeaver against the same set of html/asp files calling them a web in each respective program without conflicts or issues.  Dreamweaver is uber packed with goodies, and for anyone doing any level of 'creative' work, it blows away FrontPage and everything else on the market, but frankly, for web based business systems (lots of tables for displaying data, simple graphics, basic CSS ) Front Page is far superior for 2 reasons 1)Dreamweaver blocks out vbscript code blocks...making the gui aspect useless on blended pages and 2) You can only have 1 instance of DreamWeaver open at a time...yes, I know I can access multiple sites in 1 instance...but business system are all about pulling modules from other sites and changing and putting in new...and multiple instances speeds up that process 4 fold.... Notepad++ - I use it mostly for my personal knowledge base.  No need to use it as a manual code editor for html/asp when I have both FrontPage and DreamWeaver near by... Expression Web, Visual Studio - Expression web is Front Page on steroids, but in my opinion still short of Dream Weaver....Don't see need for Expression Web when I have Front Page / Dreamweaver combo...and I really mostly use Front Page as a graphic text editor.  Visual Studio on the list for testing...

Google Docs/Google Drive

As of Feb 2014... it rocks.  They are so far ahead of the the curve it's sick.  Enjoying riding the wave.

PC Utilities

Snag-IT - screen capture CCleaner - restore point management ShellExView - content menu management TreeSize - Utility for viewing and managing files by size Last Pass - Password management (tried robo form and preferred this one) XMarks - Book mark synching across all browsers an iphone Bulk Rename Utility - (very powerful, but not intuitive, looking for simpler option) PhotoElf Agent Ransack

DNS Troubleshooting

DIGG for windows (yes, it does exist)

Chrome Extensions (Chrome is my preferred browser, but 4 majors loaded)

Google mail checker Tab Cloud Smooth Gestures OpenFrame this frame context menu xmarks statusbar

Smart Phones

Iphone 6 Verizon Iphone 5 Verizon Iphone 4s, ATT HTC Fuze, ATT

MS Office 2010 (unfortunately all still necessary....hate the ribbon...)

Word Excel PowerPoint Access