Software for my new laptop 2

Time for a new laptop, and to replace software. Hereโ€™s my new list.

A lot has changed in the last 5 years. Mainly, I use the browser, cygwin and Portable Apps a lot more. (The last is to escape jailers, not registry bloat.)

Media

  • Chrome [new]: For browsing and development. Fast, light, and stays out of the way.
  • Firefox: I keep it just for printing. Chrome sucks at printing.
  • Media Player Classic: Nothing against it, but I decided to stick to just one app, which isโ€ฆ
  • VLC: Continues to be the best media player, IMHO.
  • WinAmp: I just manage my playlists as M3U files, using Python programs.
  • Audacity: Still the easiest way to record audio.
  • Camstudio: The simplest free portable screen capture software I know.
  • PicPick [new]: Lightweight, powerful screenshot grabber
  • VirtualDub: Not the simplest, but still good for what I need: cropping and joining video.
  • MediaCoder [new]: Good for video/audio conversions. Maybe Iโ€™ll install this later.
  • Foxit Reader: The simples free portable PDF reader I know, better thanโ€ฆ
  • NitroPDF Reader [new]: โ€ฆ which is good for Printing PDFs โ€“ better thanโ€ฆ
  • Primo PDF: โ€ฆ which has trouble on rare occasions.
  • Microsoft Reader: I have a lot of ebooks in .LIT.
  • Kindle for PC [new]: I donโ€™t own a Kindle, but Iโ€™ve bought a few ebooks.
  • Paint.NET: Good enough for cropping and adjusting colours on images.
  • Windows Live Writer [new]: The best way to write this blog WYSIWYG
  • Inkscape [new]: I occasionally edit vector graphics.
  • Google Earth. Google Maps is good enough.
  • ImgBurn: I no longer use CDs/DVDs. Just flash drives and external hard disks.
  • Picasa: Iโ€™ve stopped browsing pictures. No time.

Sharing

  • Dropbox [new]: Simplest way of sharing files.
  • Skype: I use it more than my phone.
  • Google Talk: For those friends who have chat enabled on Gmail.
  • TeamViewer [new]: Pretty efficient screen sharing. Works better than Skype, I think.
  • Google Calendar Sync: To keep Outlook in sync with Google Calendar.

Utilities

  • 7-Zip [new]: Covers all compressed formats, and has the best compression ratio.
  • WinRAR: 7-Zip has it covered.
  • AutoHotKey [new]: Shockingly powerful macro functionality. Shockingly underused.
  • Clip [new]: Command line clipboard. dir | clip copies the directory to the clipboard.
  • ClipX [new]: Stores multiple clipboard entries and history. Invaluable.
  • DiskTT [new]: Iโ€™m paranoid about disk speed. I keep measuring it.
  • WinDirStat [new]: Best way to find whatโ€™s taking up space on disk.
  • ProcessExplorer [new]: Just in case Task Manager doesnโ€™t show you everything.
  • Google Desktop: Well, itโ€™s dead.
  • mDesktop [new]: A Virtual Desktop Manager (multiple screens) for Windows 7.
  • PowerToys: doesnโ€™t work on Windows 7, but I got X-Mouse working.
  • Teracopy: I donโ€™t worry too much about copying files any more. Maybe later.
  • Junction Link Magic [new]: To map folders. But I now use Cygwin, and symlinks rock.
  • uTorrent [new]: For bittorrent.
  • ntlmaps [new]: proxies requiring a password to a proxy not requiring a password
  • Putty [new]: SSH for Windows, but can also act as an SSH tunnel
  • TrueCrypt [new]: To securely back up my bank details on the cloud.

Development

Data Visualisation

  • R [new]. The God of all statistical packages. Install reshape and ggplot2.
  • Gephi [new]: Does network visualisations quite well. 
  • GraphViz [new]: Does network visualisations not quite as well.
  • Google Refine [new]: Helps clean up messy data.
  • qhull [new]: For voronoi treemaps. Donโ€™t ask.
  • wkhtml2pdf [new]: To print web pages as PDF.

What am I missing that you really like?

18 thoughts on “Software for my new laptop 2”

  1. One more thing, I wanted to know from you is – How do you organize your work, specifically code and how do you handle repository and workspaces (if you use an IDE) ?

    In case you don’t use an IDE, what kind of coding environment?

    I got a new laptop a few months back and have been trying to figure out how to start organizing my work, repositories of things I work or experiment on and the IDE. Currently, I am trying to put in Java, Python and Scala into eclipse by using it’s plugins, hoping eclipse would help me to organize the code and repos.

  2. @Ravi: I don’t use an IDE. Just Sublime Text + bash/Command Prompt + git/hg. Since I don’t use Java, I can stay away from Eclipse (which I think is way too heavy for my liking).

  3. Evernote
    Zipeg (available on both Mac and Win, better UI than 7zip)
    Keepass
    Switcher (Expose-like feature on Win. A bit flaky and not supported.)
    Erunt (registry backup)

    I’m trialing Xplorer2.

  4. Excellent list. Thanks for sharing ๐Ÿ™‚

    I agree about Eclipse – too heavy. But if you code in Java, I dont see a better alternative. Anyone remember NetBeans?

    Google Desktop – I find this amazingly useful and I am sad Google is retiring this. Wish there is a good alternative. I hate windows search.

  5. Thanks for excellent compilation.
    Can you point to any free utility to optimize the performance of our computers

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  7. Very nice list! I would add JV 16 Power Tools to the Utilities list. They have a free 30 day fully functional trial to try them out. It’s not limited like most trial software.

  8. If you spend any time in Excel, ASAP Utilities is an absolute joy!… get it and I’m pretty sure, you’ll swear by it in no time..

    the Sparklines add-in by Fabrice Rimlinger is also excellent.. a bit raw, but powerful nevertheless.

  9. Nice list. You should really try out:

    Xplorer2 (get the professional version if you can – it is $30 and worth every penny and more) from http://zabkat.com
    Wikidpad – for organizing information in an offline desktop wiki – from http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net/
    Sublime Text – the best text editor – http://www.sublimetext.com/
    Everything – the perfect replacement for Google Desktop – actually it is better since it does not hog memory – from http://www.voidtools.com/
    Slickrun – the perfect program launcher – http://www.bayden.com/slickrun/
    MindManager – for Mindmapping – from http://www.mindjet.com/
    Irfanview – basic image viewer and editor – http://irfanview.com/
    SumatraPDF – Single portable program for reading ebooks (ePub & Mobi), comics (CBR and CBZ) and PDFs – from http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/free-pdf-reader.html

  10. Pingback: Software I currently use | s-anand.net

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