7 Pieces of Software I Can’t Live Without
Over the past couple of days I’ve been trying to make a list of all the software that I need to reinstall or transfer to my shiny new Dell* laptop. In the course of this list-making, I realized that though I have a lot of software that I use occasionally, there are a handful that I use almost every day. Here are seven pieces of software that I can’t live without:
- Adobe Creative Suite - Yes, I’m cheating by including an entire suite, but it’s the suite as a whole that I find useful. If I had to pick just part of the suite, I’d go with Photoshop.
Price: Ridiculous. - E-TextEditor - Despite the fact that I use Dreamweaver quite often, E is still my text editor of choice, especially now that it has the ability to open remote folders as a project.
Price: $34.95 - iTunes - When I’m working intently on a design, I find that the right mood music can really help my productivity. It also manages all of the web design and business podcasts that I listen to.
Price: Free. - Virtual PC - This is what I use to do all of my IE6 testing. While there are standalone versions of the browser out there, they aren’t 100% reliable. If you want to test with the actual browser, Microsoft offers a free image of XP with IE6.
Price: Free. - Humanized Enso - Enso is a little hard to describe. It is a combination of program launcher, spellchecker, calculator, and more, all rolled into the most unobtrusive interface I’ve ever seen. It is a thing of beauty.
Price: Open source. - FileZilla - For reliable FTP uploading, FileZilla is my savior. When Dreamweaver is throwing a fit and refusing to upload, or I don’t need to work with a Dreamweaver project, this is what I use.
Price: Open source. - Flock - As I’ve mentioned before, Flock is my browser of choice. Built on the FireFox engine, it adds tons of extra features, mostly around social networking, though my favorite feature is the Web Clipboard.
Price: Open source.
What about you? What software do you use so often that you just can’t live without it?
* Yes, I know Windows is uncool, but I still can’t get used to OSX.
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Ooh! A shiny new Dell - Congrats! That is #1 on my wishlist (along w/ Adobe CS3 - the web designer one, LOL). I just bought a new 24″ Dell monitor a couple weeks ago to tide me over for a bit, but yeah, I’m working on a new desktop, too, LOL.
I agree on the Adobe suite (specifically Photoshop / ImageReady, Dreamweaver, Flash, Acrobat and on occasion Illustrator).
I also love Filezilla and Flock, and use iTunes quite frequently.
I haven’t used the rest, though - and I will definitely need to check out Virtual PC if nothing else. At the moment I’m using my husband’s OLD computer to test IE6 (we didn’t upgrade IE for my testing purposes - he uses Firefox anyway, lol). The rest I will have to go check out!
Personally, I can’t live without Mozilla Thunderbird for my email. There’s even an extension for it called Lightning that serves as a calendar and to do list, etc. I only recently started using the calendar features, though, so I can’t comment too much on it. Thunderbird itself is great, though!
I also use a program called Studiometry for time tracking. It’s a bit steep (around $200) but worth it when you can accurately track your time on client work, etc. It’s a business expense, though, which is why I was able to justify the price.
(Business expense is why I’m more than willing to shell out for a new Dell and Adobe Suite in a few months too! LOL)
@ Selene: Thanks! I’m looking forward to seeing how many applications I can run without totally bogging it down.
If you haven’t checked out Enso, you really need to do it right now. I find it quite painful to work on a computer that doesn’t have Enso installed. QuickSilver on the Mac is the closest thing I’ve found, but even that seems quite clunky in comparison.
Thunderbird, eh? I’m pretty attached to Gmail and it’s instant searchability. And I still manage my to-dos and calendar with paper. Still, I might check it out.
Time tracking software sounds like a good idea, though $200 seems a bit much for me right now. Know of any less expensive ones?
Business expense? Gaming expense is why I’m willing to pay for the new computer. Just kidding. (Mostly.)
I will have to check out Enso, sounds great. I have quicksilver on my mac, but am always looking for tools that increase productivity. I had been a long time CuteFTP user until I found FileZilla which has become a cornerstone in my arsenal.
Lately I have been using OmniGraffle a lot as well, it seems to really help me get a grasp on what I am working on and the user experience of my sites has definitely improved because of it. Great tool.
A nice list. I have not heard of a few of those!
@ Ross: Thanks for the suggestion. I’ve heard of OmniGraffle, but never really checked into it before. Sounds like something to add to my list.
@ Tom: I hope you find them helpful!
And which Flock extensions do you use?
@ Shivanand: Extensions I have installed in Flock include Firebug, Web Developer Toolbar, ColorZilla and ScreenGrab. I also use the StumbleUpon toolbar a fair bit.
Thank you. Avery good list of applications. A couple I had never heard of but, after downloading, I really like.
@ Alek: I’m glad that you find them helpful.