Jaa


What software do you love?

Today marks the start of February, the "month of love." In commemoration, I want to ask you a question:

What software do you love, and why?

Some members of the high-tech illuminati start and end their discussions of design in terms of RAZR phones, iPods, and other cool gadgets. That's clearly where technology and coolness and the mainstream have all converged right now, and so I think it's only natural that people gravitate towards those topics.

But for my own curiosity more than anything else, I'm interested in shifting the conversation about desirability in design over into the computer software realm, at least for today. And I'm interested in hearing from you.

What's your favorite piece of software, modern or ancient? What makes it great? Is it something fun or something useful?

Can software provoke the same sense of "gotta have it" that a tech gadget can? What does it take to get you excited about software?

How much does a great user experience factor in to your feelings about a software product? Or is it all about the utility? Or about the people who make it? Or about attractive visuals? Speedy performance? Extensibility? Some combination of all of these factors?

What exemplifies a great software experience for you?

Use the Comments link below to tell me your thoughts.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    TextPad (www.textpad.com)
    XaraX (www.xara.com)

    Both these pieces of software are fast, reliable, and perform exactly as I expect in every situation. They are also very orthogonal, every feature is available on every item etc.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Winamp. Not for the player itself or the "skinning".

    I really like the "snap to the edge" feature. When you drag it near the edge of the screen or near another window, it pause to adjust perfectly to this place.

    Really cool feature.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Beyond Compare

    Incredible time saver and the UI is very well designed. Also cheap to purchase.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    I gotta have Photoshop. It is not perfect, in fact for its age it is quite unrefined. However I know it just so well I can accomplish anything graphical in it with very little effort.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Trillian (www.trillian.cc)

    I love it because it's BOTH useful AND usable. I think lots of other IM clients out there are usable and some are even beautifully designed. But Trillian lets me talk to anyone on pretty much any chat medium, AND it's beautifully designed.

    I think both utility and usability will only get you so far on their own. But when the two are both present and work together well, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Well, back in the DOS days, I LOVED the revolutionary Norton Commander. Today I use a NC clone (Windows Commander) (www.ghisler.com). Cannot live without it. Love also Cobian Backup. (http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm)
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/)

    I LOVE VLC. It can play any of my video to and from, out of and into and over anything! Shame the GUI for Windows is so uninspiring. That's why I'm working on a WPF front end for it.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
  1. WinRAR
    2. Far Manager
    3. ReGet
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    GarageBand
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Opera browser-

    I've used it back in the first browser wars when I was a college student, and came back again in 2001 and I've been hooked since. Firefox and the new IE are nice tools, and they are just as nice, but Opera fits me like a glove- the mouse gestures are so intuitive. When I use Opera, I feel like those scenes in the movies where they show someone using a computer.. the UIs are NEVER realistic and the actors magically get the information they need with a few clicks... Opera actually does that for me! I love it.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    When it comes to photo organizing, Picasa 2 rocks. It is very intuative, extremely functional, and is polished to a great degree. I really enjoy the subtle and smooth animations and graphical effects such as the animation of rotation and zooming.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Sonar. Calkwalk rocks! Great software made by a great company. A LOT has to with the fact that the program manager is on their newsgroups answering questions and solving problems.

    Also, RSSBandit. Great features and is free. Plus, the software has matured over time, getting better with each release.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Far Manager
    Colorer
    RAR
    PaintShop Pro

    ...and, of cource, I love all the GPLed software, because it is free. ;)
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    I love MindManager software, because of the idea, System thinking does a lot of good for us.
    And one more is the PERSONAL BRAIN software, I love it too for it's great thinking
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    FME by Safe Corp. (www.safe.com) - Tons of stuff in it that would take years to write if I had to do it on my own. I could not do my job effeciantly without it. It has a few bugs that can be frustrating but other than that I love it. Plus it's extensible using C++ and it's scripting environment Tcl is extensible as well. All in all an absolute must have for anyone dealing with geo-spatial data.

    University of Minnesota's Mapserver coupled with DM Solutions Php Mapscript (mapserver.gis.umn.edu | http://maptools.org/php_mapscript/index.phtml ) - This little combo has enabled me to be able to put together solutions that have amazed some the biggest players in the Telecom industry. It amazes me constantly what you can do with these libraries. I could not do what I do without these libraries. Literally hundreds of thousands of man hours of development time have gone into these libraries for manipulating and displaying spatial and geometric data.

    MSFT Excel for Mac and Windows - I probably do not go a single day without using Excel at least once. For everything I have ever needed it to do it has always been able to do it and it's never been hard to figure out how to accomplish what I need to do when I use it. All the other Office products I could pretty much care less about because I never use them because there are better programs that do what the other products do. Excel however has no equal in my book.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Total Commander is a tool that I always carry with me on a USB stick, and is the first to get installed on a fresh Windows.

    It's a fast and flexible filemanager with a source and destination pane, which makes it far more flexible for copying files. Its Search & Synchronize Directories are also much faster than the built-in Windows counterpart (does anyone actually use those?).

    The design is somewhat dated, but the functionallity of it is unsurpassed. Been using it since 1996, and it's still being updated :)
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Personally, I think the RAZR's UI is awful (to many button pushes to get stuff done).

    My favorite to would have to be my e-mail client, The Bat!. Admittedly, the UI could be better, but the power (safely) exposed to uses is tremendous.

    Also, those little UNIX utilities (sed, grep, etc.) can be chained together to do all sorts of things. I hope MSH ends up being what is was promised to be...
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    These are tools for developers, but many non-developers would find them useful if they understood what they did. And they're all cheap or free!

    Beyond Compare: file and directory comparison tool. http://www.scootersoftware.com

    WinGrep: Windows GUI version of classic GREP search engine. http://www.wingrep.com

    TortoiseCVS: An almost invisible interface between Windows Explorer and CVS source control. A beautiful integration into Windows.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    I'll second the nomination of TextPad, though cursor navigation doesn't behave exactly like I'd expect or desire. Starts fast, stays focused, respects my preferences. When Visual Studio removed Brief mode, my productivity suffered tremendously. CodeWright was good. Best text editor ever? TPU on VAX/VMS. For actual writing (as opposed to producing "documents"), nothing beats a good text editor.

    Firefox. Sure, everybody raves about tabbed browsing, which IE 7 will have natively, but IE doesn't give me the same sense of control with everything else. Far superior cookie control. One button to clear caches, cookies, history. Simple preferences pages. Adblock. Accelerator keys for quickly changing text size. Incremental search for text on a page. I just wish it would start up a little faster and that form controls wouldn't wreak havoc with ClearType text on Windows.

    TurboTax, until a couple versions ago when they starting moving to a klunky Web-like interface on the desktop version. I got so fed up with scrolling to hit the Next button last year that I'm trying TaxCut this year.

    TeX. Open, powerful, portable, but a pain to learn. I never bothered re-learning LaTeX after the big re-design. I've got my own TeX macro packages for manuscripts, screenplays, etc.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    While I can't say it's an application I love because I only played with it, rather than use it day-to-day, however the most intriguing applications I experimented with is Kai's Power Soap. While I did not find it particularly intuitive because all of the widgets were graphical without any textual descriptions, it stands as having the prettiest interface I've ever used (even after all of these years) - light years ahead of anything else I've used.

    One of the most significant feelings I remember when I played with this program is how fun it was to play and experiment with the tools. The combination of not having any textual descriptions and extremely attractive widgets (which looked like and were shaped in proportion to common physical objects, but had a futuristic and sometimes unfamiliar look them so that you do not necessarily knew what it would do) actually encouraged the user to experiment with the tools to figure out what to do. In a way, it's akin to "Myst" where you were figuring out what to do - what this button did, what happened if I pulled this level, what if I dragged this tool over the canvas? There was also a tremendous amount of satisfaction when you figured what what the tool was and how to use it.

    This is far from the types of interfaces you would ideally design because of learning curve required to figure out how to use the application, however I have never been compelled to explore an interface and be rewarded with such a level of satisfaction once I learnt the interface as I have with any other application. While it probably should remain as an experimental project rather than a template to base interfaces on, is there anything we can learn from it? I personally struggle to figure out what parts I can use from it to develop my own interfaces, however this product and the feelings it evoked still be remembered for a long time to come.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    M.U.L.E for the Commodore 64.

    The game is great and the interaction design for the auctions is perfect that it adds to the fun of the game.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Okay, I'll give a third call out for TextPad. I'm a professional writer as a sideline (it's not a job you live off of) and I do all my writing in TextPad. It doesn't get in my way the way Word does. It's there when I need it, but only when I call for it. I've been using it for years, and unlike many programs it hasn't suffered the fault of trying to be bigger and better every version. It's a text editor and it doesn't try to be anything else.

    Infranview is another must have application. It's an image views, and has been for years. Many image viewing programs fall into the trap of trying to become editors and end up vanishing because of it. Infranview was stayed the course and produced one of the best images views out there.

    There is also Boost, which isn't a program exactly, but a set of libraries. If your program in C++ Boost is a must, it fills in a lot of the gaps of the STL and just makes writing code easier.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    I love Mac OSX. I just works, and is very intuitive.

    The iLife suite as well.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    iTunes. I could do without the stupid brushed metal look, but iTunes was the first mainstream media player to get managing a music library Right. Quick and easy filtering on artist, album, and genre. Easy to use playlist generation. Ratings. Weighted shuffle. Search based playlists. None of these were pioneered by iTunes, and I bet at least one other player put them together this way. But iTunes was the one I saw first. My first serious exposure was setting it for my mom so she could use her MP3 player. That little exposure was enough to sell me. Since then I've been eagerly tracking iTunes knockoffs for Linux (Rhythmbox is pretty close if any other Linux users are reading).
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    SnagIt (http://www.techsmith.com) - this is the capture tool I really love. Has beautiful interface, is easy to use, and produces really nice output with minimal work from me.

    Miranda IM (http://www.miranda-im.org) - a really nice replacement for ICQ, MSN and a couple of other IMs.

    MyInfo (http://www.milenix.com) - some sort of free form organizer. Has nice UI, simple to use, looks like another Office app (btw I like MS Office apps interface very much ;))

    WinZip (http://www.winzip.com) - actually I use WinRar, because it handles both most popular file compression formats, but WinZip is a much more beautiful application and should be an example for good UI for many developers.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    I think it's very interesting that most people mentioned smaller utilities than larger applications. I think that underscores how hard it can be to make a complex, feature-rich application truly lovable (which is why I admire the efforts of the Office team as you strive to do so).

    I think Photoshop has come pretty close, but I'll never understand why they decided to create ImageReady as a separate application. Adobe's worst sin, though, has been allowing the same tools to function differently in each of those two applications. That was when I lost my love.

    I do love Final Cut Pro. That's a pretty complex application that's also elegant and a pleasure to use. Maxon's Cinema 4D is another example.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    OneNote. Absolute must have for day-to-day work.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    It's kind of odd to me how I haven't seen any Microsoft applications yet in the 20+ comments...but I will mention at least one Microsoft application:

    I love OneNote. It's not perfect, but it makes it easy to organize all of my client files and it has some great indexing and reporting (action flags) features. It's also one of the few applications that really works well with my Tablet.

    Outside of that, it's all about the great utilities:
    - Hoekey is fantastic for creating universal shortcuts, and it takes up less than 100k of space!
    - GoToMeeting is lightning fast, inexpensive, and much easier for participants to configure than the other products I won't mention here
    - ViceVersaPro keeps my computers in sync with all sorts of nifty customizations
    - Firefox. Fast and lots of great add-ins.

    Some of the others mentioned by peers here are also favorites, like TextPad and SnagIt. However, programs like iTunes and Trillian, which I use all the time, wouldn't be in the same category as the others--they're bloated and resource intensive.

    I remember once-upon-a-time when software was designed for hardware rather than the other way around. When applications are light and fast that makes them that much easier to add into one's regular tools.

    A couple years ago I tried out Microsoft Business Contact Manager for Outlook and ran into all sorts of problems, but the biggest issue was that it installed SQL Server to link everything together. I don't know if that's still what it does, but talk about a CPU killer! I live in Outlook for work but I also run Eudora (12 years now!) for personal email, and it's faster than any iteration of Outlook, both in terms of searching and navigating.

    I'm a huge fan of the way 37signals designs software: less is more. Code it well. Don't try to be everything to everyone.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    One piece of software I fell in love with when I was a student was VNC. The ability to make any computer become any other computer (safely) is fantastic. I use it for work and for fun...

    Also Excel is something I actually enjoy using for work. I code a lot of macro's and the latent power of the software is incredible... The graphing could do with a SERIOUS overhaul which I hope is coming in office 12, but it's cheaper easier and, with my programming, more powerful than the company standard software (Diadem)
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    <a href="http://www.macromates.com/">TextMate</a>, by far the best text editor I've ever used, and <a href="http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/">Quicksilver</a>, and the best whatever it is (brain extension software?) that I've ever used.

    TextMate is the only program I've ever used that felt like it was made by my future brain that already knew what I needed in a text editor (and nothing more!). I can't explain in words how it fits me perfectly like a glove.

    Quicksilver learns from your behavior so quickly it feels like it's reading your mind.

    I miss both whenever I'm working on a Windows&reg; computer at work.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
  1. MindManager - a great brainstorming and idea management tool and the best non-MS Tablet PC app yet (I do love OneNote too).
    2. ActiveWords - automate everything with virtually no UI unless you want or need it.
    3. Anagram - add contacts, appointments, and tasks to Outlook with a single keystroke.
    4. Tablet Enhancements for Outlook - You have no idea how useful Outlook can be on a Tablet PC until you try this elegantly designed and feature-laden add-in.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Access 12!

    But more (or less) seriously, the software I've gotten the most enjoyment out of ever is Blizzard's Warcraft 2 (actually, I'm surprised no one is mentioning games in general). As far as more serious software, any fairly lightweight text editor (even notepad) is something I always love having around, and I also like Trillian (someone said it was bloated and resource intensive, but last time I used just ICQ, it was more resource intensive, so I figured I had a definite savings).
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Mac OS X (Tiger) is a must-have for me. I'm a recent switcher and the whole thing was based on the fact that the mac feels alot more streamlined, for some reason. Tiger + Quicksilver (or Spotlight, but i prefer quicksilver, leaner UI) is an amazing experience. Most Mac OS-software the recent months have been great experiences. the main thing is how programmers treat the user with respect. no spyware and nothing infecting my browser is a refreshing idea. Oh and textmate for the mac. it's love since it's so small and yet so powerful.

    Photoshop is another one of those (I'm mostly used to it on Windows), especially CS, the version before this one. The sheer and raw power, the intuitivity (this is based on the fact that i've used ps for quite a few years) and the general feel of it is love.

    Contrast this with for example Word for Mac. horrible. I've got no beef with Word for Windows, I find it pretty nice, though I guess the ribbon, by the looks of it, will attract me alot more than Word currently is. But Word for Mac is just l'horrible!
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    MacOS X + TextMate (hands down the best editor I seen)

    Windows side is
    VS2005 + Code Express
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Interesting comments so far... I'm learning a lot.

    I agree with Todd that it's noteworthy so many of the entries are utilities so far. I think he might be right in surmising that it's easier to get the design right for a very sharp, constrained tool.

    I know Owen and Chris at least will be happy to see the votes for OneNote. :)
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    I think my #1 is still InfoDepot for the Mac. (I'm slightly biased; I briefly worked for the developer.) Think outline + spreadsheet + mild databases + massive flexibility, scriptability, and just an all-around powerful tool. Back then it could do a LOT of what Project, Outlook and Excel do for MOST users today ... The interface looked simple, but the simplicity hid great power. Since I didn't have anything to do with its code or construction, I've often thought of building a clone of it ... definitely for Mac, possibly for Win ...

    (I still have two legal copies ... one shrinkwrapped; it's my "collectible." LOL.)

    Shortly beneath that is iTunes -- either Mac or PC, your choice. (Although I swear the Win version runs slower than the Mac-native version.)

    Interface Builder on the Mac (and prior, NextStep). (I'm a developer ... And I'm finding the connection-action paradigm beautiful when compared to Win's message pump ... which is itself beautiful next to trying to do ANY decent UI in Java ... )

    I gotta say something Microsoft, since this is a Microsoft blog ... And Visual Studio takes the taco there. If I could Visual Studio's integration, power and flexibility with IB's simplicity, I'd be in 7th heaven. (Too bad there's no Objective C for .NET ... and too bad no official .NET on Mac ... )

    Firefox. Clean, simple, beautiful, fast.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Tools:
    FAR Manager + Colorer + S&R
    Beyond Compare
    XnView

    Big apps:
    Excel
    OneNote
    Firefox + GreaseMonkey

    New kids:
    Microsoft Max :)
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    SnagIt.

    Statbar (statbar.nl) I would love to see an updated version of this.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Favorite software:
    QuickBasic
    What makes it great?
    It always responds intuitively and provides a great debugger. The only downside was its limitations (memory and 16-bit).

    Can software provoke the same sense of "gotta have it" that a tech gadget can?
    Yes, but it has to be useful (as in, I have to need the software's features), easy to use, and friendly to my computer. To get me excited, it has to do something extremely well (features' performance).

    How much does a great user experience factor in to your feelings about a software product?
    It factors in a lot. If it's hard for me to get to something, I keep looking.

    Performance is my only other major criterion. If it responds quickly to tasks that usually take a long time (e.g. file processing), it gets bonus points. :)

    What exemplifies a great software experience for you?
    OneNote, the .NET framework (all versions), and the accompanying versions of VS .NET.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    vi / vim

    I saw it mentioned once before, but I wanted to mention it again. I can't imagine a more efficient way to write code than in vi. The universal availability of at least some version of vi on all unix platforms means it's a tool you only have to learn once (it's also availble for windows, though not quite such a good fit there, unless running cygwin). Then the amazing number of features in newer vi's (i.e., vim), let you manipulate pure text better than any other tool i've ever seen.

    some examples of the potential power in vim include word completion, macros, multiple copy/paste buffers, regular expressions, and a fairly full featured scripting language. also, the easy integration with the full tool set available on a unix system (i.e., :%! sort | uniq) makes anything that vi can't do easily itself easy to do using outside tools.

    also, the biggest thing for me is never having to take my hands off the home row on my keyboard (i.e., no mouse). using "hjkl" for basic movement means you don't even have to move over to the arrow keys! perhaps for people without natural keyboards it's nice to have to spend half your day reaching for your mouse, but with a nice split board, it's a pleasure.

    obviously it's not a tool for everyone (big learning curve, doesn't immediatly lend itself to "documents"), but for me, it's the best thing ever, and i'm glad i get to spend 8 hours a day in it.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Remote Desktop
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Pegasus Mail. Because it is slicker and feels less bloated than any other mail application I've used. I have an archive with over 9000 mail messages and Pegasus loads and sorts the list in a couple of seconds.

    WinAmp. Because it puts the playlist in the center of the application and not hard to find like WMP.

    Other previous loves include:
    Norton Commander - I'm still not sure Windows' Explorer has caught up.
    Delphi - Made Win32 programming fun.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    As far as text editors go, I'm a huge fan of Crimson Editor. It has support for syntax coloring of more than 100 file formats, and it's real easy to make your own coloring specifications. Throw in fast loading, large file support, and column editing, and you have a real winner.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Visual Studio. I can't live without it.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Opera. It is the only painless browser -- it is as though it and I are in a mind-meld. Firefox feels very clunky compared to it, and IE isn't even in the running. I wave and Opera does. Fast-forwarding through images and "Next" links is brilliant. Switching on Fit-to-Window-Width or disabling styles reduces aggravation. Full page zoom -- so easy, so convenient. Password management is perfect -- remembered login forms get a golden halo that is deliciously attractive on any colour scheme, and you either Ctrl+Enter or wave forward or hit the toolbar button to continue.

    Oh, and Opera's non-destructive toolbar customization may be of interest to Office. Dragging copies instead of moving, and dropping half-way does not delete the original. To actually remove something, you have to right-click on it and choose Delete Button. This is probably the most newbie friendly approach.

    Also of note is Total Annihilation, a game that lets me to general my armies instead of sergeanting them. Queues are easy and powerful, and troops behave intelligently. They start firing when in range and obey lists of attack precedence. You can give orders far in advance and then do other things while those are carried out.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Xara X, Opera...
    Both very fast, small, cool and useful.
    Opera also very customizable, while still very small in size.
    FAR Manager - robust, fast, customizable... also I considered it as cool. :)
    MS Office 12 beta - I tried it. It has HUGE usability improvement, so it will be useful when released.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    My savior is Ghost and I really don’t know how anyone lives without it. But! What amazes me even more is the fact that no windows has/had this backup utility built in.
    I don’t mean to backup the some files I mean to do as Ghost does. But, then you are probably frightened of pirates again. So, we have to buy another program to do what I believe should be in the Windows anyway.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    The original Cool Edit. Well, I think it was Cool Edit 95 I started on. I could just fly on editing with that thing. I've kept upgrading even after Adobe acquired it (all the way to Adobe Audition 2, which just came out!) and I love the new versions too, but still, there's something about that app that compelled me to edit faster. Probably like people say--it was relatively simple then, and the latest version of Audition can do about 10x as much.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    The only two programs I can't live without are:

    CLCL ( http://www.nakka.com/soft/clcl/index_eng.html )
    which is a clipboard enhancement - saves multiple items on the clipboard, but not in the annoying way that Office 2003 did it. ctrl-c, x and v work normally, until you want to paste an older cut, then just hit a slightly different combination (ctrl-shift-v for me) and a menu of the last 50 or so clipboard entries is shown. up/down to select, then enter to paste in place. Harder to explain than to use :). It also persists the clipboard.

    Synergy ( http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/ )
    Works on pretty much all platforms, and allows you to use your mouse and keyboard on multiple computers at once. Once you use this, you'll NEVER figure out how to live without it. I have three PCs (one is a laptop) at home, and I use this on all of them.

    Oh, and strokeIt (mentioned above) is great too, although I only really use it for back and forward in editors and firefox.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    The most innovative product, in the productivity suite area, was without any doubt VisiCalc - the first spreadsheet. For every other productivty program you can find a similar way of doing in the non-computer world. However, the spreadsheet idea is a totally new, electronic only, way of increasing your productivity. There is no equivalence in the non-computer world, still it is widely adopted by novice and advanced users.
    Excel has brought the spreadsheet concept to great sophistication and ease of use, but the credit for this revolutionizing idea goes to the original VisiCalc team.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    I've gotta join the crowd and say that Firefox rocks. I particularly love extensions - the ability for the user community to change the way that the app works. I also can't do without tabbed browsing, expecially how you can middle-click a link to open it in a new tab.

    I'm a pretty serious developer, so Visual Studio 2003 and 2005 rate highly on my list. 2003 is good, but there are a number of bugs that irritate me. 2005 is better in a number of ways, especially for editing XSL documents, but I think that the new find/replace dialog is a BIG step back from the one in 2003.

    I also love Paint Shop Pro for its bitmap editing abilities. I can do anything I like with it, and fast. I'm trying to teach myself Photoshop, but it's a bit of a learning curve. One thing that I don't like though are the vector editing tools. Definitely not intuitive. The text tools are the worst. One tool to edit text, another to move it and change its colour. And you've gotta click on one of the letters to make either tool work - miss, and you've gotta go back and try again.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    HomeSite. It's a little buggy, but I've been using various versions of HomeSite since 1997, and I love it. The best HTML and text editor I've ever used, bar none. Between being able to map keys to tags, the explorer window at the side of the page for easy drag-and-drop linking, and the templating, as well as so much other stuff...I love it. I do all of my writing in it, because most of my writing comes out as HTML eventually anyway, and if I write in Word I have to manually go back and add tags.

    Unfortunately, it's no longer being developed, which is sad. But the thing I like best about HomeSite is that it does just what I need it to do, and otherwise just stays out of my way!
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    I have two I'll mention:

    Alias Sketchbook Pro 2.0 (there's a free download). The UI is incredible ... wonderfully elegant and a joy to use. What's great about it is how over time, normal use of the menus/options become gestures that you naturally just learn. I've never seen a UI that moves you down the path of UI-power-usage so persuasively as Sketchbook Pro.

    Also, I'll second the nomintion for M.U.L.E for the commodore 64 and Atari 800 (there's a bunch of emulators to play it today). There are so many unique folds to it, like the Gambling room that encouraged players to end their turn as quickly as possible. Every aspect of it was really thought out well.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Quicksilver. Someone's already posted a description of it, but it's the way keyboard interfaces should be.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Quicksilver (MAC) is the most amazing piece of software that I've used. I don't mind using my Windows machine at work, but I miss Quicksilver every single day.

    Excel (WIN) is my favorite large software program. It's a fantastic tool that is incredibly efficient. I love it as is - I can't wait to see how good it gets in the next release.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
  • TextMate, editor that is fast to code with
    - Transmit, Really the most intuitive ftp-browser, although it lacks some features
    - Xbox Media Center, the only media center there is. It does it all, and perfect.
    - And, well, I could say Photoshop but I think I'll go with "Mac OS X". I always was a Windows user but OS X makes me happy. I enjoy working again, and I guess it's the most important thing of all.

    I'm looking forward to Office 12. It looks like I'm gonna enjoy working with Office much more. Hopefully it comes for OS X soon and make my environment complete.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    My personal favorite is Microsoft Money 95. It has a very slick, intuitive navigational interface, and a manageble number of places/forms, and the things it does it does very well indeed. Especially the reporting interface is stellar.

    However, after that 95 version the program got destroyed and has exploded into an awful mess of pages and places out of comprehension, and mutated into some sort of bad web browser.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    There's a lot of different software listed here already.

    Remote Desktop/VMWare/Virtual PC are things I didn't think about when writing this topic, but I have to agree they've very nearly changed the way I work more than anything. Working in the software business, I guess that's not surprising.

    I remember back when I was working on Mac software, we had to use Virtual PC in order to run the Microsoft bug tracking software. That was a lifesaver for never needing to leave the Mac environment.

    Then, Connectix announced Virtual PC for... PC and I remember thinking "what in the world would that be for?" Whoops, short-sighted thinking on my part.

    Remote Desktop is a huge part of how we get work done at Microsoft, so that saves me hours a week.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Asides from a lot of the already mentioned stuff (OneNote I love you too), the one really stand out piece of software I have is the TabletPC Snipping Tool.

    Simplicity and Perfection in one tiny package.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
  • Trillian
    - FireFox
    - Office 12

    Trillian:
    I love instant messaging and have at least 8 screennames on different services. Trillian is just great in integrating them in one interface.

    FireFox:
    Tabbed browsing, fast, extendable, easy to use UI.

    Office 12:
    This might sound cheesy...I read about Office 12 and it's new UI in a slashdot post. Then I watched a 45 mins video of someone at MS showing off the new UI and explaining the rationale behind it. The geek in me was totally hooked. When I got into the beta program, I was very excited. When I got beta 1, you couldn't get me away from computer for a very long time. The new interface totally fascinated me and got me hooked (new features in the programs with the new UI and OneNote 12 got me even hooked more after that). I've totally switched to Office 12 Beta 1, and only will use 2003 if I really can't do something in beta 1 due to a bug.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Chalk up one for M.U.L.E. on the C64 for me too. I have burned countless hours playing it with friends. It continues to whittle time away from my life, thank you VICE :-)

    My favorite software of all time has to be the Commodore 128 OS (Made by Microsoft). You had a BASIC interpreter, operating system, disk utilities, sprite editor, assembler, and more and yet it took so little time to start up. The BASIC language was so much better than the C64's (PLAY "A" as opposed to some 12 lines of PEEK's and POKE's). Truly an innovative OS for its time.

    For modern utilities, I swear by both TextPad and EditPlus. TextPad for its ease of working with huge files and regular expression engine, EditPlus for its built in FTP capability and superior syntax highlighting. YMMV on those.

    Then there's Cygwin. It is the first thing to get installed for me on any new install.

    The IE team's DevToolBar has also become a can't live without item, has already helped so many times. Thanks IE team!
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    WinMerge. Definitely.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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    February 01, 2006
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    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Jensen,
    Dang, the heart image in your post makes it look like I'm shopping online for a V'day gift in the office!
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    My favorite was Adobe Atmosphere ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Atmosphere ). It was both fun and useful – useful to me at least; Adobe certainly didn't think so when they discontinued the software. Atmosphere was a very immersive 3D platform, and it had a great user community to boot. Those two reasons made the program a joy to use.

    I think the main reason the Atmosphere viewer was so immersive was that, by default, it had hardly any UI, but it still offered lots of handy controls that stayed out of your way. It sounds like that's what you're trying to do with Office 12.

    Also, the program itself wasn't extensible at all, but the platform was very flexible, so you could be very creative with the content you created.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Phylyp,

    Maybe you should take this opportunity to get that special Valentine's gift as long as everyone thinks you're shopping anyway! :)
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Total Commander (with plugins) - The shell

    Winamp (skins/plugins) - smartest and most polished media player

    Trillian - one (fully-featured) client to rule them all

    VLC - no need to mess with codecs, lots of options, ui could be improved

    Firefox (with plugins) - clean simple standards-compliant browser, everything customizable with plugins

    Winrar - best general purpose archiver, clean smart ui, takes care of all the details
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    I love Winamp and Visual Studio 2005, because they're powerful, extremely customizable, and I can make them work exactly the way I want them, not the way the designers did. They're both chock-full of options... more options than I'll ever learn... and I love that. I can completely rearrange the UI. I can get rid of buttons I don't ever want to see (cough ribbon cough). Windows Media Player and iTunes don't even come close to Winamp in features, and Winamp doesn't get in my way like those other players do. Visual Studio's competitors are so far behind in ways that I care about that they're hardly competitors. Word 2003 and Outlook 12 are not far behind.

    You didn't ask what I hate, but I hate Photoshop. It's offensively cocky—I feel like it's telling me to "learn to do it my way, #$#%&." Corel Photo-Paint has a far better UI in most areas; if only it had the features and stability of Photoshop. And, of course I hate Lotus Notes, but everyone hates Lotus Notes...
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    I can't believe no one has mentioned ACDSEE, well - atleast version 3, before it got filled with bloated features.

    I second WinAmp.

    I love Video Lan Client.

    I miss the Amiga shell.

    Loving large software applications is hard. You can love features of an application, but loving the entire package is harder.

    Just like the wife. ;-)
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Work:

    Outlook 12. I work in Outlook all day, every day. I love the new Outlook. It's highly addictive.

    Remote Desktop. It makes life easier...

    Microsoft Office Picture Manager.

    Clue electronic dictionaries. Yep...

    At home:

    Xbox 360 Media Center
    Ulead PhotoImpact
    World of Warcraft
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    My favourites and it must be a list thing, are Excel and iTunes (although iTunes is bloaty underneath, but the UI is near perfect)

    Also one little app called 010 Editor, which lets me look into files, useful for when you are trying to figure out how Exif files are built, as I had to recently

    Jensen I think you next questions should be "what software do you hate, and why", or "what features really bug you". Sometimes it is just a little thing that takes a shine of a program.
    For example, I have to use Lotus Notes but one stupidly annoying feature, is I can't copy paste into the search bar. So if I have been sent a cryptic id string in an email, I have to manually copy it. (I use right key click for copy paste,keycodes may work).
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Excel (pre 12), Visual Basic 6.0, Windows Explorer, WinZip and Snagit.

    I love them for the same reason - they've all hit the sweet spot between powerful, focused functionality and ease of use.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    FAR Manager - fast, no fancy icons, get the job done
    PaintShop Pro 6.00 - fast
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    I love Visual Studio 6 (c++), I live in it. newer versions 2003> are getting a bit hard to love due to the size of feature set and the bugs. I might see how I get on with the "mini me" versions.

    After being forced to use Lotus Notes I'm starting to remember what a joy of simplicity Outlook was - probably because all I want of an email client is threading/mail preview and a little calendaring.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    I can't live without SnagIt from TechSmith. If you're a developer and from time to time have to create documention (yes - some actually do that), then you must buy this product. Capture any thing, objects, regions, menus etc. with a snap. And the new version 8 has even more features.
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2006
    Already mentioned:

    Quicksilver & Gmail

    Also:

    Flickr - I learn more about it the more I use it and I love being able to get to my photos from anywhere with a decent Internet connection. I also love using it to find amazing photos from other people!

    NewNewsWire - Mac RSS reader that does all it should do and nothing more. For Windows, see FeedDemon.

    Borland Delphi 1 & 2 - My introduction to Windows programming. Amazingly well-thought out and everything about it just felt right. Later versions lost their focus, although v5 was pretty good.

    BAMZOOKi Zook Kit - Why should children have fun software to themselves? See http://www.johntopley.com/archive/2004/08/21/
  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2006
    Can't live without Dave's Quick Search Deskbar (http://www.dqsd.net/). Lets me run a google search before you have even finished reaching for your mouse to launch IE. Or look up a word in Merriam-Webster's. Or... Just try it !
  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2006
    Bryce

    OK so it turns out you can make 3D images of any landscape as long as it is of the moon or Mars with trees, the user interface is a mess (Jensen could probably write a book about all the things that are wrong with it) and it doesn't play nice with other 3D applications.

    I love it anyway. Turning that final render into your custom wallpaper is so very satisfying. The UI makes it easy to do the common tasks (but hard to do the advanced stuff).
  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2006
    I like small utilities that do things on the click, that means "no questions asked" kind of behavior. I have a google toolbar. I opted out of showing text right next to it. Each button's function is now just a click away (feels nice).

    If something is really simple and useful that I am always using it, a shortcut key is more than necessary.

    Design, colors, look? It should be cool to the extent that I "look into it." Doing anything further is just useless.

    A program should be welcoming. I tried using photoshop just to learn it. I did not know where to start, or how to start. So I use fireworks. Starting is just a click a way.

    Lastly, if a program loads up slowly, it will be dreaded. example: Adobe Reader 6.0 and almost Reader 7.0.
  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2006
    I like Creative Docs .NET, it is full of amazing ideas... You can check it out (the soft seems to be free) here:

    http://www.creativedocs.net/
  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2006
    Corel PhotoPaint 6 - I do alot of pixel art of computer games, and this is the best program I've ever found for that. Even though it is an ancient program, I still continue to use it because it's simple and easy. Newer paint programs are much too complicated and poorly organized. Color selection in Corel PhotoPaint 6 is so much easier to use than the nutty color wheels/triangles in newer programs; controlling brush size, transparency, and anti-aliasing is easier; and dealing with masks and objects is so much more intuitive to me.

    Enterprise Architect - A wonderful UML design tool. Reasonably priced (compared to Rational Rose), powerful, easy-to-use. Also runs on both Windows and Linux. A big plus, since I write games for multiple platforms.

    MS Project - I use this for program schedules, but I only use about 5% of it. I hope this gets the new ribbon interface soon - I'm sure I could do better with it if I knew more.

    Firefox - I like the RSS functionality that comes with the Sage plugin. Having RSS integrated into the web browser feels very natural. I also like that it runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac - so I can use the same program no matter what platform I happen to be working on any given day.

    Art Icons Pro - Great shareware program for creating icons. Cheap, powerful, easy to use.

    Rational Purify - Great program, but so insanely expensive. I sure wish there was a cheaper alternative. I've found other cheaper programs that detect memory leaks, but what I really need is a program to detect memory read/write errors (for those hard-to-find bugs), and Purify is one of the best. Too bad it is so expensive. That hurts little startup businesses like mine.

    Creative WaveStudio - great program for editing and recording wav files. I use it for game music and sound effects. Too bad it only comes with Creative sound cards, but that's ok since I only use Creative sound cards.
  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2006
    Sim City
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    February 02, 2006
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    February 02, 2006
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    February 02, 2006
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    February 02, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2006
    outlook express for nntp
  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2006
    I second Homesite as a great piece of software. I really love the find and replace feature - you can find and replace blocks of text across multiple files. Something like that would be very useful in other environments. In general I found Homesite has features laid out so that they're there if I need them, but they don't "intrude" on my work the way other programs do.

    I can't live without the google toolbar.
  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2006
    I love the Xbox 360 dashboard...
  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2006
    I would add a vote to Total Commander.
    Also Compare It! (http://www.grigsoft.com/) rocks for files comparison
  • Anonymous
    February 03, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 03, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 03, 2006
    I use a Tablet PC so...

    OneNote - Ink or type. I store info about everything, work or personal, in there. The integration w/ Outlook is a big plus.

    MindManager - again, Ink or type. Excellent for brainstorming or meeting notes.

    Firefox (w/ TIP plugin) - fast, lots of useful plugins
  • Anonymous
    February 03, 2006
    I like the ion3 Window manager (http://modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~tuomov/ion/) because a tiled window manager is very nice if you have a big screen, and it's also very minimal and has no useless eye candy at all.
  • Anonymous
    February 03, 2006
    WordPerfect, hands down. WordPerfect 5.1 was probably the only application that I used my first year or two of computing (besides games.) Still miss the "Reveal Codes" feature. I still have most of the function key commands memorized. Sure miss ol' WP.
  • Anonymous
    February 04, 2006
    OneNote, hands down. Not only because it's something I use every day (I'm in the consulting business, and every single note I take or diagram I draw with customers goes into OneNote), but because I admire the creativity that went into it, and that creativity makes my work fun and more productive. Fun rules, I enjoy using OneNote.

    I was in the original beta program for OneNote, and I'm in this one too. And already using OneNote 12 for everthing no 3 daily-use systems (no more OneNote 2003). It rocks, and again I admire the creativity and hard work the OneNote team put into it.

    Now we need another drop of the Beta - and I don't see why there wasn't a CTP program for Office 12 as a whole. Pls send a new build out asap!!
  • Anonymous
    February 04, 2006
    You won´t believe it. I love MS Office, MS Windows (especially this new one Vista, and every kind of other MS product).

    But there is one product I love even more:
    Apple´s OS. This is really stunning.

    And I really like the SAP products. I pitty that MS could not merge with them...

    Best regards,

    Bill
  • Anonymous
    February 04, 2006
    If I have to pick only one I would decide on the Maxthon browser, especially because of the great mouse gesture, the advanced search and super drag&drop functionalities. Saves me a lot of time every day and increased my productivity very much (for example, when doing research).

    Other tools I daily use are Outlook, OneNote, or MindManager.
  • Anonymous
    February 04, 2006
    PingBack from http://www.technotheory.com/2006/02/the-best-software-could-microsoft-office-be-a-contender/
  • Anonymous
    February 04, 2006
    Entourage. The only completely MacBU - created application, and it rocks. The Exchange additions took a while to come up to par, but the UI is great, the layout fantastic, and it's highly scriptable without allowing for all the infection vectors that Outlook had so many problems with.

    Safari. If they ever add in the intelligent bookmark autofill that IE 5 on the mac had, it'll be perfect.

    iChat.

    BBEdit.
  • Anonymous
    February 05, 2006
    Capture One from Phase One - it absolutely changed my way of working with my DSLR pictures and I can't think up ways to make it better.

    Other than that I like VS2005, but thats just my day to day work...
  • Anonymous
    February 05, 2006
    another vote for WordPerfect "Reveal Codes"
  • Anonymous
    February 05, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 06, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 06, 2006
    The Office for Macintosh suite on Mac OS X is great.  The Mac-like look-and-feel and added polish makes it even better.  Can't wait to see what MacBU is up to next!
  • Anonymous
    February 06, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 06, 2006
    ... committed the sin of ommission...

    When I posted above, I forgot the app I absolutely love and use most: Opera !
  • Anonymous
    February 07, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 07, 2006
    A few votes for things that have already been mentioned.

    Xara X. Very fast, minimalist and extremely powerful (although there are some things I would like it to do that it doesn't). Oh, and hello to Tim Browse - a name I recall from the Acorn days!

    I also like VS2005. It seems to do what I want, when I want and organises information much better than previous versions.

    iTunes is (yet) another application that does things the way I want, without going over the top.

    Composition on Risc OS is a great hybrid application as is the OS in many ways. I miss some of the features even today.

    Google maps and earth, because they are so much fun.

    That's probably enough for now. Otherwise I'll end up listing all my software.
  • Anonymous
    February 07, 2006
    Lots of text editors and general purpose tools but few vertical apps mentioned here. There are quite a few really great applications in the AEC CAD field in which I work, but my favorites are:

    SketchUp http://www.sketchup.com which is a fabulous tool for 3D model building, really intuative, easy to use and created by a bunch of guys who really give the impression that they enjoy what they do :)

    Another super tool is NavisWorks http://www.navisworks.com which allows you to combine multiple 3D models from a wide range of different applications. Once combined you can walk and fly through the model, detect and highlight clashes between elements, create movies, and a whole lot more. It's bindingly fast and the interface is very well thought out.

    Brendan
  • Anonymous
    February 08, 2006
    PingBack from http://usabilityblog.dk/?p=15
  • Anonymous
    February 09, 2006
    Magic happens when you can make software perform a task virtually the moment you are able to formulate it. That is naturally easier with small software that you know thoroughly. Such 'great user experiences' I accomplished with TextPad and Total Commander (highly customised). They deserve to be mentioned again.

    Excel 2000 (+VBA) is really great too. But it took me years to fully master it. I hope MS Office 12 is on the right road here.

    I do avoid 'attractive visuals'. Most Media Players are plain annoying, so I embrace 'Media Player Classic'.

    NERO 6 is the only software I have that features Wizards (Nero BackItUp and NeroVision Express). NERO's implementation of Wizards is fully satisfactory.

    And Windows XP Pro has never failed me, although it needs a multi-threading PC to perform and I use none of the 'Applications' it ships with.
  • Anonymous
    February 16, 2006
    Firefox
    WordPress
    RSS Bandit
    Notepad++
  • Anonymous
    February 16, 2006
    digiKam
    amaroK
    Ditto Paul Bennett's comment about WP's show codes.  You could even edit them in the show window, and get rid of 'bad' codes.
  • Anonymous
    February 17, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    February 20, 2006
    Among the many many programs I use my favourites:

    Excel - I literally couldn't survive without it. I use it for modifying data, analisis, charting, development, everything.

    Awazu - an excellent rss reader

    Opera - been a fan for years

    Visual Studio

    Google earth - its not often a program impresses me

    Virtual PC/Vmware - they're both highly recomendable.

  • Anonymous
    March 14, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    March 14, 2006
    Seems like I'm not the only one who thinks SketchUp is pretty neat (see my comment above on February 08, 2006)

    Google liked it so much, they bought the company :)
  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2006
  1. Not an application really, but a Unix shell combined with the most common utilities helps me so much in everyday work.

    2. Emacs.