Categories
IT for all

Utilities and tools

I’ve been looking for inspiration for days now. I have some domains and haven’t done anything with them. It just bugs me. I accomplish a lot at work but this is my own personal stuff and I feel kind of guilty about it.

And tonight it came to me. What I have been doing lately ?

Recently I did a full reinstall of windows on my personal computer at home and realized how I always use the same tools. I do the same with friends and family computers and also at work.

Here are the basic tools I use.

Utilities

  • 7-zip. To compress and decompress files. It’s free and it’s probably the best. It’s fast and the compression ratio is just amazing. If you want to automate, take a look at the command line version, it works like a charm.  http://www.7-zip.org/
  • Cute PDF writer. You don’t always have a printer ready and sometimes you just don’t need a paper copy. This application acts as a printer and it gives you pdf. When you print to it, a window pops up and you enter the name you want for your file. It’s simple and it works.
    http://www.cutepdf.com/products/cutepdf/writer.asp
  • PSPad. It’s a simple yet powerful text editor. When you have large text files and notepad chokes when opening them. It’s the tool you want to use. It’s also very good with encoding. Just pay attention to say no to the junk when installing it. http://www.pspad.com/
  • LibreOffice. Sometimes it’s too pricey to get microsoft office or you just don’t need the advanced stuff you find in Excel. Basically a good editor for writing, good spreadsheet editor, and other great tools. If you can’t afford Visio, Draw might do the job.

What are the utilities or tools you first install when you get your hands on a computer ?