Ask HN: Productivity tools for windows 8?

Windows 8.1 has an inbuilt Alarms app which includes countdown timers that you can use for keeping track of time in general (Pomodoro technique etc;). Here's how it looks like : http://i.imgur.com/cz0tg6Z.png

Non-Windows 8 specific : Eclipse has a full-screen plugin that I use to be free from distraction when working with code.

There's an Autohotkey script for making any window full-screen + borderless, too. It's great for focusing on one task :

http://www.autohotkey.com/board/topic/78903-yabt-yet-another...

Autohotkey can automate various other things like having keyboard shortcuts for Volume levels, opening applications, turning off Caps Lock, etc;

I use console2 (make sure you grab the 64-bit version) + an autohotkey script to provide a "quake-like" console drop down... in which I use...

Powershell is extremely awesome; it's basically a c# console.

and...

Chocolatey and/or OneGet, Boxstarter, and myget.

Notepad++ <i>and</i> Notepad2. I use both, notepad++ for complex replacement tasks, notepad2 as my simple editor.

Puretext which strips formatting from text when pasting.

nimbletext.

See: http://mbrownnyc.wordpress.com/misc/my-toolchain/

Not sure if this is what you mean by "productivity tools," but these things greatly increase my productivity and reduce the time it takes for me to complete tasks.

For me, it's a superior multiboot arrangement so I can choose other Windows or Linux versions painlessly without hesitation to take advantage of inherent productivity differences whenever I want.

preme, listary, cmder/conemu. that's a good start.