The Journal of Light Construction has a survey on a new or rediscovered tool that has made your life easier. If you've never check out JLConline, you should. It's a fabulous, FREE online Magazine for the general contractor, has an active forum and tons of good advice for the small businessperson. You can sign up for their email newsletter to get weekly updates.

1. Blackberry cell phone: I live in California and I'm a busy handyman. I also have a general contractor's license. Nearly, every estimate I provide a customer is done in Quickbooks. I cut and paste my estimates into Microsoft Outlook's 'Task's' section. Since my Blackberry syncs up with Outlook, I get all my estimates with all of each estimate's text into my cell phone. Blackberry's memory can hold a lot of info. I have all my jobs' details, amounts and the exact same wording my customer has. This combined with having my calendar, customer/vendor/personal database all on my hip is a very efficient use of technology. I rarely have misunderstandings with customers about a job and this is a big part of my success. -Douglas Atwater General Contractor
2. The Extracting Pliers by Jefferson Tools. The best nail pulling tool I have ever used. It pulls nails in seconds that used to take minutes. -Sam Brode
3. My new favorite tool is the Bosch Impact Drver PS20 , the small (10 volt) impact driver. Size does matter. The small size is so much more convenient. I wouldn't use such a small driver to drill down a whole deck, but for 90 percent of screw driving jobs it has power to spare. -John Pfluke
4. How about that old fashioned hand saw when you only have a few cuts and throw in that old fashioned wodden miter box? No cord to roll out then roll up and the dust falls to the floor not blowing all over the place so you can cut in many finished areas that you can not do with a Circular saw. Try the shark tooth style saws, they are fast and clean. -Bert Flood
5. Without a doubt I'd have to say my construction master 5. From stair layouts to arch radius to roof layout, I can't imagine not having one, the accuracy in layout saves time and money beyond numbers! -Phillip Gere
6. A Senco Micro Pinner . We remodel kitchens and in a recent high end cabinet job with pre-finished crown and undercabinet mouldings. I purchased this little nailer to help out and told the guys we will probaly never use it again. Now its a standing joke like where is the gun we never use or we are out of nails for the gun we never use. Its great for nailing pre-finished outside corners with hardly a trace and we have found many other uses for it. -Claude
7. I get a lot more use than I expected from an orange all-plastic-molded 14oz Stanley soft face hammer. It has steel shot in it. Light and small but surprisingly handy for taking stuff apart and knocking stuff into whack -- without damage and headache-making noise. The orange color means you can find it quickly. -Curt Gowan
8. The Kreg Master Jig K3MS system has greatly improved the quality of our trim work and cabinet work by several notches. We regularly pocket-screw casings and other trim for fast, tight joints. Much better than bisquit joinery! -Thom Lipiczky
  9. The Rocket Anchor. I have one of these attached to all of my chalk lines. No longer having to tap a nail or clamp the string to snap lines is great ( and helps maintain my sanity). -Dave Otto
10. The Fein Multimaster . It has cut my nit-picky little task time by 100% and makes my work more accurate. -yours truly, Jude Herr

Do you have a favorite tool that you are passionate about? We'd love to hear about your good ideas so post them below!!