OK, so you’re on site doing some work and you’re pretty much coerced into using Windows. How do you trick it out to make life less painful, particularly for the Mac addict? Is there an equivalent of Quicksilver? What’s closest to TextMate? I’ve already grabbed Firefox and all the requisite extensions, so at least I’m feeling at home in a web browser. 
Hopefully, we can arrange to get my laptop setup on the network here, since it’s a regular gig (I’m redeveloping the Behind the Medical Headlines web site for the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh), since until then I don’t really have access to my own email while I’m in this office! Fortunately, I do still have access to support@rubaidh.com and sales@rubaidh.com though!
Update what do all the cool kids use for RSS on Windows? I feel like I’m half-deaf without NetNewsWire!
“what do all the cool kids use for RSS on Windows?”
bloglines.com, same as any other platform
Well… there aren’t really Quicksilver of TextMate replacements.
I’ve tried and tried and tried, and I haven’t found a Windows text editor that isn’t weird and crufty.
I finally settled on “jEdit” as my default editor (for when I’m not in Visual Studio, which is most of the time anyway.)
http://www.jedit.org/
For launching stuff, I always disable the “Quick Launch Tray” on the taskbar and replace it with “Free Launch Bar”: http://www.freelaunchbar.com/
It’s pretty much like Quick Launch, except you can create folders that act as pull-down menus; I throw all my common shortcuts to apps and folders in there and rarely have to dig through the start menu.
For RSS, well, I just use BlogLines since I use too many different machines in a day to want to look up all my subs on NNW on my iBook.
I also drag the TaskBar to the top and lock it (right click for the option.) I guess that’s more “OS 9″ than “OS X” though.
TextPad I use sometimes, and notepad2 is a nice, really lightweight option. Notepad a lot of people like, but it’s crap auto indenting annoys me. A lot of people really like ultraEdit, but I’ve not used it much myself. There’s also editplus and scintilla which I’ve played about with, but not used enough to say much about.
I use jEdit on windows. I had to add in 4or 5 plugins to it but its an excellent development environment.
To for RSS I’m hooked on Bloglines. Its web based so it follows me home from school.
Thunderbird supports RSS. There’s also web based things or planet.
Emacs is cross-platform.
No, I must ammend that. Emacs IS a platform.
My condolances; this must be difficult for you.
For Quicksilver, use Launchy. For TextMate, use ActiveState Komodo. For RSS, don’t bother with a Windows client. Use something web based.
GreatNews RSS Reader http://www.curiostudio.com/
Tried a couple, but have been using this one for the last 6 months.
When I was enslaved to the tyranny of Windows, I really liked UltraEdit (http://www.ultraedit.com/). It might be the only thing I missed upon abandoning the platform…
AppRocket (which I use) is nice for launching apps and other files straight from the keyboard a-la QuickSilver: http://www.candylabs.com/approcket/
You might also want to consider the free alternative, Launchy: http://www.launchy.net/
I’d probably vote for using RadRails for your TextMate replacement: http://www.radrails.org/
Approcket doesn’t come close to quicksilver, but is great for just launching apps. Feeddeemon is a nice rss reader.
Thanks for all your suggestions!
phil: what a very good point. I’d always used XEmacs before switching to TextMate, so what made me forget about it now?
The e text editor is pretty close to textmate. http://e-texteditor.com/blog/2006/textmate_on_windows
I’ve switched to e (http://e-texteditor.com) full-time. InType would be your other option, but right now it’s missing critical features like undo and multiple document editing.