Just completing the second reinstall of Windows 8 on my Lenovo W520 in 10 days due to my new SSD failing and needing to be replaced.
To try to ease the process I though I would try putting on the miscellaneous tools I use such as 7Zip, Filezilla etc. using Chocolatey. I have to say first impressions are good, one command and the product is on, the files pulled from the appropriate site.
Obviously there is the issue that packages are may not be kept up to date, unlike Nuget (which is at Chocolatey’s core) the packages are not stored on the Chocolatey site. I noticed the SysInternal package is a bit behind, but I could always submit the updated package myself couldn’t I.
Emboldened by my success with simple utilities I tried Eclipse and Java, they worked fine.
The biggest gain was git, posh git and git-tf. Usually there is a degree of file/path editing here, but with chocolatey just a single command for each.
To find out more why not listen to Herding Code podcast on the subject