Scott Hanselman has this great list of tools that every developer should have. He comes from a .NET perspective, so some of the tools are even written in .NET.

Quick list of my favorites:

• Notepad2
• Cropper
• Reflector
• Process Explorer

Check out Scott's list - it's extensive. I've learned about a ton of new utils in just 5 minutes of perusing his list...

Trying to find out if VSS 2005 (8.0?) can be used from a VS 2003 IDE.

Here's a start...

Visual SourceSafe Compatibility Matrix - Microsoft Technical Forums

...and here's a Q&A that says that the SCC APIs haven't changed, so you should be able to access a VSS 2005 server from within VS 2003 IDE.

So this will get us through the next couple months until we can install and use the *released* version of VS 2005. Ah, the fun of a paranoid client...