The Essential (Software) Mix
As mentioned previously, I reformatted my laptop recently and installed a fresh virginal Windows XP. Then began the task of reinstalling all the of software I need. Here’s my list of essentials (some are obvious no-brainers, I’m just including them here for completeness).
- Photoshop
- Illustrator
- HomeSite - my favorite text editor.
- Dreamweaver - I find myself using this less and less but it still comes in handy.
- Mozilla - The very first thing I do with a virginal Windows install is open up IE, download Mozilla, set it as my default browser and mail client, and then try to avoid ever opening IE again. I favor the full Mozilla suite instead of the Firefox-Thunderbird duo.
- WinRAR - Compression, baby! (It handles .zip too).
- IrfanView - Lightning-fast freeware image viewer/editor/converter. Handles about every format you can think of, crop, resize, resample, scale, etc. Gotta have it.
- Winamp Classic - I don’t care for the bloated new versions. It peaked at 2.6.
- FileZilla - Excellent freeware FTP client.
- My old version of PHPTriad - Outdated, but free. Installs Apache, PHP and MySQL in one fell swoop without the headache of installing all three separately.
- MySQL-Front - Nice front-end client for working with mySQL databases, friendlier than phpMyAdmin.
- Trillian Basic - Cross-network chat client.
- Avast! Antivirus - Free virus protection.
- Ad-Aware - Spyware protection.
- Spybot Search & Destroy - More spyware protection, worth having and running both regularly, as each one will catch things the other may miss.
- The latest Flash player for Mozilla.
- The latest Adobe Acrobat Reader.
- The latest Quicktime player.
- MicroSoft Word - I know, I know, there are other less evil alternatives. I’ve used StarOffice, haven’t tried OpenOffice.org though I may give it a shot. Meanwhile I have a copy of Word 2000 so I might as well use it.
There are probably others I could mention. Opera, SnagIt, Arachnophilia, etc. But this list pretty much covers my core neccessities. Any suggestions for more essentials to add to my arsenal?
