My digital life

[Joeri]

I'm always looking into new software and tools to make my work and play on my devices more efficient and smarter. This is a list of most of the things I currently use. If you reply with your list we could learn from each other!

Let me first give you a small profile of what I use my pc for:
I am a university student doing a lot of word processing, graphical editing, engineering analysis and 3d modeling.

Operating system & computer:
I am currently using Windows 7 64bit on a HP 8540w laptop. This thing has a i7, 12gb RAM, a SSD for the system and an HDD for files. It has a shitty battery life (2h) but its fast and powerful.
I've been looking into buying an Mac book pro but my current workflow is tailored to windows so switching would mean that I have to adapt a lot.

Word processing
For schoolwork I'm using Microsoft Office 2010 Word since its easy to use and I need the spell check. For tables and graphs I use Excel and for presentations I use Powerpoint.

For reports I use Adobe Indesign since it has advanced layout tools and very nice ways to update changed text from imported files in the links panel.

Browser
Once firefox got bloated and slow a few years ago I switched to Chrome. Its fast the UI is minimal. I have my most visited websites on the new tab page and the rest on the bookmarks bar without a title so just the icon is visible.


The vital extensions I use are Checker plus for gmail since you can preview and archive emails without opening the website. I also use Adblock, fancytube for auto 720p on youtube, socialfixer to fix timeline on facebook, hooverzoom to preview images on various websites and autocomplete=on for website that block the saving off passwords for some silly reason (like blackboard does).

Graphical editing
For pixel based work (cutting/pasting, removing parts from photo's, fixing errors or artifacts I use Adobe Photoshop CS6 since it has nice history and snapshot features and the tools are understandable to use.
For vector based work (lines and stuff) I use Adobe Illustrator because using shapes in Photoshop is like using paint.

For taking quick screen-grabs from various documents and website I use the windows snipping tool for which I have created a shortcut and bound that to control + F12 for easy access.

To quickly upload screen-grabs to imgur I use their tool called Hyperdesktop. I mainly use this for irc and the forum to explain stuff. control+shift+4 is bound to its selection tool, you select a region, add lines or markings and its uploads to imgur, after that its automaticly copies the weblink to your clipboard. I made and uploaded this screen-grab in 3 seconds.

3D modeling
I study Industrial Design Engineering. To build models for my designs and test their structural properties I use Solidworks. It is fairly easy to use once you understand its principles. It is also simple to make assemblies of tens of parts and simulating forces resulting in stress, strain, deflection and wear on a product is useable aswell.

To render models I use Keyshot. Its much easier to use then Photoworks and the renders look more natural if you use keyshot's materials.

Remote desktop
To help out my family and friends with their pc troubles I use teamviewer. Downloading a small file on their client and forwarding 2 numbers is enough to take over their screen without a hassle.

File sharing
Because I work a lot in project groups its vital for a tool to share files back and forth. Dropbox is the best service for the job, you can invite an infinite amount of people into a folder, files are updated instantly uploaded and updated, it stores the previous 30 versions of every file and its even possible to run multiple boxes on one pc! I have one 'main' one, one as a temp folder for big photoshop files and one with backups. I currently have 12gb of storage for participating in various contests and beta tests. Be quick to complete this year's dropquest! 1gb free storage on completion. Signup here.

Media
I have an iPhone and therefor use iTunes as main music player, I also listen to some podcasts from there. I experience no lag in itunes on my laptop.

I use Media Player Classic to play video's of various formats. It beats VLC in speed and you can toggle subtitles while playing with W.

Mounting images
I use Virtual Clone Drive to mount disk images, I like how it integrates with the system, just double click to mount and eject from explorer to unmount. No useless empty drives if nothing is loaded.


I think these are the things I use the most, I'll update it if I've forgotten something vital.

What is on your list!

[Tuism]

System: Windows XP

Browsing: Opera

Computer Graphics:
-Blender 3D
-Photoshop
-After Effects

School:
-Microsoft word 2007
-Foxit PDF editor

Media Players:
-VLC for movies
-Jet Audio for music

That's about it.

[Dust]

CCleaner, PowerISO, PS3 Media Server there are some of my favourite software programs that I use quite often.

I'm on a i5 Intel processor, with the ASUS sabertooth motherboard. I play alot of Battlefield 3 and I've recently won a Nvidia Asus GTX 680 card which I'm still getting used to. (drivers for the gtx 680 is not 'tip top' at the moment).

I use Photoshop CS3 for image editing, recently switched over to the somewhat newer CS5.1 Extended. I like it alot.

I got all my TV/movies on external 2TB HDDs and the OS + BF3 on a 128GB SSD.

Currently got 8 GB of RAM and the OEM Win 7 home 64Bit OS.

I use chrome with adsweeper + adblock + adblock plus. <- BIG TIP, it's awesome.

[Danny]

Unfortunately I only just formatted my PC two weeks ago, just before I went away for a week. So I haven't had too much time to get a lot of my old software back. Off the top of my head, stuff I use or used to use consist of:

System
I have a Windows 7 PC, 32bit. Only 2GB of RAM but I've been meaning to upgrade for a while. AMD Athlon II X2 3.0GHz. Primary HDD Maxtor 150GB, IDE, and a SATA Western Digital 1TB.

Not the best computer in the world but it does me fine.

Browser
Google Chrome. It's the fastest and has a better system for it's memory usage (imo). Also use AdBlock Plus to remove ads (and speed up page loading times) and TurnOffTheLights to dim YouTube pages backgrounds.

Antivirus
Don't currently have one installed, but when I get around to it I'll get ESET Nod32. Works well for me, never had any false alarms and almost always gets the job done. I'll also install Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, and ESET Online Scanner. I also keep a copy of Kaspersky 'TDSSKiller.exe' since I had that virus twice in the last two months.

Graphics
Only Photoshop CS6 on this one. Plan on getting Cinema 4D soon and learning to do some 3D modelling.

Office software
I have the whole suite of Microsoft Office 2007 but only really use Word, and on rare occasions Excel. It's not too slow when used on it's own, but I have to close it when I want to do anything else.

Media player
I just use Windows Media Player, but I have this 'Media Player Codec Pack' which allows me to watch files in formats such as MKV.

Mounting Images
PowerISO. Fast, easy to use, can both browse image files and mount them to virtual drives. Nothing bad to say about it.

Video Editing
I use Sony Vegas Pro 12 for most of my video editing, but also use Adobe After Effects CS4 for, well, effects. Also, I hear Photoshop CS6 has some kind of video editing function, might check that out.

Remote Desktop
Only one I really use is PuTTy, a command-line based linux tool. Only use it to control my Minecraft server. But I have TeamViewer 4 for accessing friends or families computers and TightVNC to access... well, nothing specific, but it can be useful at times.

File Sharing
I tend to upload all my files to Mediafire, and Images to Photobucket or deviantArt. uTorrent is my torrent client of choice.

Music
I use Spotify for listening to music. Supposedly there's a cap on how many minutes/hours of music you can listen to in a month with the free version, but I've never hit it.

Screen Recording
I've forgotten the name of this awesome screen capture software I use, because it's not installed atm. If I remember it I'll post it later. For most game recording I use Fraps, although I've started to favour DXTory in games using Directx because it doesn't cause any lag.

Auto-Shutdown
I sometimes like to make use of the time I'm away from my PC to maybe download something, or upload a video, or whatever. When it's done, I want to make sure it turns off. Best program I've found was made by our very own iou, and it's called iou-timer. Forum post

[SolidRock]

Audacity for editting audio. It's free and very easy to use.

[Fuse]

[cake]

Let me first apologize for the spell errors you will find in the next few lines :7

System
I currently own a Chromebook (Samsung Series 5) and an old PC running Windows 7 Ultimate (pirated ofc). For everyday use, the Chromebook does a fine ass job. Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar are the main three web services I use since a couple of years, which makes the Chromebook the perfect laptop for me to use at home and university. Current extensions: Ad Block, Ad Block Plus, Do Not Track Plus, Disconnect, Edit this Cookie, Ghostery, Smartr Inbox for Gmail, Turn off the lights. On the PC, I use Chrome, VLC Media Player, CCleaner, Vuze, Microsoft Office 2007 (pirated), FileZilla and Notepad++ (I am into webdesign).

Mobile devices
I am a tech guy, and I am into mobile devices a lot. I've owned a lot of different devices, and I got used to a lot of different systems. iOS, Android, Windows Phone etc. Every device I owned got hacked/jailbroken/cracked till the max. It's a sport for me to pay as less as possible for everything. I never buy any apps, the system is always up to date for the latest features and it's my goal to keep it the device fast, minimalistic and simple.

Recently I sold my smartphone for a dumbphone, I was sick of the bullshit battery running out every day. I bought a Samsung Xcover 271, which fits me perfectly (I can open my beer with it btw). Still, I can use Whatsapp because I also own an iPod 2G.

WWW privacy
Since a couple of months ago, I got aware of my privacy on the internet. Since then I use a shitload of extensions to keep things private, as well as a few modifications to my online behaviour. Facebook is completely locked down for outside users (even my profile pic only shows my back, I've had nasty experiences where people would miss-use my profile pic), I use a few email accounts to keep stuff organized and I try to close/delete as many accounts I can on websites I don't use anymore.

Everything I have, is stored by Google: documents, music, email, calendar, contacts etc. I keep a close eye on everything Google relates me to (this includes looking up my own name, checking Google Dashboard for used products), and I try to keep everything organized, cleaned up and private.

On a side note, Facebook f*cking sucks and tries to clutter up my news feed as much as possible. I fight back by ignoring posts from idiots, block almost every app people use, block game invites, block dumb asses. My Facebook feed is clean and organized. It shows posts from people I like, and who use their PC/mobile browser to post something, not some dumbass app. Ads are blocked by above mentioned extensions, I turned off all the mail notifications and all my privacy/account settings are up to date and well set. I keep a close eye on my security settings to check where I am logged in, or which devices are being used for Facebook. Now I can just use FB as it should be used, like back in the days.

Explanation of extension/program usage
Privacy: Ad Block, Ad Block Plus, Do Not Track Plus, Disconnect, Ghostery. Speaks for itself.
Contacts: Smartr Inbox for Gmail connects my Facebook, LinkedIn and Gmail together and syncs all my contacts and associated users to the cloud and my iPod. It's awesome.