Programs I can’t live without

When getting to a new computer there are program that I simply must install or it would restrict the way I work on computers.

Total Commander – With the old roots in the Norton Commander structure and Directory Opus for the Amiga the two window file manager tradition is where I was born and bred. It has so many features that I simply don’t know how to do without it; pattern based mass renaming, support for all compressed formats, FTP, fully configurable button-bar, extensive search.

VLC – Videolan plays all the media-formats you feed it without the need to install the vast variety of codecs available. It’s all built in, nicely packaged and available for free. I wouldn’t mind a more cosmetic and skinned front-end, but the engine inside is second to none.

Firefox – I refuse to work with Internet Explorer. I believe in competition and a vital part of that is to steer away from the leading provider and support a challenger where I can do this without too much effort. So as you notice I do run Windows (XP, Vista and now 7) as all efforts to run Linux failed horribly. It has improved SO much but so many times did it fail on lack of support for a piece of hardware. I am well beyond the average user but even I am reluctant to go to the shell window and start issuing a “sudo” command, no to mention the “classical” “make and install” combination.

Must have plug-ins:

– Swedish and English dictionaries. I know you can’t always tell I use it 😉

– Google Gears – Offline support

– IE tab – allow using IE for specific pages withour fireing up IE itself.

– Twitterbar – If you are a tweeter, twitterbar is fantastic. When you find a link to share, enter a comment in the address field and fire away the comment + link as a tweet.

– Xmarks – Synk your bookmarks between computers. It can do passwords as well but I never spent the time to get that to work. It’s worth the effort to install it by the bookmark synker alone.

Microsoft Office – Yes, Open Office cannot give me what I need – sorry! Pivotables based on an underlying SQL query to a MySQL database is yet to show up in OO, so there is no option for me.

Nokia Ovi Suite – I gues this replaced the PC Suite. Being a Nokia junkie, I do of course need this.

Vuze – Nuff said. Good shit that you need 😉

Dropbox – You get access to a slice of diskspace on the web and a brilliant sync function to it. The stuff that I have at home and at work which I need to have consistent across is there. Source code for a project, EXE files that in the virus infested net never seem to get through in any other way, plus you can provide a link to a file or directory for someone.

Avast Antivirus – Going cheap, this is the best no money can buy in terms of safekeeping your environment.

ACDSee – My favourite program for handling the family pictures. I have used it since version 2, where it’s now in version 9. Very good! Favourite feature is the ability to rename files from an EXIF property.

Picasa – Picasa is a free picture managing program. Very good and the 3.5 has a truly nice face recognition feature. If it could do a few of the things ACDSee can, then I would terminate the use of ACDSee but so far they are complimentary.

Snagit – Snap pieces of the screen. The new “snipping tool” in Windows is a light version of Snagit and works really good (however a bit primitive) but nothing beats Snagit.

Thunderbird – Mail and news monster. Second to none. My mail is relayed to GMail so I can read it on the move, but mail at home is read using Thunderbird using IMAP. I then collect and delete it from the server using POP3 from Outlook. Might seem like a clumsy solution and to some extent it is. I am sort of halfways between webmail and client based mail, wanting the best of both worlds.

TweetDeck – Recent acquaintance. Really convenient for following feeds from twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and so on. Actually made it possible to follow both Facebook and Twitter without much human CPU load.

I would want to say I use Spotify and Voddler a lot, but I honestly don’t. I have accounts, have both programs installed, friends working for Spotify and honestly support their cause with all my heart, but I consume local media using MediaPortal (TV, movies and sometimes music) on the HTPC and MediaMonkey (music) and SqueezeBox (music – hardware but the HTPC also run as a SqueezeServer)

Webservices

iGoogle – My opening page is the iGoogle page where I have a set of gadgets that shows the information I need on a regular basis

– Twitter gadget – Read your twitter feed in a compact way

– Stock portfolio – Monitor one or more stocks. I am naturally following my employer.

– GMail – THE online webmail. I collect my mail using POP3 (with no delete) from my normal accounts. Gives a common interface to all of it and also a storage repository.

– Latitude – Google’s positioning service that sits on top of the Google Maps