In accordance with my love of products that are small, sleek, elegant, and fast, much of the software I love to use is outside the mainstream, but of higher quality than the masses.
Good software is out there, but it takes a little looking for.
Operating System BeOS is the coolest operating system that I've ever come across. BeOS speaks of quality craftsmanship more than any other product listed on this page. At most client locations I end up using Windows NT, and that ends up being where I spend most of my time, so most of what follows describes my work environment, as that seems most pertinent. But now, something has dethroned the king, and I almost exclusively use UltraEdit . It has all the features I need, with plenty of extras - including hex editing features, syntax hilighting for many languages including Java and XML, macros, easily configurable external tools, with tons of nifties all in a fast and easy to use application.