It’s a new year and it’s must be time for me to go over what toys I have played with in 2009.

• Balsamiq Mockups must be the best application and tool that I have come across this year, after giving a talk to DotNetDevNet on the application I found that many other developers went ahead and bought the application too.
• NotePad+, which is an extended version of the very basic default NotePad that comes with Windows.  Just replace your NotePad with this one and off you go.
• SysInternals Process Explorer I have used every day, mainly due to the fact that Windows does not handle resources and memory that well, so you have to have a tool to sort it out for you when things go wrong.
• GhostDoc is an internal tool for use with Visual Studio and cuts down the amount of time required for documentation, and does it right all the time.
• The biggest and most impressive toy last year has to be the purchase of a MacBook, it’s so much easier than Windows 7, XP or Vista, and things just work as they should do, well designed and well throughout, this gets 10 out of 10 for last years toys.