Essential Software

SYSTEM REFRESH

I just redid my personal computer system this past Christmas day. It seemed like a good time to refresh, because I knew I'd have most of the day quiet with no business or social interruptions. Back when I ran Windows 98, I used to reformat and re-install everything about once every 3 months to keep the computer running smooth. With XP, less often. With Vista, I've only done it once since I bought my Vista computer a few years back.

SOFTWARE I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT

Everyone has their own set of favourites they immediately install on a fresh computer before it feels like home. I offer my own personal reviews of my top programs.

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Google Toolbar

The Google toolbar has become one of the first utilities I install on the computers I use. I find it hard to live without, and was quite surprised it is not an option on Google's own web browser Chrome. Among the essentials, it offers me a handy web spellchecker for my forms and blogs. The entries on this web site were mostly correctly with Google Toolbar. I also like the Auto-Fill feature for filling my name, address and phone numbers into all web forms. The SEARCH THIS SITE option lets me find content on the web site I'm currently viewing. The UP ONE LEVEL button allows me to shorten the URL one tree level. I use that a lot. The bookmarks that stay with me between browsers and computers is handy when I am at a client or friend's home and need a URL from home. I have tried all the toolbars from Microsoft and Yahoo and others and think the Google one offers me the best features.

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Gadwin Print Screen

http://gadwin.com 

Gadwin makes quite a few neat little utilities they offer for free. Their Printscreen is another essential I install almost immediately when I redo my computer or set up a fresh one. There are a lot of free or almost free screen capture utilities but the Gadwin Print Screen tool is my favourite. It allows me to define a PRINTSCREEN key to capture a rectangle of the screen, and save it to the clipboard and/or a png image fie for use elsewhere. While you may not think this is essential, for web design and cross posting blogs, nothing is easier than capturing screen images. It's faster then saving and makes training, blogging and emailing so much easier.

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Power Menu

http://www.abstractpath.com/powermenu/

A new addition to my essentials, this utility simply adds a few extra menu options to any program including ALWAYS ON TOP and MINIMIZE TO TRAY. This means I can make ANY window stay on top of the others all the time... or minimize items to the system tray if I don't need to use them again. I use it mainly to keep my chat windows on top of my work windows.

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Displaylink USB Video

I tell you right now - if you use your computer for work on more than one program at time, you should not be limited to one monitor. A few years back I discovered how amazingly handy (and cool) using two monitors was. Since then, I have upgraded to three screen on my main work computer and it has changed my life more than any other tool or program.

Three monitors lets me keep Eudora on one screen 100% viewable at all times. It is my email tool and to-do list. The second screen is my main work screen, but the third screen visible allows me to drag and drop and perform many tasks on two screens without flipping back and forth.

Displaylink is an amazing new technology that allows a second, third, fourth or sixth monitor to be connected via USB 2.0 without the cost and installation of additional video cards. It works like a charm, with resolutions up to 1900x

You should see how cool a 19" monitor looks when used sideways to be a 19" tall screen for web browsing pages. It's hard to give up once you've used it for a while.

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IE Inline Search

http://www.ieforge.com/InlineSearch/HomePage 

Just a simple utility, but one I've grown quite used to. It simply gives you a different style of word search within an Internet Explorer web page.

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PIDGIN Instant Messages

http://www.pidgin.im/

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ARTcopy

My shareware photocopy software, that uses my scanner to scan to either of my printers or an Adobe PDF or image file. I use it everyday for incoming cheques and photocopies.



http://www.scanhelp.com/288int/artcopy/consumerversion/features.html

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UltraMon

I couldn't live without UltraMon.


http://ultramon.com

There are a few others out there that do a similar job, bit for me, none are as good, simple and useful as UltraMon. It gives my three monitor setup a taskbar on each screen, also saves and restores my icon positions as needed, and double clicks to activate my screen saver. It is the second or third thing I install on my computer after a fresh install.

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DynamIP

http://dynamip.com/

Although my Internet uses the same IP address for months at a time, it's not absolute. It's what is referred to as a Dynamic IP which means the ISP has the right to re-assign me a new IP address at any moment, and occasionally does. DynamIP is a small utility I use to register a domain name to my dynamic IP. This means that something like http://local.frogstrar.com can point to my home/office computers and find me wherever or whatever my true IP address is.

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FrontPage

I admit it. I am a FrontPage user, and will go as far to say a huge fan. Part of my loyalty is time based... I started with FrontPage, and have kept up with it since it's first version. However another part of m e likes it because it really is good. I won't deny it has some quirks, and some aspects that take a bit of getting used to and living within the confines of it's limitations - but most productivity software does the same.

Like Vista, FrontPage's reputation is notorious for some things it doesn't deserve. The FrontPage "hater" community is filled with bloggers and chatters who will bash it relentlessly without every having actually used the tool. It's almost fun to enter a Web Design chat room and proclaim you are a FrontPage fan. The backlash and fighting words you have to defend against will be harsh and offensive. When you ask the individuals why they hate it, you discover none have even used it, or experienced it's negative features first hand. You're just supposed to hate FrontPage. It's what they all do.

When you investigate further, you learn that most people are using Dreamweaver instead... and that tools performs very similarly when given similar tasks to FrontPage, but people just don't use it that way. You also learn than a huge percentage of the FrontPage enemies don't own either. They pirate, because the competition to FrontPage is 8 times the cost. A product only professionals can afford, and few actually buy legitimately.

I love FrontPage. I won't give it up, even if Microsoft has. I recommend it highly.

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Eudora

Eudora is an email tool that I started with back in the early days of Windows 3.1 and TCP/IP based Internet. I've upgraded every year as the new versions came, right up until they stopped producing new releases. I will not give up Eudora as long as it still runs on Microsoft's new operating systems. It just does things differently than Outlook or other Email clients and I have come to rely on it to organize my life. My inbox is my TO DO list in many ways and Eudora is responsible for a more structured life than I used to have. I don't recommend it to everyone new. I like it because I'm loyal to it's structure and concepts.

A great deal of my tech support time is spent resolving Microsoft Outlook issues. Odd, weird crashes and error messages like; UNKNOWN ERROR. I am not a fan of Outlook, but it's what the masses use and there are few competitors that have made any inroads. For me, Eudora is stable, and does what I need it to do.

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The Operating System: Microsoft VISTA

Microsoft gets a bad reputation unfairly sometimes. I won't deny that their operating systems are very bloated and contain so much stuff that they often don't play well together, and are constantly being hacked and attacked and security holes discovered, but the industry dumps on them with unfair anti-marketing simply because they are the leaders... and leaders need to be hated by some. Its that way with every leader. Pepsi markets anti-Coke. Avis advertises they try harder because they're number 2. It's funny however that people believe it more with Anti-Vista ads than most. The MAC vs PC marketing that Apple has created has people actually hating Vista without giving it a chance.

Vista is a nicer operating system than XP was in almost every way, and yet the perception is, Vista is as bad as Windows ME ever was... and don't get me started on how I liked Windows ME too.

With few exceptions, I like Windows Vista. I wish the networking configuration wasn't so hard to figure out, but apart from that, it has treated me well. I am old enough to remember how everyone was afraid of Windows XP when it first appeared, and how people were clinging to Windows 98 as a more productive, easier to remember and figure out operating system.

The simple fact is, Microsoft makes good operating systems for new users, and the change to anything different is always harder. If Vista is your first introduction to computers, it's better than XP. If you learned XP and need to re-learn Vista, you'll probably like XP better... at least for a year or so, and then you'll never look back.

This marketing of Anti-Vista has one side effect however. Most of us have been forced into Vista in the past year or two when we bought new computers... and because the world perception is that Vista sucks, Microsoft should have no problem at all convincing us all that Windows 7 is an essential upgrade in a much shorter time span than would usually happen. Windows ME was the main OS for a very short time for the same reason. Failure is smart in a sneaky way... it turns us into customers twice very quickly. As different as Vista seemed at the start, it is still Windows... and I'm not going to become a Mac convert anytime soon.

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