Ask HN: Productivity tools for windows 8?

vijucat · on May 23, 2014

Windows 8.1 has an inbuilt Alarms app which includes countdown timers that you can use for keeping track of time in general (Pomodoro technique etc;). Here's how it looks like : http://i.imgur.com/cz0tg6Z.png

Non-Windows 8 specific : Eclipse has a full-screen plugin that I use to be free from distraction when working with code.

There's an Autohotkey script for making any window full-screen + borderless, too. It's great for focusing on one task :

http://www.autohotkey.com/board/topic/78903-yabt-yet-another...

Autohotkey can automate various other things like having keyboard shortcuts for Volume levels, opening applications, turning off Caps Lock, etc;

mbrownnyc · on May 23, 2014

I use console2 (make sure you grab the 64-bit version) + an autohotkey script to provide a "quake-like" console drop down... in which I use...

Powershell is extremely awesome; it's basically a c# console.

and...

Chocolatey and/or OneGet, Boxstarter, and myget.

Notepad++ <i>and</i> Notepad2. I use both, notepad++ for complex replacement tasks, notepad2 as my simple editor.

Puretext which strips formatting from text when pasting.

nimbletext.

See: http://mbrownnyc.wordpress.com/misc/my-toolchain/

Not sure if this is what you mean by "productivity tools," but these things greatly increase my productivity and reduce the time it takes for me to complete tasks.

mdpm · on May 23, 2014

conemu provides the drop down natively too :)

danelectro · on May 29, 2014

For me, it's a superior multiboot arrangement so I can choose other Windows or Linux versions painlessly without hesitation to take advantage of inherent productivity differences whenever I want.

mdpm · on May 23, 2014

preme, listary, cmder/conemu. that's a good start.