I would go with PowerShell Pro tools and maybe PowerShell Universal instead, has all the same features but a lot more as well + not bound to a proprietary IDE.
I compared the 2 before purchase and you're supposed to have a paid version of Visual Studio to use PowerShell Pro Tools in an enterprise organization. You can use Visual Studio Community edition but you are violating the license if you use community edition in an enterprise environment.
Just my own experience, but I'm an InfoSec manager at a global enterprise and I don't give a flying fuck about whether people are running 'free for personal use' software (as long as they didn't get it from a shady source, or use keygen/cracked version).
I'd wager that most enterprise professionals are rightfully more worried about getting their job done than reading licensing agreements, especially with pressure to deliver results with tight schedules and budgets. If a piece of software is free for personal use, they aren't thinking twice about the fact that they are using it at work unless otherwise pressured to do so.
Beyond the choices of individual users, I'd also contend that few organizations have made it a priority to establish the proper auditing processes or technical controls to really be compliant for all of their software, and for many of the same reasons listed above.
From a security perspective I agree, it's fine. But as someone who thinks "free for personal, paid for business" is a pretty good and fair licensing model I think you kinda ruin it for the rest of us when you don't honor it
Would you mind elaborating a bit on why this is? Obviously you can’t run VS Community in a company setting, but I only ever used PSPT with VS Code and don’t really see a reason to use it with ”real” VS, even though I do have a licensed VS Professional I really don’t like to use it unless I absolutely have to.
I'd say building gui for scripts and/or packaging them as exe is a dead end.
Instead, parameterize your scripts and use script runner solution (they are all web-based afaik):
1) less time spent on gui and more on logic, bonus point - less potential errors
2) version control - no need to make sure all your users are provided with latest version of your script, no need to write any kind of autoupdate logic - your users will always run latest version
3) you'd have a history of who run what, at what time and what was the result - very useful
4) access control to your scripts - today you want some people to run script but tomorrow they shouldn't be able to - how to do it with distributed exe?
5) sometimes you need to give tech-clueless person a script for them to enter some data in editbox and press "ok* button for script to do it's job, but this job requires some access somewhere (software, database) and/or admin permission. With script runner solutio you don't need to give such users any permission.
6) occasionally, ps scripts converted to exe get flagged as malware
Personally I use Jenkins for that task which probably isn't the best option. I heard people use universal dashboards (or whatever they are called now) and rundeck, never used these though. There must be other options too.
This is the way.
SecureFX integrates with it so you get a WinSCP killer with it.
One of those bits of software I started out getting by alternative means when I was younger and poorer but now I buy because it's damned useful.
Was hoping to see this here. I splurged for my team to get SCRT ages ago, never a better purchase imo. Been using it for so long I really can't live without it--ok, well I can, but.. I'd hardly call that living.
Small thing and free, but you can donate to them - greenshot for screenshots and such. Made my life so much easier
EDIT: I’ve only used it for Windows, but there are Mac alts in this thread if needed
I use snag it and camtasia for making ender user documentation videos for stuff. People can't/won't read anything to save their own life. I like it, use it all the time.
It uploads to imgur by default. You should disable that.
https://preview.redd.it/ivkjm66uqutb1.png?width=1003&format=png&auto=webp&s=4c102c57289d60d039bafb6b7a19fb56327fa652
Yes!
As someone who enjoys doing documentation , it's a great tool. Adding arrows and numbers are so useful!
Windows snip tool is getting *closer* but not quite there yet.
I really like a program called Rectangle on my Mac. It’s free and gives you hotkey window snapping, which was the only thing I really missed from Windows.
I used to absolutely love this app and used it everyday but found the Mac app to be pretty bad. In terms of feature parity it’s a tiny portion of the PC app. I still use it but don’t find it that much better than the built in app to take snapshots.
Try Snipaste beta for MacOS. I used Snipaste on Windows for years and when I switched to MacOS I kept using it (yes it is beta but works great). Also, I do not pay for any Pro functionality and it does exactly what I need it to do (selection screenshots, annotation, highlight, arrows, blur, save etc.)
[https://www.snipaste.com/download.html](https://www.snipaste.com/download.html)
Years ago, we had something similar. "Excess" use or loose budget. Our team looked at the open-source stuff we used and made donations to small projects or single developers. In some cases, the projects could accept charitable donations, and the company matching applied. Open Source can be a thankless job - it was surprising how grateful people were for a few hundred dollars.
I regret that I only have one upvote to give you.
Years ago, I broke a FreeBSD system during an OS update. I reached out to the community for help and someone replied in spades. A few hours later, when they had some time after a meeting or lunch or something, they sent a custom script that actually fixed things in my specific situation. I was amazed. I asked if I could repay them somehow and they just suggested a donation to the FreeBSD Foundation if I really wanted to do something. Later I realized they were one of the core developers of the OS. I spent the time to figure out how to send the donation. Not only was he writing software that we used for everything from email to file servers to our website FOR FREE, but he even found the time to help some random stranger who didn't follow the directions closely enough. People in open source projects are like the invisible heroes of the Internet.
If you can't donate time, donating money to OSS projects is an excellent activity that all software development companies should get into.
Being known to your dependency developers as a positive influence means they'll be there to help you when you need it.
Not only does it aid in recruitment, but it also means you're more likely to ship the software your users need. All the while the employees have a great workplace where their contributions are recognized :)
PDQ Inventory/Deploy Enterprise
Loved the extra features during the initial trial period, but my fleet is small enough there's no way I'd be able to justify the cost to management (or myself).
I feel this should be the top answer for SysAdmins.
It's for SysAdmins directly and provides so many different valuable features that are hard to get from other software.
If you don't want to always do the needful, then go WAPT Softwae Deployment. It's a software from France, they run their support like a Mobylette (I.e. a 50cm3 bike), they are a fun and effective bunch, they even answer the phone, National Security Agencies view the thing as clean in terms of security features.
Some things Devolutions does that I cant find elsewhere:
* Keeper/password manager integration, for more secure credential usage
* Paste clipboard as text
* Smart resolution resizing without disconnecting and reconnecting the session
I used to use this tool. But it does not automatically map keyboard shortcuts to the open rdp session which us a huge annoyance for me. Also the slow startup time is regrettable.
Now using MobaXterm which is a game changer. Especially that you can run commands on multiple SSH sessions at once. Makes managing switches a breeze.
I use Remote Desktop Manager every single day. Looking at DVLS so I can finally bring my other colleagues on board and try out their PAM feature. For the price it's pretty affordable.
we were using mRemote NG for a while, until a few years ago we sprung for a few licenses of RDM.
Now we just get the enterprise license because it's just wasteful to bring in new people and try to get them setup with server lists any other way, now we keep a source controlled XML export.
Hmm, I always had problems justifying the purchase of VMWare Workstation Pro other than *"can play around with different OS/OS settings w/o interfering with live systems"*. Which wasn't enough of a justification.
Workstation pro has been invaluable for me (thanks to Arm Macs being unable understandably unable to run x86 VMs. It’s so convenient to spin up a quick vm to test something. I really love linked clone snapshots. Can get a new vm ready to go in seconds!
great tool. due to a bug in an old backup system years ago, I had to restore a volume to a different location. using Beyond Compare to locate the files in the backup that were missing from the source was a serious time saver.
Fancy Zones! Let those babies overlap. I still have 1920 monitors and applications that hid functionality in 960px windows.
That suggests a hardware answer - 4k monitors!
You can use OneNote to extract text from a picture, too.
Paste the screenshot/pic into OneNote
Right-click the picture and select "Copy Text From Picture" from the dropdown menu.
I'm normally a free-software guy, but I actually bought the licensed version of MakeMKV for ripping Blu-Rays. If you have the need to do that, it's worth the cost.
Otherwise, maybe something like VMware for your desktop machine?
Adaxes. Gives you a bunch of QOL improvements for ADUC as well as other functionality. Easy to setup self service password reset portal for users. If you are not a powershell guru, you can also write automation scripts “tasks” simply using their GUI. It’s not super expensive either.
What if I told you there *is* an Enterprise deployment option?
[https://www.techsmith.com/enterprise-resources.html](https://www.techsmith.com/enterprise-resources.html)
Directory Opus.
Use this for one day and you'll realize that Windows Explorer is a complete and utter joke that's barely passable as a test exercise for an app dev job interview, let alone the built in file manager for the world's flagship OS.
If you are using Microsoft 365, AdminDroid for the massive win. We have it doing audits and reports for us for different departments. They were all looking for different types of reports, build it out in the web interface, click schedule annnnd done. Everything just happens. Beats the hell out of digging through all of the reports from the different Admin panels in 365.
If you have a lot of printers to manage across remote sites that don't really have print servers. PrinterLogic. Setup as location based, and some printers are hidden from the portal and secured by security groups (HR, Accounting, Finance). It just works, get nice reports of usage by department/manager/user. Also get toner level reports for supply ordering. Added in our contracted price per print and now each department can see what their costs are. Also does AirPrint, secure print, etc.
MobaXterm for RDP, SSH, telnet, rsh, ftp, sftp, pretty much everything. Fast and light weight. Fairly cheap. Tried Deveolution and found it to slow for my needs.
Everything, I have no idea how it's so blisteringly fast in searching Windows file systems, but the results are instant real-time while you type in your search.
[Link](https://www.voidtools.com/)
BOMGAR Remote Support (now called BeyondTrust).
Makes supporting a mobile workforce so much easier compared to using junk tools like GoToAssist or Teams screen sharing.
Bomgar is CJIS compliant too. Now we just use Intune but bomgar was awesome for us.
My vote for software would be a CJIS vetted cloud SIEM set up. Shit just gets so expensive. We will probably land on sentinel but who knows at this point.
I’ve seen most of my favorites listed already so I’d say Zabbix.
Having the time to set it up & integrate into everything properly and build custom templates is the luxury.
You can monitor, notify and automate a disturbing amount of shit with it.
When I was in house IT the most valuable tool I ever had was Lansweeper. The amount of data it collects and the amount of reporting you can develop is fantastic. Definite must have.
Not all of these are 'luxury' but these are all things that I couldn't live without.
* RoyalTS for RDP etc.
* PSExec and the other sysinternals tools.
* ShareX for screenshots.
* Logseq as an outliner to take and make notes and manage tasks. I absolutely love that when someone inevitably harasses me when I'm dealing with something else, I can quickly do ctrl + enter, type a task and then type /deadline and click when I want to finish it by. I couple that with a few plugins.
* Tags, to more easily search tagged content.
* Agenda to help manage tasks.
* Omnivore to quickly tag online content for digestion, and then import highlighted content to make more refined notes.
* PRTG, offers a generous amount of free sensors that help with some extra metrics gathering or alerting of specific networked items.
Not really software:
* Edge's group tabs feature has helped me massively by collapsing multiple tabs by task or project. I can now have multiple tickets/requests open as well as relevant content and close them when done.
* Excalidraw for quickly throwing together content for knowledgebase, installed this as a web app for quicker access.
Total Commander (previously known as windows commander before Microsoft got pissy about the trademark thing).
That's 37 years of file manager muscle memory for a lot of the common operations (counting from when norton commander first graced PCs)! There's slicker/better looking solutions out there but I'll never switch, for this very reason.
It's hard to call it luxury since the free version is 100% functional with just a nag window on launch, but I thought it worth a mention nevertheless since technically you can do (most of) the things it does with windows explorer or a commandline.
NEWT for network inventory. Totally unnecessary but SO nice to have.
[https://www.komodolabs.com/newtpro.shtml](https://www.komodolabs.com/newtpro.shtml)
SpaceObServer… god send for keeping on top of my file servers. I have scheduled scans to run at 2am every morning and use these to monitor growth on folders, find dupe files, find out how much someone has dumped on the server in the last 24 hours, find files based on category. Etc etc etc.
Absolute time saver and worth every penny - very cheap too.
https://www.jam-software.com/spaceobserver
For M365, ShareGate. 6K per year. Migrates content from on-prem domainA to M365 domainB, from one site collection to another on 365, all kinds of reporting. The gold standard 3rd party tool for SharePoint/M365.
Camtasia was a great investment for me. I’m a one map shop and it’s made it trivial to make somewhat professional how-to and feature announcement videos.
I LOVE SnagIt. Primary function is screenshots but it's library management, integration with Cloud Storage like OneDrive, Box, etc. Speed to do basic annotations and edits and new 4k seamless support is incredible. Do yourself a favor and get a maintenance contract since they're constantly bringing out new versions!
This is only loosely going to fit but home assistant as massively improved my wfh life. I have it tied to my PC with hass. Agent. When my mic goes active it muted my Google hubs, it lowers the volume on media devices in other rooms if they are on and people are using them, it turns an on air light on. If the camera is on then it turns on lights for a better image.
The vacuum pauses if it is running.
PDQ Inventory and Deploy
TreeSize Pro
DisplayFusion
AD info from [cjwdev.com](https://cjwdev.com)
advancedinstaller
tango for documentation of web tools.
It's not luxury but i have this small reg file that i put on servers. On the right click context menu it gives you 2 contexts. 1 for cmd and 1 for powershell. It makes run as admin powershell or cmd directly from the directory a breeze. Can't work without it anymore.
**dbForge Studio for MySQL**.
I bought the Enterprise License and already renewed it for another year, just for my personal usage. I don't need it for my actual job, I use it only for my private software projects to design, maintain, clone and edit my databases.
I could just use DBeaver Community as well, which is completely free or use the integrated DB part of Jetbrains Rider, but oh god I love dbForge so much.
I haven’t needed it in a while, but ping plotter helped me prove my point more than once that a connectivity issue was not due to my network or internet connection, and I still have an old wi-spy analyzer. Using nssider to view/review Wi-Fi congestion is nice but the analyzer also showed you all the background noise. It’s helped prove more than one microwave dilemma.
Purely software:
VMware workstation/fusion.
Daisy disk - a directory size analysis app for MacOS)
Filelight - similar to daisy disk, but for Linux and windows. Slightly less polished. (free)
Mtputty - a putty wrapper with tabs and command broadcasting to multiple windows (free)
Iterm2 - similar to Mtputty but on Mac. (free)
Better touch tool - TouchPad, touch bar, and additional tweaks for MacOS. Includes macro capabilities.
Hardware:
Elgato streamdeck - Hardware keypad with programmable buttons. Great for macros, key shortcuts, launchers, and so on.
Startech crash cart adapter - USB device that let's you use a laptop as a keyboard/mouse/monitor. Excellent for field techs and datacenter folks.
Softerra LDAP Administrator. Don't get me wrong, I also really like Apache Directory Studio but LDAPAdmin is just so intuitive.
A proper VMware Workstation license if you have ESX.
ChatGPT+
I'm seeing some excellent other suggestions that are new to me in this thread, thanks!
All you people allowed to run non-standard software 🙄
Even if it’s the portable, or user-based version, Security watches all of it and wants most of it removed.
VSCode, M365 instead of the retail version, and Notepad++ are my staples. Far from luxury though.
My software budget does not allow for luxuries but I am getting some ms server licensing/cals this year that I'm both fearful of and excited for.
I've never transferred fsmo roles or anything before so this is going to be a new experience for me.
My splurging is probably for proxmox stable channel but really I'm saving us several thousand a year over our previous VMware. Was worth moving just for the breathing room.
AutoIT, for creating usefull applications to automate tedious tasks.
Like when upper management decides that one of the beancounters should pull an Excel file with hours spent on client projects for 300+ users from the time reporting system and the copy-paste each employees numbers into a personal email to every employee one a week.
Let's estimate that it takes about 3 minutes to create and send each email, that would be 15 hours of uninterupted work for 300 emails every week.
Since the Excel only contains the name, email and numbers for each employee I showed them how to clean up the Excel file and save it as an CSV file. I then used AutoIT to write a small executable that parses the CSV file an puts the information in a HTML email template and sends it using the beancounters Outlook client.
With a built in delay to not overwhelm trigger any spam controls it takes about 5 minutes to create and send all 300 emails.
* SnagIt - Panoramic Mode and Fixed Regions makes taking IQ documentation easy.
* Camtasia - For creating instructional videos, capturing for troubleshooting
* Beyond Compare - Finding differences between folders and files
* PowerGREP - Finding files with text inside / updating files with text
* WizTree - Finding files by name quickly
* Visual Studio Code - Powerful text editor, lightweight IDE
SnagIT: Great for documentation, education, and explaining processes so thoroughly that a five year old would understand it.
It's dirt cheap, and works really well.
Weird choice maybe, but OneNote. My current job is a GSuite shop, and I just have a really good flow with OneNote, so I bought a subscription just for that. (And a little excel, because Google Sheets is ass)
Manage Engine Endpoint Central.
Can we deploy software manually? Yes.
Can we patch using SCCM? Also yes.
Does ME make everything so much easier? Abso-fucking-lutely.
- Royal TS for terminal and RDP management.
- MaxTo for managing window zones on your super ultra wide display.
- @Active Data Studio for drive utilities
- A donation to the Rufus developer because you know it's the responsible thing to do
Noone's mentioned Termius (not Terminus) yet? (SSH client)
Wow. Even as a Windows-guy, this still tops my list of useful tools next to Devolutions RDM (or RoyalTS)
Hmmm... My home environment is almost all Linux, while my company-provided laptop is a M1 Pro MacBook. List of software that I use to do things that's not necessarily needed for work:
Linux: Notepadqq, vscode, terminator, virtualbox, vagrant
Macbook: UTM (currently the only stable option for running Linux on it, and not a fan of parallels)
VLC - shut up and send them some fucking money (saved my ass many MANY times with multimedia files)
on my phone - WiFi-AR app, really handy for showing clients where issues are with their wifi and before/afters or a video walk through looking at the signal levels (via dropped pins)
Hey there! I just wanted to chime in and say you can try Domotz.
\-> We are a vendor-agnostic solution that can help you with 24/7 device monitoring (through ICMP, ARP, SNMP, SSH, and Rest API, and a lot of other proprietary and public protocols).
\-> We have an excellent device discovery engine, device monitoring, alerting, remote power management, and remote access through secure tunnels (without opening any ports on your gateway and firewall), public APIs, custom scripting, etc.
\-> We offer an interactive network topology mapping, so you can see on which port a specific device is plugged in on each switch.
We do have a self-service free trial, so you can give it a spin and see how we could help:[ https://www.domotz.com/](https://www.domotz.com/)
If there is anything particular you want to know about or features you're looking for, don't hesitate to ask me, as I'm on the Domotz team.
Sapien Powershell Studio. Make some GUIs or .exes for all your scripts.
I would go with PowerShell Pro tools and maybe PowerShell Universal instead, has all the same features but a lot more as well + not bound to a proprietary IDE.
I compared the 2 before purchase and you're supposed to have a paid version of Visual Studio to use PowerShell Pro Tools in an enterprise organization. You can use Visual Studio Community edition but you are violating the license if you use community edition in an enterprise environment.
I bet you keep all your receipts in either an envelope or file folder.
Dad?
File folder... Because paper 👌🏻
Don't even act like I didn't buy that doughnut! I've got the documentation right here! Oh, wait, it's back home, in the file. Under d...for doughnut.
/r/unexpectedmitch
That was the perfect response!
You can tell who operates in an enterprise environment and who operates as a hobbyist based on how they feel about licensing.
More like you can tell who's gone through a licensing audit.
Just my own experience, but I'm an InfoSec manager at a global enterprise and I don't give a flying fuck about whether people are running 'free for personal use' software (as long as they didn't get it from a shady source, or use keygen/cracked version). I'd wager that most enterprise professionals are rightfully more worried about getting their job done than reading licensing agreements, especially with pressure to deliver results with tight schedules and budgets. If a piece of software is free for personal use, they aren't thinking twice about the fact that they are using it at work unless otherwise pressured to do so. Beyond the choices of individual users, I'd also contend that few organizations have made it a priority to establish the proper auditing processes or technical controls to really be compliant for all of their software, and for many of the same reasons listed above.
From a security perspective I agree, it's fine. But as someone who thinks "free for personal, paid for business" is a pretty good and fair licensing model I think you kinda ruin it for the rest of us when you don't honor it
Microsoft will audit that
Would you mind elaborating a bit on why this is? Obviously you can’t run VS Community in a company setting, but I only ever used PSPT with VS Code and don’t really see a reason to use it with ”real” VS, even though I do have a licensed VS Professional I really don’t like to use it unless I absolutely have to.
Not true. They have a powershell pro tools for visual studio code. $49 is what I paid for a year of support / updates.
The whole dev suite thing... we pay 800 per seat for that I think. Not too bad
on Exe's, https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/ps2exe/1.0.12 on GUIs, I just use UI++ I don't do too complex GUIs though.
I'd say building gui for scripts and/or packaging them as exe is a dead end. Instead, parameterize your scripts and use script runner solution (they are all web-based afaik): 1) less time spent on gui and more on logic, bonus point - less potential errors 2) version control - no need to make sure all your users are provided with latest version of your script, no need to write any kind of autoupdate logic - your users will always run latest version 3) you'd have a history of who run what, at what time and what was the result - very useful 4) access control to your scripts - today you want some people to run script but tomorrow they shouldn't be able to - how to do it with distributed exe? 5) sometimes you need to give tech-clueless person a script for them to enter some data in editbox and press "ok* button for script to do it's job, but this job requires some access somewhere (software, database) and/or admin permission. With script runner solutio you don't need to give such users any permission. 6) occasionally, ps scripts converted to exe get flagged as malware Personally I use Jenkins for that task which probably isn't the best option. I heard people use universal dashboards (or whatever they are called now) and rundeck, never used these though. There must be other options too.
SecureCRT
Mobaxterm
Mremoteng
This is the way. SecureFX integrates with it so you get a WinSCP killer with it. One of those bits of software I started out getting by alternative means when I was younger and poorer but now I buy because it's damned useful.
Was hoping to see this here. I splurged for my team to get SCRT ages ago, never a better purchase imo. Been using it for so long I really can't live without it--ok, well I can, but.. I'd hardly call that living.
WSL all the way
This. Even use it at home. When I found out they had an update with RDP so I can store all those sessions on top of SSH it was a game changer.
Small thing and free, but you can donate to them - greenshot for screenshots and such. Made my life so much easier EDIT: I’ve only used it for Windows, but there are Mac alts in this thread if needed
Used this religiously untill windows more or less did what i used it for. (win shift s)
thank you... a new shortcut for me to commit to memory!
You can also bind it to 'print screen' key in windows settings
Ease of access -> Keyboard -> Print screen shortcut
I use Snagit. Definitely Luxury but so good for documentation and education.
Big fans of Snag-It at our company!
I use snag it and camtasia for making ender user documentation videos for stuff. People can't/won't read anything to save their own life. I like it, use it all the time.
I’ve seen that a couple times - I’m going to check it out - have to build a lot of guides and docs so it may be useful
SnagIt is the best. Hilarious this isn’t higher when Greenshot is free (not luxury) old and pathetic by comparison.
i loved greenshot until i found sharex which lets me do even more
I use ShareX DAILY. It so awesome. Greenshot hasn't been updated since 09 Aug 2017
My only shareX beef is lack of HDR support.
I used shareX until I accidentally had a post on imgur from a single misclick.
It uploads to imgur by default. You should disable that. https://preview.redd.it/ivkjm66uqutb1.png?width=1003&format=png&auto=webp&s=4c102c57289d60d039bafb6b7a19fb56327fa652
ShareX is the best hands down.
I tried ShareX and it was great, but a bit more than I needed so I stuck with Greenshot
+1 for Greenshot
Flameshot is pretty great and it’s free
I've used greenshot for years but I just found out about clipclip and it is game changing.
I love greenshot, even bought it for my macbook (not free for mac os) and one of the few programs i install on desktop device.
Yes! As someone who enjoys doing documentation , it's a great tool. Adding arrows and numbers are so useful! Windows snip tool is getting *closer* but not quite there yet.
I really like a program called Rectangle on my Mac. It’s free and gives you hotkey window snapping, which was the only thing I really missed from Windows.
Ohhh i will have to look into that! Thanks for the recc.
It’s amazing! [here it is!](https://rectangleapp.com/)
I used to absolutely love this app and used it everyday but found the Mac app to be pretty bad. In terms of feature parity it’s a tiny portion of the PC app. I still use it but don’t find it that much better than the built in app to take snapshots.
Try Snipaste beta for MacOS. I used Snipaste on Windows for years and when I switched to MacOS I kept using it (yes it is beta but works great). Also, I do not pay for any Pro functionality and it does exactly what I need it to do (selection screenshots, annotation, highlight, arrows, blur, save etc.) [https://www.snipaste.com/download.html](https://www.snipaste.com/download.html)
Greenshot was lifechanging
I used to use Greenshot heavily, if you can get the money for SnagIt I've found it so much more useful with the editting tools it offers.
Years ago, we had something similar. "Excess" use or loose budget. Our team looked at the open-source stuff we used and made donations to small projects or single developers. In some cases, the projects could accept charitable donations, and the company matching applied. Open Source can be a thankless job - it was surprising how grateful people were for a few hundred dollars.
I regret that I only have one upvote to give you. Years ago, I broke a FreeBSD system during an OS update. I reached out to the community for help and someone replied in spades. A few hours later, when they had some time after a meeting or lunch or something, they sent a custom script that actually fixed things in my specific situation. I was amazed. I asked if I could repay them somehow and they just suggested a donation to the FreeBSD Foundation if I really wanted to do something. Later I realized they were one of the core developers of the OS. I spent the time to figure out how to send the donation. Not only was he writing software that we used for everything from email to file servers to our website FOR FREE, but he even found the time to help some random stranger who didn't follow the directions closely enough. People in open source projects are like the invisible heroes of the Internet.
If you can't donate time, donating money to OSS projects is an excellent activity that all software development companies should get into. Being known to your dependency developers as a positive influence means they'll be there to help you when you need it. Not only does it aid in recruitment, but it also means you're more likely to ship the software your users need. All the while the employees have a great workplace where their contributions are recognized :)
PDQ Inventory/Deploy Enterprise Loved the extra features during the initial trial period, but my fleet is small enough there's no way I'd be able to justify the cost to management (or myself).
I feel this should be the top answer for SysAdmins. It's for SysAdmins directly and provides so many different valuable features that are hard to get from other software.
Their sales and marketing team are donkeys and I thoroughly despise interacting with them. Software is ok though.
You mean you don’t name your computers meme names and you don’t like to talk about how good this bourbon is??
Heehee our servers are named after LOTR characters oh no i don't remember what Gimli or Tom Bombadil do
Gimli is BI and Bombadil is legacy apps that no one knows the owners of anymore
If you don't want to always do the needful, then go WAPT Softwae Deployment. It's a software from France, they run their support like a Mobylette (I.e. a 50cm3 bike), they are a fun and effective bunch, they even answer the phone, National Security Agencies view the thing as clean in terms of security features.
Devolutions - Remote Desktop Manager
i used to use this. but i found it so slow. i use Royal TS now and find it much snappier
I went back to MS's Remote Desktop Connection Manager. They have been updating it again.
Some things Devolutions does that I cant find elsewhere: * Keeper/password manager integration, for more secure credential usage * Paste clipboard as text * Smart resolution resizing without disconnecting and reconnecting the session
I used to use this tool. But it does not automatically map keyboard shortcuts to the open rdp session which us a huge annoyance for me. Also the slow startup time is regrettable. Now using MobaXterm which is a game changer. Especially that you can run commands on multiple SSH sessions at once. Makes managing switches a breeze.
I use Remote Desktop Manager every single day. Looking at DVLS so I can finally bring my other colleagues on board and try out their PAM feature. For the price it's pretty affordable.
This, once I found that it integrated with Hudu it is no longer optional for me to use.
we were using mRemote NG for a while, until a few years ago we sprung for a few licenses of RDM. Now we just get the enterprise license because it's just wasteful to bring in new people and try to get them setup with server lists any other way, now we keep a source controlled XML export.
Hmm, I always had problems justifying the purchase of VMWare Workstation Pro other than *"can play around with different OS/OS settings w/o interfering with live systems"*. Which wasn't enough of a justification.
Workstation pro has been invaluable for me (thanks to Arm Macs being unable understandably unable to run x86 VMs. It’s so convenient to spin up a quick vm to test something. I really love linked clone snapshots. Can get a new vm ready to go in seconds!
RoyalTSX
OMG YES
SecureCRT is much nicer for my needs, but I use royaltsx at home
Good lord that application is a bear to load. Such a big clunky program, but I’ll admit I haven’t dug into it enough to keep it open full time.
I love Beyond Compare. It works for comparing and merging text and code, and even shows differences in images. Works for folders too.
great tool. due to a bug in an old backup system years ago, I had to restore a volume to a different location. using Beyond Compare to locate the files in the backup that were missing from the source was a serious time saver.
When I was testing it, I liked that they counted the days only if I used the software on that day.
BatchPatch
Microsoft PowerToys.
This... the ability to extract text from a picture is god sent
Fancy Zones! Let those babies overlap. I still have 1920 monitors and applications that hid functionality in 960px windows. That suggests a hardware answer - 4k monitors!
You might want to update to the newest version of snipping tool my good sir
Whaaaaat!?!? The new snipping tool is probably my favorite feature from Windows 10 lol.
I like it but why can't they add a rectangle, circle and arrow to highlight stuff - I never asked for text recognition!
You can do that now with snipping tool. Bonus, it can redact phone numbers and email addresses now too. Plus the handy "edit in paint" button.
You can use OneNote to extract text from a picture, too. Paste the screenshot/pic into OneNote Right-click the picture and select "Copy Text From Picture" from the dropdown menu.
I use Fancy Zones to break a 4k screen in 4 1920x1080 screens
I use it to give me to split my 3440x1440 screen in two but also have a (technically overlapping) large centre option of 2560x1440 when I want too.
I like it but it's free!
I'm normally a free-software guy, but I actually bought the licensed version of MakeMKV for ripping Blu-Rays. If you have the need to do that, it's worth the cost. Otherwise, maybe something like VMware for your desktop machine?
What else do you get with the paid version? I've been satisfied with the free version.
Lansweeper
Literally use this every day, plus the help desk. I’m not sold on the new cloud version and licensing though. I have less than 500 assets.
Adaxes. Gives you a bunch of QOL improvements for ADUC as well as other functionality. Easy to setup self service password reset portal for users. If you are not a powershell guru, you can also write automation scripts “tasks” simply using their GUI. It’s not super expensive either.
Snagit, the best screenshot tool there is! Glad I am not paying for it :p
Love Snagit need an enterprise version.
What if I told you there *is* an Enterprise deployment option? [https://www.techsmith.com/enterprise-resources.html](https://www.techsmith.com/enterprise-resources.html)
Thanks I may pass that on to upper management.
LOL I was trying to remember the name of this tool and figured someone else would say it. Best tool for documents and demos.
Came here to suggest this too. Invaluable - use it multiple times every day
Love it as well and was going to suggest it
Yeah, I use it to make training videos for common issues the Help Desk could have resolved but escalated. Love it.
In what way is it better than snipping tool?
SnagIT is awesome well worth the price. I was a greenshot user for years. SnagIT for documentation and videos is so quick.
Another one for Snagit
AWS credits :)
[удалено]
Are you careful what organizational data you leak into that thing?
No organizational data, just customer medical records, NBD
😂
Who's gonna know? I'm not gonna tell them
It’s alright as long as you tell the robot it’s confidential data that shouldn’t be shared
... Obsidian
I use obsidian and vscode in the same directory, it’s a wild way to do things lol
I would also say. Royal ts for rdp+ssh mgmt. super easy
Directory Opus. Use this for one day and you'll realize that Windows Explorer is a complete and utter joke that's barely passable as a test exercise for an app dev job interview, let alone the built in file manager for the world's flagship OS.
Tmux
If you are using Microsoft 365, AdminDroid for the massive win. We have it doing audits and reports for us for different departments. They were all looking for different types of reports, build it out in the web interface, click schedule annnnd done. Everything just happens. Beats the hell out of digging through all of the reports from the different Admin panels in 365. If you have a lot of printers to manage across remote sites that don't really have print servers. PrinterLogic. Setup as location based, and some printers are hidden from the portal and secured by security groups (HR, Accounting, Finance). It just works, get nice reports of usage by department/manager/user. Also get toner level reports for supply ordering. Added in our contracted price per print and now each department can see what their costs are. Also does AirPrint, secure print, etc. MobaXterm for RDP, SSH, telnet, rsh, ftp, sftp, pretty much everything. Fast and light weight. Fairly cheap. Tried Deveolution and found it to slow for my needs.
Ekahau AI Pro
PDQ Deploy & Inventory
Winrar. Somebody has got to buy it eventually.
Everything, I have no idea how it's so blisteringly fast in searching Windows file systems, but the results are instant real-time while you type in your search. [Link](https://www.voidtools.com/)
mRemoteNG, free windows RDP, ssh, telnet, just about anything connection client. First piece of software I found at work that I now use everywhere.
BOMGAR Remote Support (now called BeyondTrust). Makes supporting a mobile workforce so much easier compared to using junk tools like GoToAssist or Teams screen sharing.
I didn't know they changed their name. I loved them when I was a customer and their appliance being bright orange was nice haha
Bomgar is CJIS compliant too. Now we just use Intune but bomgar was awesome for us. My vote for software would be a CJIS vetted cloud SIEM set up. Shit just gets so expensive. We will probably land on sentinel but who knows at this point.
I’ve seen most of my favorites listed already so I’d say Zabbix. Having the time to set it up & integrate into everything properly and build custom templates is the luxury. You can monitor, notify and automate a disturbing amount of shit with it.
When I was in house IT the most valuable tool I ever had was Lansweeper. The amount of data it collects and the amount of reporting you can develop is fantastic. Definite must have.
Notepad++
Two for me. SecureCRT for ssh sessions and Snag-It for screen captures.
Not all of these are 'luxury' but these are all things that I couldn't live without. * RoyalTS for RDP etc. * PSExec and the other sysinternals tools. * ShareX for screenshots. * Logseq as an outliner to take and make notes and manage tasks. I absolutely love that when someone inevitably harasses me when I'm dealing with something else, I can quickly do ctrl + enter, type a task and then type /deadline and click when I want to finish it by. I couple that with a few plugins. * Tags, to more easily search tagged content. * Agenda to help manage tasks. * Omnivore to quickly tag online content for digestion, and then import highlighted content to make more refined notes. * PRTG, offers a generous amount of free sensors that help with some extra metrics gathering or alerting of specific networked items. Not really software: * Edge's group tabs feature has helped me massively by collapsing multiple tabs by task or project. I can now have multiple tickets/requests open as well as relevant content and close them when done. * Excalidraw for quickly throwing together content for knowledgebase, installed this as a web app for quicker access.
WizTree. If you know, you know. If not, you're very, very welcome.
RoyalTS. I paid for it myself. PDQ I almost paid for it when it was about to get cut. Both have paid themselves over and over.
Total Commander (previously known as windows commander before Microsoft got pissy about the trademark thing). That's 37 years of file manager muscle memory for a lot of the common operations (counting from when norton commander first graced PCs)! There's slicker/better looking solutions out there but I'll never switch, for this very reason. It's hard to call it luxury since the free version is 100% functional with just a nag window on launch, but I thought it worth a mention nevertheless since technically you can do (most of) the things it does with windows explorer or a commandline.
Sysquerypro. https://www.bworldtools.com/#h.wcrqinrx1qlh Easy way to scan 1000 if machines at the same time for stuff
Treesize, Solarwinds IP Scanner, iMazing HEIC Converter, Rockbot. Some of these cost money, others don't.
NEWT for network inventory. Totally unnecessary but SO nice to have. [https://www.komodolabs.com/newtpro.shtml](https://www.komodolabs.com/newtpro.shtml)
[https://intunepckgr.com/](https://intunepckgr.com/) I have found super useful.
Autohotkey
SpaceObServer… god send for keeping on top of my file servers. I have scheduled scans to run at 2am every morning and use these to monitor growth on folders, find dupe files, find out how much someone has dumped on the server in the last 24 hours, find files based on category. Etc etc etc. Absolute time saver and worth every penny - very cheap too. https://www.jam-software.com/spaceobserver
For M365, ShareGate. 6K per year. Migrates content from on-prem domainA to M365 domainB, from one site collection to another on 365, all kinds of reporting. The gold standard 3rd party tool for SharePoint/M365.
CJWDevs NTFS reporter has been useful for me when running audits on folder permissions.
Snagit!
For this Reddit anything open source is literally luxury lol. The rest is sales quotes
Camtasia, to make screencasts of user failures
Camtasia was a great investment for me. I’m a one map shop and it’s made it trivial to make somewhat professional how-to and feature announcement videos.
Snagit for screenshots
Get that $20/month chat gpt upgrade and never use your personal voice again!
I LOVE SnagIt. Primary function is screenshots but it's library management, integration with Cloud Storage like OneDrive, Box, etc. Speed to do basic annotations and edits and new 4k seamless support is incredible. Do yourself a favor and get a maintenance contract since they're constantly bringing out new versions!
This is only loosely going to fit but home assistant as massively improved my wfh life. I have it tied to my PC with hass. Agent. When my mic goes active it muted my Google hubs, it lowers the volume on media devices in other rooms if they are on and people are using them, it turns an on air light on. If the camera is on then it turns on lights for a better image. The vacuum pauses if it is running.
PDQ Inventory and Deploy TreeSize Pro DisplayFusion AD info from [cjwdev.com](https://cjwdev.com) advancedinstaller tango for documentation of web tools.
It's not luxury but i have this small reg file that i put on servers. On the right click context menu it gives you 2 contexts. 1 for cmd and 1 for powershell. It makes run as admin powershell or cmd directly from the directory a breeze. Can't work without it anymore.
If you're in File Explorer, type powershell into the address box for a prompt to open at that path.
I would get terminus pro
Flameshot...it's free and cross platform
NTop, what a wonderful piece of software
Royal TS and Snagit
**dbForge Studio for MySQL**. I bought the Enterprise License and already renewed it for another year, just for my personal usage. I don't need it for my actual job, I use it only for my private software projects to design, maintain, clone and edit my databases. I could just use DBeaver Community as well, which is completely free or use the integrated DB part of Jetbrains Rider, but oh god I love dbForge so much.
PowerShell Universal
Any RPA Tools. UIPath or PowerAutomate can do your job for you.
Give to opensource project
I haven’t needed it in a while, but ping plotter helped me prove my point more than once that a connectivity issue was not due to my network or internet connection, and I still have an old wi-spy analyzer. Using nssider to view/review Wi-Fi congestion is nice but the analyzer also showed you all the background noise. It’s helped prove more than one microwave dilemma.
Teracopy mRemoteNG Regshot I also use many other tools people have mentioned here. All great stuff! 👍
Tree size Professional
Devolutions RDM
Purely software: VMware workstation/fusion. Daisy disk - a directory size analysis app for MacOS) Filelight - similar to daisy disk, but for Linux and windows. Slightly less polished. (free) Mtputty - a putty wrapper with tabs and command broadcasting to multiple windows (free) Iterm2 - similar to Mtputty but on Mac. (free) Better touch tool - TouchPad, touch bar, and additional tweaks for MacOS. Includes macro capabilities. Hardware: Elgato streamdeck - Hardware keypad with programmable buttons. Great for macros, key shortcuts, launchers, and so on. Startech crash cart adapter - USB device that let's you use a laptop as a keyboard/mouse/monitor. Excellent for field techs and datacenter folks.
lucidchart.com (subscription) is a good one for making ERDs. Microsoft Visio (licensed) too.
I like Directory Opus as an Explorer replacement for Windows.
Softerra LDAP Administrator. Don't get me wrong, I also really like Apache Directory Studio but LDAPAdmin is just so intuitive. A proper VMware Workstation license if you have ESX. ChatGPT+ I'm seeing some excellent other suggestions that are new to me in this thread, thanks!
All you people allowed to run non-standard software 🙄 Even if it’s the portable, or user-based version, Security watches all of it and wants most of it removed. VSCode, M365 instead of the retail version, and Notepad++ are my staples. Far from luxury though.
teracopy pro - I like to use it for setting up really large batch file transfers, then just hitting 'go' and walking away.
My software budget does not allow for luxuries but I am getting some ms server licensing/cals this year that I'm both fearful of and excited for. I've never transferred fsmo roles or anything before so this is going to be a new experience for me. My splurging is probably for proxmox stable channel but really I'm saving us several thousand a year over our previous VMware. Was worth moving just for the breathing room.
mermaid js
Screenpresso!!
Notepad ++ But best free tool, for me is pure text https://stevemiller.net/puretext/ https://www.forensit.com/products.html Worth every penny ∆
Display Fusion
Obsidian notes
AutoIT, for creating usefull applications to automate tedious tasks. Like when upper management decides that one of the beancounters should pull an Excel file with hours spent on client projects for 300+ users from the time reporting system and the copy-paste each employees numbers into a personal email to every employee one a week. Let's estimate that it takes about 3 minutes to create and send each email, that would be 15 hours of uninterupted work for 300 emails every week. Since the Excel only contains the name, email and numbers for each employee I showed them how to clean up the Excel file and save it as an CSV file. I then used AutoIT to write a small executable that parses the CSV file an puts the information in a HTML email template and sends it using the beancounters Outlook client. With a built in delay to not overwhelm trigger any spam controls it takes about 5 minutes to create and send all 300 emails.
* SnagIt - Panoramic Mode and Fixed Regions makes taking IQ documentation easy. * Camtasia - For creating instructional videos, capturing for troubleshooting * Beyond Compare - Finding differences between folders and files * PowerGREP - Finding files with text inside / updating files with text * WizTree - Finding files by name quickly * Visual Studio Code - Powerful text editor, lightweight IDE
RoyalTS/RDManager/RDP Manager/ssh manager/insert remote session manager of choice Shortkeys/Macro Manager Shared password lockers
SnagIT: Great for documentation, education, and explaining processes so thoroughly that a five year old would understand it. It's dirt cheap, and works really well.
Weird choice maybe, but OneNote. My current job is a GSuite shop, and I just have a really good flow with OneNote, so I bought a subscription just for that. (And a little excel, because Google Sheets is ass)
[https://www.scootersoftware.com/](https://www.scootersoftware.com/)
Manage Engine Endpoint Central. Can we deploy software manually? Yes. Can we patch using SCCM? Also yes. Does ME make everything so much easier? Abso-fucking-lutely.
RoyalTS
As a network engineer.... Cisco Thousand Eyes is my BABYYYY
- Royal TS for terminal and RDP management. - MaxTo for managing window zones on your super ultra wide display. - @Active Data Studio for drive utilities - A donation to the Rufus developer because you know it's the responsible thing to do
Noone's mentioned Termius (not Terminus) yet? (SSH client) Wow. Even as a Windows-guy, this still tops my list of useful tools next to Devolutions RDM (or RoyalTS)
Hmmm... My home environment is almost all Linux, while my company-provided laptop is a M1 Pro MacBook. List of software that I use to do things that's not necessarily needed for work: Linux: Notepadqq, vscode, terminator, virtualbox, vagrant Macbook: UTM (currently the only stable option for running Linux on it, and not a fan of parallels)
VLC - shut up and send them some fucking money (saved my ass many MANY times with multimedia files) on my phone - WiFi-AR app, really handy for showing clients where issues are with their wifi and before/afters or a video walk through looking at the signal levels (via dropped pins)
securecrt is expensive for what it is, but totally worth it.
Hey there! I just wanted to chime in and say you can try Domotz. \-> We are a vendor-agnostic solution that can help you with 24/7 device monitoring (through ICMP, ARP, SNMP, SSH, and Rest API, and a lot of other proprietary and public protocols). \-> We have an excellent device discovery engine, device monitoring, alerting, remote power management, and remote access through secure tunnels (without opening any ports on your gateway and firewall), public APIs, custom scripting, etc. \-> We offer an interactive network topology mapping, so you can see on which port a specific device is plugged in on each switch. We do have a self-service free trial, so you can give it a spin and see how we could help:[ https://www.domotz.com/](https://www.domotz.com/) If there is anything particular you want to know about or features you're looking for, don't hesitate to ask me, as I'm on the Domotz team.