Evan's Software Tools

I've had a few friends / contacts ask me what tools I use... well here's my current list and why I use them. This is just my opinion and there are other equally good tools out there, I use several of these just because they were the first ones that I used, I don’t claim that this list is ‘best of breed’.

Last Update July 2012

This list is always available at http://bit.ly/NsJguN

Primary Tools

Email Client Gmail www.gmail.com
Office Software Microsoft Office http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/
Web Browser Google Chrome https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/ Anti Virus Microsoft Security Essentials http://windows.microsoft.com/en-CA/windows/products/security-essentials
Online Backup Mozy http://mozy.com/

Secondary Tools         

Notetaking Evernote http://evernote.com/ Has a clipping add-on for chrome as well.Online Storage Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/
ISO Mounter Virtual Clone Drive http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html
Online Office / Storage Google Drive https://drive.google.com
RSS Reader reader.google.com
Don’ use this much anymore, it now feeds a tool on my iPad called Zite http://zite.com/
IM Client Google Talk www.google.com/talk/
Bitmap Drawing Paint.Net www.getpaint.net
Text Editor Notepad++ http://notepad-plus-plus.org/
Photo Orgaizer Software & Online Album Google Picasa www.picasa.com
Calendar Google Calendar calendar.google.com
System Cleaner CCCleaner www.ccleaner.com
Secure File Delete Eraser http://eraser.heidi.ie/
Virtualization VMWare Player (It now allows you to create new vm’s) http://www.vmware.com/products/player/overview.html
Changed from MS Virtual PC, vmware has better Linux support and has better hardware
Torrent Client uTorrent www.utorrent.com
Bit-Torrent is a file sharing protocol, yes, much of it's traffic is less than legal but I suspect that over time Bit-Torrent will become a major way of sharing legal/open source/creative commons material.
Game Purchases Steam http://store.steampowered.com/
Music Management iTunes www.apple.com/itunes

Installer Service

Ninite allows you to check off the 'best of class' tools in several categories and install them in one run!  http://ninite.com/
If you are setting up a new PC I’d recommend you run PC Decrapifier http://pcdecrapifier.com/ before running Ninite.

Development

Visual Studio 2010 Premium (C# is my language of choice) http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-ca

I have a list of development tool ad ons at http://bit.ly/PXFSMO
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