What software do you use/find indispensable?

[Postbib Yeshuist]

OK, I'm on a Mac, so I'm really just interested in Apple software, but I didn't want to deprive you PeeCee's from offering your own insights (plus, a lot of software is cross-platform).

So, here are the "rules"...

1. What's your degree "level" (i.e. masters, doctoral, etc)

2. What do you use the software for (be as brief as you want)

3. Free or $? ("$" < $30, "$$" <$50, "$$$" > $50)

4. Heard of anything cool that you haven't tried yet?

Software I use (Advanced Masters, soon to be doctoral)

The usual (MS Office, iWorks '08) plus...

Bookends- Citation software for Mac ($$)

Evernote- note organizer, stored online (cross-platform) (Free)

MacJournal- Mac journalling software (for notes, etc) ($)

Mellel- Word processor (Mac, handles large documents (i.e. 60,70+ pages) better than Word/Pages) ($)

Omnifocus- Mac task organizer ($$)

Papers- PDF organizer for Mac ($$)

Scrivener- Word processor with a creative system for arranging papers & thoughts ($$)

World of Warcraft- (How else would I keep my sanity?)

I'm interested in DEVONthink, but at a going price of $60, I'm waiting for a Macheist to get me the hookup.

I'm also interested in something that's tailor-made for research notes, etc (especially at the dissertation level)

Edited March 7, 2010 by Postbib Yeshuist

[Roll Right]

OK, I'm on a Mac, so I'm really just interested in Apple software, but I didn't want to deprive you PeeCee's from offering your own insights (plus, a lot of software is cross-platform).

So, here are the "rules"...

1. What's your degree "level" (i.e. masters, doctoral, etc)

2. What do you use the software for (be as brief as you want)

3. Free or $? ("$" < $30, "$$" <$50, "$$$" > $50)

4. Heard of anything cool that you haven't tried yet?

Software I use (Advanced Masters, soon to be doctoral)

The usual (MS Office, iWorks '08) plus...

Bookends- Citation software for Mac ($$)

Evernote- note organizer, stored online (cross-platform) (Free)

MacJournal- Mac journalling software (for notes, etc) ($)

Mellel- Word processor (Mac, handles large documents (i.e. 60,70+ pages) better than Word/Pages) ($)

Omnifocus- Mac task organizer ($$)

Papers- PDF organizer for Mac ($$)

Scrivener- Word processor with a creative system for arranging papers & thoughts ($$)

World of Warcraft- (How else would I keep my sanity?)

I'm interested in DEVONthink, but at a going price of $60, I'm waiting for a Macheist to get me the hookup.

I'm also interested in something that's tailor-made for research notes, etc (especially at the dissertation level)

Masters Degree.

I use:

SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). Very expensive. It can be up to 500 dollars.

Microsoft Excel. Not too expensive, comes with microsoft office.

Microsoft Word.

Microsoft Access

Nvivo (qualitative data analysis program). Not sure on the costs, my department bought it.

Microsoft Powerpoint. Great for presentations.

[liszt85]

Masters Degree.

I use:

SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). Very expensive. It can be up to 500 dollars.

Microsoft Excel. Not too expensive, comes with microsoft office.

Microsoft Word.

Microsoft Access

Nvivo (qualitative data analysis program). Not sure on the costs, my department bought it.

Microsoft Powerpoint. Great for presentations.

PhD. On Windows 7.

1. MATLAB (for modeling purposes mostly, also use for plotting stuff)

2. SAS (statistical s/w used for frequentist statistics: ANOVA, etc)

3. R (free)

4. WinBUGS (free) (for Bayesian Modeling, will also start using R2winBUGS and MatBUGS to interface this with R and MATLAB respectively)

5. OpenOffice (free)

(will start programming in Python next quarter and will also use some ERP data preprocessing s/w.. so the list probably will keep getting bigger as I progress through the program)

Edited March 8, 2010 by liszt85

[zilch]

masters, may go directly to phd

dual boot of windows and linux

1. matlab (free from university)

2. chrome/firefox (free)

3. microsoft word/open office (~50-60 for students / free)

4. Engauge Digitizer (free) - used for extracting data from plots in articles

5. GIMP/MS Paint (free/free) - photoshop for linux/basic place to paste an image

6. Google Docs, wave, etc (free)

[Postbib Yeshuist]

I forgot to mention that Dropbox (www.dropbox.com) and Evernote (www.evernote.com) are two pieces of software I couldn't live without (both free).

[Genomic Repairman]

On the Mac:

1. Time Machine (of course for backing up)

2. EndNote (makes citations a breeze and you can get a student discount). My only advice, buy it now. I mean now dammit.

3. Papers (keep a pdf of all my articles and I can attach my notes to them as well as look at them on my iTouch)

4. StatPlus (cheaper but more limited version of SPSS)

5. EazyDraw (great way to make figures and less space and monetary costs than CS4)

6. FileMaker (great for creating databases)

7. Aperture (takes iPhoto out back behind the woodshed and puts it to shame)

8. MacVector (only relevant if you are biologist)

[Roll Right]

On the Mac:

1. Time Machine (of course for backing up)

2. EndNote (makes citations a breeze and you can get a student discount). My only advice, buy it now. I mean now dammit.

3. Papers (keep a pdf of all my articles and I can attach my notes to them as well as look at them on my iTouch)

4. StatPlus (cheaper but more limited version of SPSS)

5. EazyDraw (great way to make figures and less space and monetary costs than CS4)

6. FileMaker (great for creating databases)

7. Aperture (takes iPhoto out back behind the woodshed and puts it to shame)

8. MacVector (only relevant if you are biologist)

Ah, Endnote! I forgot! And I really ought to get matlab for modeling too. You use SAS Liszt85?? Why do that to yourself!

[liszt85]

Ah, Endnote! I forgot! And I really ought to get matlab for modeling too. You use SAS Liszt85?? Why do that to yourself!

Haha.. THat's because its a course requirement. I doubt anybody would use it unless they were forced to (like I was). It was a tremendous pain just to get it installed on my 64X windows 7 OS. Anyway, now that I have codes that can be easily modified to do almost any design of ANOVA, I can do the ANOVA stuff easily on SAS but I doubt I'll do a lot of ANOVA and frequentist statistics because I got introduced to Bayesian methods and I'm totally in love.

Your university should have MATLAB licenses that you can sign. I checked it actual price.. if you wanted a lot of the toolboxes, you'd end up spending thousands of dollars! Which is why I need to also learn to work in R (which I've started doing), and am also doing a Python course next quarter..so will learn to use pylab and stuff, which is free too. MATLAB is good as long as you stay in a university as a student/faculty. Most of us, I guess, will do that but its important to learn how to use the free stuff. Being in a university is awesome though.. I need to work on some humongous matrices and I've signed up to use the supercomputing facility here for free. All this is just so awesome.

And yea I forgot, just downloaded mendeley..haven't transferred all my papers to that but it does look awesome so far and have heard great reviews!

[joro]

Degree

Masters

OS

Windows 7 Pro (free for students)

CentOS (free)

Useful

Fences - for organizing my desktop (free)

Ccleaner (free)

Defraggler (free)

Avast - antivirus (free)

Microsoft Office ($50?)

Openoffice (free)

Firefox/Chrome (free)

Computer Graphics

Maya - computer graphics stuff (free)

Nuke - compositing stuff (free)

Zbrush/Mudbox - sculpting stuff $$

Realflow - fluid sims $$

Massive - crowd sims (free)

Photorealistic Renderman (free)

Programming

Visual Studios - C/C++ and C# stuff (free)

Eclipse - Python, Java, Perl stuff (free)

Notepad++ - anything really, but mainly renderman sl (free)

Fun

Steam - with all my games ($50 >)

Topcoder contest applet (free)

Edited March 14, 2010 by joro

[liszt85]

OS

Windows 7 Pro (free for students)

Wow, that's a sweet deal. Do many of you get this for free too? The best I could get from the university was windows 7 premium for $35.

[joro]

Wow, that's a sweet deal. Do many of you get this for free too? The best I could get from the university was windows 7 premium for $35.

It was free for students in my department (computer science).

[johndiligent]

Not attending yet, but I thought I'd throw Zotero on to that list. It's a Firefox add-on, highly recommended for managing your citations and maintaining a database of your sources. It takes some time to learn but very worth it.

[liszt85]

Not attending yet, but I thought I'd throw Zotero on to that list. It's a Firefox add-on, highly recommended for managing your citations and maintaining a database of your sources. It takes some time to learn but very worth it.

I've heard better reviews for Mendeley..however its not for people who like open source.

[Roll Right]

Degree

Masters

OS

Windows 7 Pro (free for students)

CentOS (free)

Useful

Fences - for organizing my desktop (free)

Ccleaner (free)

Defraggler (free)

Avast - antivirus (free)

Microsoft Office ($50?)

Openoffice (free)

Firefox/Chrome (free)

Computer Graphics

Maya - computer graphics stuff (free)

Nuke - compositing stuff (free)

Zbrush/Mudbox - sculpting stuff $

Realflow - fluid sims $

Massive - crowd sims (free)

Photorealistic Renderman (free)

Programming

Visual Studios - C/C++ and C# stuff (free)

Eclipse - Python, Java, Perl stuff (free)

Notepad++ - anything really, but mainly renderman sl (free)

Fun

Steam - with all my games ($50 >)

Topcoder contest applet (free)

Steam- I second that, damn it's a great outlet after a long day. Beers and games. It's the best way for me to stay in touch with friends from back home too. Liszt, do you do any regression analysis in psychology?

Edited March 15, 2010 by Roll Right

[liszt85]

Steam- I second that, damn it's a great outlet after a long day. Beers and games. It's the best way for me to stay in touch with friends from back home too. Liszt, do you do any regression analysis in psychology?

Regression is being taught at a somewhat advanced level next quarter. So will have to wait and see how that's done.

[Roll Right]

Regression is being taught at a somewhat advanced level next quarter. So will have to wait and see how that's done.

I'm messing around with it right now...it's pretty much a Pearson's correlation with more than two variables. Its interesting stuff though. So does psych use ANOVA quite often? We really don't use it in sociology.

[liszt85]

I'm messing around with it right now...it's pretty much a Pearson's correlation with more than two variables. Its interesting stuff though. So does psych use ANOVA quite often? We really don't use it in sociology.

Yea, Psych uses a lot of ANOVA..

[natsteel]

Level: Undergrad writing honors thesis

OS: Mac OSX Snow Leopard (new Mac user)

Software:

Microsoft Office - I was just too comfortable with Word and actually like the Mac version better than Windows, though I wish the Mac version had the ribbon instead of the Toolbox. Also Entourage's Project feature has been fantastic in keeping all my thesis work organized as it gathers all your tasks, calendar events, email messages, and notes all in one place.

Scrivener - This program has helped my research immensely. The interface and ideas behind it are exactly what you don't see on PCs.

Notebook - It's exactly what it says it is. Lets you set tabs/sections and add new pages. I date each page for each class. I still take notes by hand but then type them in later both for organizational and review purposes.

EndNote - I still use EndNote because I've been using it for a few years now, however I am slowly but surely making the switch to...

Sente - This program may not be perfect yet, but it has potential that EndNote can't even sniff at. For organizing PDFs, it's fantastic.

My workflow since switching to the Mac from PC has increased significantly and that was exactly what I hoped the switch would achieve.

[metasyntactic]

 I'm a graduating undergrad. My machines run various flavours of Linux and some of them run Windows virtualized or dual-boot.

Most of the software I use are actually programming languages: Haskell, Scheme, Java, and so on.

Aside from that:

R (still a programming language, but I use it to maintain budgets)

LaTeX for typesetting documents.

Vim, git, svn, and so on for coding.

Opera/Chrome/Firefox.

Mutt, procmail, and postfix for e-mail.

Various utilities: the ones I use most are ssh and screen.

Edited March 16, 2010 by metasyntactic

[liszt85]

 I'm a graduating undergrad. My machines run various flavours of Linux and some of them run Windows virtualized or dual-boot.

Most of the software I use are actually programming languages: Haskell, Scheme, Java, and so on.

Aside from that:

R (still a programming language, but I use it to maintain budgets)

LaTeX for typesetting documents.

Vim, git, svn, and so on for coding.

Opera/Chrome/Firefox.

Mutt, procmail, and postfix for e-mail.

Various utilities: the ones I use most are ssh and screen.

How could I have forgotten LaTeX? TeXworks.

[amercanist]

MA/History (soon to be PhD, hopefully )

Mac User:

Word (I am, after all, in the history field).

[Genomic Repairman]

If you are a Mac user and you are making lots of presentations check out Keynote. It blows PowerPoint away and you can customize way more stuff. Love it. And if you have to give a presentation on a PC you can export your file to a .ppt file.

[coyabean]

I saw the one off comment about Mendeley. I've been debating dl'ing it in preparation for fall. Any users? Feedback?

[Confused Goose]

I saw the one off comment about Mendeley. I've been debating dl'ing it in preparation for fall. Any users? Feedback?

I've been using Mendeley for a while now, and I love it. Sure, it's still beta, so there are a few bugs (imperfect extraction of meta-data from pdfs) and crashes once in a while, but all in all, it's great. The only major caveat is that while it is free for now, it's not open-source, so once they come out with the final version, it may become non-free or feature-limited.

[Postbib Yeshuist]

I saw the one off comment about Mendeley. I've been debating dl'ing it in preparation for fall. Any users? Feedback?

Sounds a lot like Papers which, was (perhaps still is) the standard. I like Papers, to be honest, but it's not well-suited for the humanities. No idea about Mendeley, but I defintely believe that these types of programs do a better job of organizing PDF's and making them easy to find than I ever could.