Bored of struggling with SE20 coursework and still dreaming of my new laptop which still hasn’t been dispatched I did an inventory of the software on my current laptop so I knew what I had on there and what I needed to install on my new laptop so that I could trash my Windows install on my old one and still have all the software I needed.
The approach I’m going for is very much go free software (open source for the most part) all the way. I’m planning to switch from Outlook Express to Thunderbird and Power Archiver to IZArc. I’ve never used IZArc so I’m hoping it will be good. I generally use Power Archiver at the moment as I bought a licence for that but I’m not massively impressed with it.
I’m still strugging to find some software r eplacements though. I currently use AceFTP which I love. It’s simple to connect using quick connect or you can store your site’s details you can easily lockstep directories (a MUST for any FTP client I use), has tabs for local and remote (multiple connections and transfers), allows me to heavily customise my collision actions. I need an FTP client with all that plus I know some FTP clients offer server to server transfers and on-server file editing which would be wicked bonuses if such software that is free exists (though I’m very tempted to just pay for CuteFTP as it does have all that or so it would appear from the website).
I also want to find a program I can stick icons together in. IconCool Editor is good software but it’s not free. I need something I can easily copy and paste an image into or import from a file and output an icon for my website’s shortcut icons / favicons.
I also need an office suite. OpenOffice is obviously the leading contendor but I prefer Microsoft Office over OpenOffice. I don’t use Excel and PowerPoint as much as I used to so that’s less of an issue but I occasionally use Access for the old websites still running Access databases. Although Base can apparently handle those. So I should be fine with Openoffice.
Then there is also my graphics editing software. While most things can be replaced by free alternatives I don’t see how I can get round this one. Fireworks is really, really good at doing what I want it to do. For the stuff I do it’s probably by far the best software out there. I’ve used PSP and Photoshop and I still think Fireworks is way ahead. But the hippies over at Adobe want money for it. Maybe I should try chatting up the sales staff.
So yeah, if anyone wants to preach how great their FTP client, icon editing software or even vector based graphic editing software is, I’m all ears.
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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 2nd, 2006 at 12:11 am and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.