What software have you purchased to use at work, that your company wouldn't purchase?

Question

I used to work with VMS a lot, and accessing it from my PC was the pits, as the company supplied terminal emulator left a lot of keypad keys not accessible. I finally gave up asking for them to do something about it, and bought Kermit95. Problem solved for me.

If you have ever been in this situation, what was the software package you picked to solve your problem, and what was your problem?

The goal here is to identify software packages that are good enough to buy on your own to use at work, even if your company is not interested in doing so.

Answer 1

Beyond Compare for comparing code by directories and at the file/line/character level. It took the office a while to get around to buying licenses for it, so some of us went and paid for it, then eventually when the approval comes through will be theoretically reimbursed. Not that we're holding our breath. Not that we expect the approval to ever come through.

Answer 2

ViEmu - http://www.viemu.com/

It's an impressive VI emulation mode for Visual Studio. So habbits I can't break.

Answer 3

UltraMon is the only software that I purchased myself. But to be fair, I never asked for the company to purchase it.

Answer 4

• OmniGraffle
• RegexBuddy
• TextMate

(Not that my employer refused to buy them, they're just great tools I wanted to own.)

Answer 5

I use VEdit which isn't on the company's "approved" list.

Answer 6

• UltraMon
• VisualSVN
• ReSharper
• BeyondCompare

Have been pretty successful on getting the company to spring for licenses (R#, BC,and UltraMon) for these programs for everyone.

Answer 7

ViEmu and TotalCommander. Can't live without these.

Answer 8

Komodo IDE <-- its magic for those who do python Pathfinder (a finder replacement that integrates a terminal and ssh client)

Both tools have made me a much more efficient engineer.

Answer 9

UltraEdit. Lifetime license was woth every penny - I use it every day.

Answer 10

• UltraEdit
• VisualSVN
• RegExBuddy

(but I replaced UltraEdit with Notepad++ which I prefer)

Answer 11

O'Reilly Safari. I use it every day, and it has saved me hundreds of dollars in books.