I purchased a new desktop yesterday. My old computer was better than three years old and starting to show it. The new one is quite a powerful little beast — Intel Quad Core i7, 8 GB ECC3 RAM, terabyte hard drive — and I got a great deal on it. Tossed in a second video card and it’s running all three monitors quite nicely.
As it was going through it’s initial start-up, I made a list of the software I’d need to load. So much of my life is in the cloud (Gmail, Google Calendar, Nozbe, etc) that it was fairly easy, but it was still a pretty sizable list. Here’s what I loaded:
- Firefox — Much better browser than Internet Explorer
- Google Chrome — This is actually my primary browser, though I use Firefox a good bit too.
- Ultramon — If you have more than one monitor on your system, this tool stretches your taskbar across all three, then only show icons for the programs open on that particular screen. It’s superb.
- Open Office — I use Google Docs for most things, but sometimes it’s nice to have native software to run.
- Dreamweaver / Fireworks — I still run old versions of these (ver. 8), but they’re essential. I’ll upgrade to the latest CS versions eventually.
- Google Earth and SpaceNavigator driver — I use Google Earth a ton, and the Space Navigator is a great tool to have with it.
- Notepad++ — For quick text/code editing.
- DropBox — I’ve got thousands of files stored in here, all automatically synced to all of my computers.
- iTunes — Of course.
- Evernote — Syncs notes and ideas across all of my computers and my phone.
- Jing — Slick software to quickly grab screenshots or do short screencast videos
- AceFTP — Simple free FTP software.
Beyond that, I made sure to install the video chat plugin for Gmail, a patch for Dreamweaver, my printer driver and some files from an external hard drive.
I must say, it was the easiest and smoothest new PC transition I’ve ever made. Using the right tools can make all the difference.
Anything I’m missing?
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