What Are Your Essential Software Tools?

Essential Software tools



What are your essential software tools? Which applications can you not get by without?

I would like to do a round up of your suggestions and links. Please add your recommendations as a comment or if you have written an article or blog post describing your favorite tools, put the link in a comment. When I do the round up I will link you up with attribution.

Ideally it would be good if you can mention which operating system (Windows, Mac and Linux) and price along with your suggestions, along with why you find the software so useful.

My aim is by this time next week to have compiled a comprehensive list of the best software tools around right now. Think we can manage that?

Add your recommendations and links in the comments. I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Posted on May 29, 2008 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Software Tools

Comments

30 Responses to “What Are Your Essential Software Tools?”

  1. Ketil on May 29th, 2008 1:55 pm

    Evernote for notetaking and web clips (http://www.evernote.com/). Version 2.2 only for Windows, version 3 (beta) for both Windows, Mac and mobile platforms. Price: free.

    Nelson Email Organizer Pro for email (http://www.caelo.com/). Windows only, requires Outlook and Exchange. Price: $35. Makes Outlook a useful email client.

  2. Live Crunch on May 29th, 2008 1:59 pm

    There are few things I have to download on my Windows Pc before I start using it.

    VmWare so I can boot to my *nix box.
    FileZilla
    StrongDC++
    Notepad++ awesome editor!
    Twhirl – new thing for me.

    That’s about it the rest of it is pretty much known to every1

  3. Ryan Jarrett on May 29th, 2008 2:03 pm

    Some of my essentials are not the most original, but the ones I use the most are:

    Firefox – my window to the world. FF is still the best browser around (IMHO) and I’m looking forward to the full release of FF3.
    iTunes – I have a 20+Gb music library in there, plus 3Gb of podcasts I’m slowly catching up on. It runs when my system boots up and I rarely work without music, so to me its essential.
    Filezilla – I know this is in your screenshot, but it really does make FTP so much easier.
    Notepad – Basic, but with a tiny resource footprint its always handy for a quick edit. I use notepad replacements (most notably Win32Pad) but Notepad is brilliant because its simple.
    Zattoo – Fantastic for late night sessions, or when you want to watch the news from your desk. Zattoo lets you watch live TV channels from your desktop. In the UK you can watch over 20 channels already and its growing every month.

    These are all running on my WinXP laptop by the way.

  4. James Chartrand - Men with Pens on May 29th, 2008 2:07 pm

    Does Gmail Notifier count? Couldn’t live without that. RescueTime is another good one I enjoy.

  5. Andy on May 29th, 2008 2:10 pm

    Depends on the OS, but, here’s my list:

    Windows:
    Putty (SSH Client)
    Trillian (Multiple IM Client)
    mIRC (Chat Client)
    HyperCam (Desktop Recording)
    FileZilla (FTP)
    RapidPHP (PHP IDE)
    Dreamweaver
    Adobe Photoshop
    EditPlus (Text Editor)

    Linux:
    Pidgim (Multiple IM Client)
    Xchat (Chat Client)
    GFTP (FTP Client)
    Geany (IDE)

    Mac:
    Adium (Multiple IM Client)
    Xchat (Chat Client)
    Forklift (File Manager)
    CyberDuck (FTP Client)
    Smultron (IDE)
    DreamWeaver (HTML Editor)
    DayLite (Project Management)
    Thunderbird (Email)

    All:
    FireFox (Web Browsing)
    Skype (Chat/Phone)
    Synergy2 (Keyboard/Mouse Sharing)
    VideoPaste.com (Video Encoding)

  6. Sachendra Yadav on May 29th, 2008 2:24 pm

    Must have for me:

    1. Firefox – Explorer 7 is not that bad, but can’t do without it firefox’s extensions
    2. Twhirl – Amazing Twitter client
    3. Google Talk – Must for connecting with near and dear ones
    4. Notepad – Write all my blog posts here and copy/paste in Wordpress
    5. Picasa 2 – Photo manager and online album creator

  7. Kim Woodbridge on May 29th, 2008 2:26 pm

    Windows

    Notepad++
    Firefox – Web Browsing
    Irfanview – image editor
    GameCam – take videos of gameplay
    twhirl – twitter app
    AVG Antivirus – antivirus software
    DVD Shrink – DVD back-up utility
    Picasa – image organizer

    Linux

    Amarok – music library organizer and player – can’t wait for the windows version

  8. Jon Norris on May 29th, 2008 2:32 pm

    Other than the Adobe apps, email and web browser, which have already been mentioned, my two must-haves are these:

    1. Klok for time tracking. It’s an Adobe Air app in beta, but after a few short days of use, I’m hooked.

    2. Things for GTD on my Mac. I’ve tried most of the GTD apps on the market and this one is by far my favorite.

  9. Nick Wilsdon on May 29th, 2008 2:36 pm

    Ubuntu Linux – my essentials:

    1. Firefox (although I’m also using Flock and liking it)
    2. Google Apps (Gmail/Documents/Calendar)
    3. Eclipse (w/ Aptana plugin) – complete development environment with FTP and SVN
    4. RedMine – Project Management Platform in RoR
    5. PhotoShop CS2 – Gimp just doesn’t cut it, you have to run this through Wine but it works.

    Since moving to Ubuntu I’ve also jumped quite heavily into cloud computing. Although I do use OpenOffice, I’m trying to do more online through Google Apps. They still have a few kinks to iron out though there to make the reality match the pitch. It’s definitely the future though.

  10. Brandon Eley on May 29th, 2008 2:46 pm

    I absolutely cannot live without TextMate… I use it for much more than an IDE. I use it to edit flat text files, such as tab or comma delimited, etc. With its snippets and commands, you can customize it to save you a ton of time.

    Below is a list of the software I use all day:

    TextMate
    Transmit (but Filezilla works well too)
    Terminal (ssh)
    Safari & Firefox (safari for browsing, FF for testing — until 3 anyway)
    Mail.app and Gmail
    Adium
    twhirl

    I open up Photoshop occasionally, read my feeds using NewsFire, but the above list pretty much sums up where I spend most of my day.

  11. Dennis Bjørn Petersen on May 29th, 2008 2:47 pm

    Until something bad happens with twitter twhirl is one of my favourites.

    Of course Firefox and Flock are the top ones. I can’t quite decide which one of them is best.

    I recently started to use Skitch (Mac) and it has quickly become a favourite too.

    Then a few that makes my every day easier.

    Filezilla
    Utorrent (Windows)
    StumbleUpon
    Adobe Photoshop
    Microsoft Office 2007 (Windows)

  12. Michael Carnell on May 29th, 2008 2:54 pm

    For Mac:
    1. Firefox is a must have, mainly for the add-ins.
    2. Foxmarks so Firefox bookmarks can by synchronized.
    3. Chicken of the VNC or Microsoft Remote Desktop so that I can get in and manage my remote machines.
    4. Smultron as my text editor.
    5. Quicksilver so that I don’t have to constantly search through applications, utilities, and documents to find what I want.
    6. NetNewsWire so that I can read my RSS feeds. Syncs to the NetNewsGator site so I can stay up-to-date on any machine or on-line.

    For Windows
    1. AVG from Grisoft to protect against viruses. This is always install #1.
    2. Firefox – because IE sucks.
    3. Foxmarks – again, I can synchronize bookmarks across machines and browsers.

    Both / Web
    1. I use GMail for almost all of my mail needs, so a good browser is essential and I don’t have to install a local client.
    2. NetNewsGator – to stay up with my RSS feeds when I am not on my main machine. Again, syncs with my local machine so I am never out of place.
    3. WordPress – I maintain most of my sites in WordPress, so most of my writing and editing is done on-line.

    Note: You can tell by the list that syncing is key. I move around between home, office, and remote machines constantly so being able to pick up where I left off anywhere is key.

  13. Adam on May 29th, 2008 3:07 pm

    Firefox (and a ton of plugins)
    Adium
    iTunes + last.fm
    QuickSilver
    VLC
    Eclipse
    CyberDuck
    Terminal
    MAMP
    Coda
    Smultron
    Twitterfic (maybe – I can’t decide if I like it more than twitterfox)
    Shakespeer
    Google Notifier

  14. Sharon Hurley Hall on May 29th, 2008 3:18 pm

    There are all for Windows:
    Firefox – best browser ever. I’ve been using it since it was a twinkle in the creator’s eye and FF3 promises to be better than ever.
    Gmail – I love the conversation management and you can improve it with FF Greasemonkey scripts
    Skype
    Twhirl – best manager for my latest obsession
    SmartFTP
    Clicky – easy stats
    Google Reader – I keep coming back to this because it’s so easy; could be prettier though
    Windows Live Writer – works beautifully to upload posts to my Wordpress blogs

  15. DazzlinDonna on May 29th, 2008 3:34 pm

    Backup, backup, backup is what I believe is most vital, and online remote backup is even better – I’ve picked the 2 best over at http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/2007/12/12/online-backup-services-i-highly-recommend/

    (Mozy is for windows and mac, and carbonite is for windows only)

  16. Grant D Griffiths on May 29th, 2008 4:11 pm

    MarsEdit
    NetNewsWire
    Twhirl
    NeoOffice
    Firefox
    Gmail/Mailplane
    Google Calendar
    Skitch
    ImageWell
    TextEdit
    iTunes
    Spanning Sync
    Adium
    Skype
    ScreenFlow

    There are more.

  17. Tony Rose on May 29th, 2008 4:44 pm

    I won’t duplicate many of the software tools already mentioned. I will add:
    - Windows Live Writer
    - Adobe Illustrator
    - Excel
    - Tableau
    - MicroCharts

  18. Nik Smit on May 29th, 2008 6:01 pm

    For windows, I could not work half as efficiently without Total Commander.

    Its essentially a shell replacement, but theres a wealth of functionality in there that means you don’t have to resort to other tools.

    Once you’re familiar with the keyboard shortcuts, using Explorer (and equivalent) becomes painfully slow.

    It doesn’t necessarily *look* pretty, but what you lose in aesthetics you gain in productivity.

  19. SierraK on May 29th, 2008 8:23 pm

    Stickies on the Mac!! I love those things! If I think of something I don’t want to forget I always type it up on a stickie. They are like post-it notes for the computer.
    Quicksilver and Spotlight are both pretty awesome, but I always lean towards Quicksilver. (Mac)

  20. Dennis Guten on May 29th, 2008 10:25 pm

    Mac

    Transmit (FTP)
    SkEdit (text editor replaced Dreamweaver)
    Adobe CS3 Suite (Graphics)
    Gmail Notifier
    Skitch
    LogMeIN (for working remote)
    Firefox
    SpeedDownload
    Overload

  21. Guilherme Zühlke O'Connor on May 30th, 2008 12:40 pm

    Any Platform;
    * Firefox + firebug + webdeveloper + google Sync
    * Photoshop
    * Illustrator
    * Google Earth
    * Skype
    * Jing

    Mac:
    * Quicksilver before anything else.
    * Cyberduck FTP
    * Textwrangler (text editor)
    * NeoOffice (office SW)
    * VmWare to use *nix and Win without rebooting

    Windows:
    * Just the necessary for web testing

  22. Stephen Warkentien on May 30th, 2008 6:58 pm

    This is the software I use every day:

    1) Evernote.com – Windows client version, free form text database

    2) Swift To-Do List – http://www.dextronet.com/ – tree-structured task list able to group tasks by due date, priority, category

    3) Jott.com – speech to text via toll-free number. Send results to email, cell phone, blog, or other web tools.

    4) Meebo.com – web-based unified chat client

    5) 4info.net – sms service for weather, flight status, stock quotes, package tracking, sports, trivia & more

    6) Google.com – mail, reader, calendar, iGoogle widgets

    7) GiveAwayOfTheDay.com – free licensed software, one per day for one day only – some of the software are jewels; others are dogs.

  23. Angie Bowen on May 31st, 2008 8:47 am

    Firefox
    Thunderbird
    SmartFTP (going against the norm here)
    RapidCSS
    Notepad++
    Photoshop CS2
    Paint Shop Pro 10
    Xara Extreme
    Corel Painter
    Apophysis
    Utorrent
    SumatraPDF (my default reader since adobe is so slow)

  24. Glenda Watson Hyatt on June 2nd, 2008 11:23 pm

    One free program I use a fair bit is ReadPlease (http://www.readplease.com/). This text-to-speech software is great for proofreading writing.

  25. Brad Grier on June 3rd, 2008 12:45 am

    Firefox
    Google Apps
    Flickr
    Crimson Editor / Notepad++
    Irfan View
    Total Commander
    Twitter
    Jott

  26. Ash Chuan on June 3rd, 2008 12:57 am

    Gmail
    Visual Studio
    WordPress
    Facebook
    Gimp

  27. Ruth Marie Sylte on June 3rd, 2008 2:01 am

    * Firefox + extensions like Update Notifier and compact themes for more browser window, less toolbar
    * Google Browser Sync
    http://manitouheights.com/blog/2008/05/13/tech-tool-google-browser-sync-firefox/
    * Other Google apps (Gmail, etc.)
    * Fetch FTP
    * TextEdit/Notepad

  28. Top Software Tools: Readers Recommendations : Codswallop on June 5th, 2008 2:28 pm

    [...] week I asked readers to recommend their Essential Software Tools – here are your [...]

  29. alisty on June 8th, 2008 6:14 am

    my top 5 tool list:
    1.notes holder lite: for quick note, to-do list and notification.
    2.google desktop search: a handy file-finder.
    3.ad-aware se:to block ads, malware and keep my pc safe
    4.winamp: itunes are simply too complicated.winamp is really easy-to-use
    5.ie:firefox is not stable and sometimes consumes too much RAM and crash.

  30. Lennert on October 9th, 2008 3:22 pm

    A few things I use on Ubuntu Linux:
    gedit for textediting;
    gFTP for FTP;
    xampp for linux, so i an locally test my PHP sites; opera and firefox for surfing;
    supertux, what a great game;
    the GIMP;
    openoffice.org;
    rhythmbox for music; kaffeine for video

    that’s about it I believe

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