Software Recos

I’m setting up a new machine soon, and mostly for myself, I’m documenting the full software set I need on the machine (or will need access to:)

* OS: Win xp pro. I use the remote desktop feature a lot within the house and between house and work, so XP Pro is necessary. I’m also evaluating KnoppMyth and Windows MCE 2005 as I may use one of them on a media center machine soon… * AVG antivirus. The price is right. * Firefox of couse, tho I keep IE around to run WinUpdate and Outlook Web Access. ..and I have a lot of firefox extensions loaded, but the must-haves are Adblock, Tabbrowser Preferences, Download Manager Tweak, Googlebar, Searchkeys, and EditCSS. * Aim. I don’t have a love affair with AIM but other family members are committed to it, so I am too. * Adobe reader 7.0. The latest version is worth the download as it loads a lot faster. * Yahoo toolbar. Ok I don’t actually care about the toolbar but the free spyware detector which is included makes the download worth it. * Azureus for bittorrent downloads. There are probably codec sets I need to download as well but I have forgotten them all, I will have to rediscover. Videoinspector is helpful in discovering what codecs i need. * Itunes of course, as I am an iPod user. For ripping I use Exact Audio Copy and the codecs implied. * PKzip or any other reasonable file compression/decompression utility. * Google Desktop. Actually I am not sure that I have to have this or not, it is still in the evaluation stage. The idea is nice – but in practice I never seem to use it. * Outlook for accessing work email. Don’t love it but it is a fact of life. Back when I was wearing the CIO hat for Ignition I tried to move us to some other server alternative but calendar management and people’s familiarity drove us back to exchange and outlook. * Newsgator for feed reading. * Cloudmark for spam control (ignition is an investor in cloudmark). * one of DZsoft’s tools for structured editting. Pretty lightweight which is all I need. I also use Notepad2. Oh and Spread32 is a nice little spreadsheet – I honestly don’t need most of the function of office.

While I don’t need these installed on every machine, I would feel remiss if I didn’t mention Movabletype, Activestate Perl, Blogrolling, and Sitemeter. I use these tools every single day, in many ways they are more irreplaceable than most of the desktop software I use.