Software Suggestions: Every site I’ve had since the late ’90s has had a page dedicated to the software that I use and that I love. I haven’t updated that page in a while, certainly not on this incarnation of my blog and not since I “Switched” to Macbook Pro from PC. So, it’s time to update my Software Suggestions. I’ll mark at the end of my program descriptions of the software is available for Mac (M), PC (P) or both (M&P).
One of the things that I’ve noticed since switching is how few programs I actually use any more. So much more of what I do I can do from within my browser online, “in the cloud” as they say. That being said, the first place I’ll start will be with my browser.
Firefox is the only browser I really use. I used it on PC and Mac and it’s just the bee’s knees. It’s far from perfect, and it’s getting slower and clunkier all the time. As soon as Chrome comes out for the Mac or I get a PC I’ll use Google’s Chrome browser. Browsers I do NOT use, Opera and Internet Explorer. (M&P)
OpenOffice.Org is what I use instead of Microsoft’s Office Suite. I don’t use Word or Excel. Much of my work is done in those two formats and NeoOffice (A Mac port of OpenOffice.org) handles them seamlessly. I do all my document creation with OO.0. It’s free and works just great. It opens all versions of the Microsoft documents that I’ve gotten to date. (M&P)
Evernote is my brain. I use it to organize all my documents (in PDF format) and notes. I keep my project lists and status updates in Evernote and I couldn’t be happier with it. I fit into my workflow surprisingly fast and I became addicted to it even faster. It’s got an online interface that makes my information accessible to me on any computer if I don’t have access to mine. I really just like it a lot.(M&P)
Dropbox is my USB Drive in the cloud. Once upon a time I carried around versions of all my important stuff on USB drives so I could get to them anywhere if I needed them or backed them up there in case of a HD blowing up. Now I just drop things into Dropbox and it syncs them up with whatever computers I have aimed at Dropbox. It has a web-interface so I can access my files from other computers, and I can make a file or folder shared or public so other people can access them if I want to share the documents. If I accidentally delete the file I can restore it from within the Dropbox web interface which has a restore functionallity that I have heard goes back at least six months! If Evernote is my brain, Dropbox is my briefcase! (M&P)
Picasa by Google is the image viewer and organizer that I use. I used to use ACDSee 2.x when I had a PC and I’ll use it again when I go back, but on the Mac I can’t find an image viewer that I love. I use Picasa more because it’s not iphoto than anything else. I didn’t like the iphoto software that came with the Mac at all. After Pages it was the second program I removed from my Mac within a week of getting it. That being said, Picasa really is good at organizing photos into albums and folders. The Mac version is rough and doesn’t tag well and isn’t as quick as the PC version is. The PC version of Picasa is much better than the Mac version which looks very much like an unfinished after thought on google’s part.
Stanza is my ebook reader of choice. I use it on my Macbook an on my ipod touch. The software itself will translate quite a few formats of e-book into others. If you’re an ebook reader yourself you might give Stanza a look. Once I get a kindle I imagine I will continue to use Stanza as it will convert files into kindle format. This is convenient for existing books I’ve already downloaded from other locations, for txt files or pdfs, and for things available at gutenberg.org. (M&P)
Itunes is my music player, organizer of choice. Itunes manages my playlists, audiobooks, podcasts, and more without my having to think about it at all. I’d use it even if I didn’t have an ipod. My only real gripe is that when it updates it often updates quicktime and I don’t use it to view videos at all, ever so I wish that were optional and that’s not much of a gripe really, more of a bandwidth concern on my part. (M&P)
Gmail – I used to use an e-mail client of e-mail but now I shove all my e-mail into Gmail and let my browser be the client. Gmail’s storage, sorting, and search ability have transformed the way I use e-mail. I can’t imagine going back to a non-Gmail way of doing things. (M&P)
Launchy is one of two PC only application. On the Mac I use spotlight and I never use cascading start menus any more. Just hit a key combination and call up a little text input line where I start typing the name of the program I want to launch and it will autocomplete it for me and launch the program. It’s much faster than a start menu. (P)
Foxit Reader is my second PC only application. It’s for viewing PDF’s without being as huge, bloated, and slow loading as Adobe’s Acrobat Reader is. I don’t use Foxit Reader on the Mac because Preview does the job for me, but I have Foxit Reader on a USB drive in case I’m at someone’s house who doesn’t have it. Nobody should be without this program so I give it to them without having to download it or anything. It’s quick, lightweight, and secure. Use this and remove Adobe as soon as you verify that this will open your time delay downloadable library books. You won’t miss Adobe at all after using Foxit Reader. (P)
7-zip is the free alternative to winzip and winrar that will open just about any compressed file out there. (P)