What software do you use/find indispensable?

[natsteel]

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.

I tried both Mendeley and Papers and went with Papers in the end. I liked what Mendeley could do but the GUI didn't work for me, for some reason. If Papers would just add annotation functionality, there'd be absolutely no reason to consider another application. And while Papers is geared towards the sciences, I have had no problems making it work and I'm in history. A "Humanities" version of Papers would be nice, though. It's helped me finally organize the 100s of PDFs I've collected in the last couple of years and the search function works well.

[Manduhai]

Ph.D

I use a Mac desktop and PC, so many of the programs I need operate to work on both:

1. Office

2. Sugarsync ($$)

This program is worth every penny and is a lifesaver for keeping files automatically updated between my two computers. My files are all backed up plus I can access them from absolutely anywhere.

3. Mendeley PDF organizer (free)

This program is still working out some kinks, but it is wonderful since it works on both Mac and PC and great for sharing libraries for collaboration. The annotation and highlighting feature is especially great when working on jointly authored articles or proposals.

4. xMind (free, but upgrade which has more features, costs money)

I love mind mapping tools and find this one user friendly and visually appealing. Great for note-taking and keeping track of complex ideas and theories.

5. Google calender for organizing my life.

6. Nvivo ($$)

Coding software

7. Evernote (free)

[joro]

Just to add onto my list of recommendations. Note this is for Windows users.

-Comodo firewall (free)

-McAfee Site Advisor (free and no annoying ads)

-HijackThis (free)

-Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware (free)

-NoScript (free firefox plugin)

Edited March 30, 2010 by joro

[goukaku suru you ni]

I am a mac user and these are my favorite programs: adobe premiere cs3 for video editing: audacity for sound editing; mpegstreamclip for resizing and converting audiovideo files; name mangler for well, renaming files, and; subsfactory or miyu for writing subtitles. Also, synapsen hypertextual index for compiling research materials was a lifesaver when i was writing my thesis. In a blink of an eye, this software can automatically generate your bibliography. Now I sound like a salesperson, haha!

There are various online softwares and freebies which are simply fabulous such as:

http://citationmachine.net for generating your bibliography

http://ccmixter.org for creative commons music

www.freesound.org/for creative commons sound effects

Edited March 30, 2010 by goukaku suru you ni

[matcha]

Anybody consider using the new 3G network connections from Verizon or AT&T? I enjoy my 3G connection on my Droid and not having to worry about whether wireless is available when I need it. I have no clue if it is useful for a laptop though.

[timuralp]

For Linux stuff:

F-spot - photo processing/managing, although mono is a bit slow

vmware player - awesome for... anything, even running OS X for the apple salesmen

irssi - IRC can be useful and this is my favorite client

All are free.

By the way, the moment people stop saying there is just Mac and "PeeCee" is the moment I think one of my strong urges to choke someone will end. I mean, seriously, PC = personal computer, if your macbook is not a personal computer, what the hell is it?

Edited May 24, 2010 by timuralp

[Postbib Yeshuist]

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

I am beta-testing Office 2011 for Mac. Absolutely awesome. They finally got it right.

[Postbib Yeshuist]

On-campus WiFi is all I need. 3G is too slow.

[ruatipoki]

I have to recommend Dragon Naturally Speak and for the Mac, MacSpeech Dictate

I use them both - kind of prefer Dragon as I use it a bit more.

cant believe more people dont use it.

It saves me bundles of time

[natsteel]

MA/History (soon to be PhD, hopefully )

Mac User:

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

Being a fellow historian, and Americanist at that, I would suggest you find out about a student discount on EndNote. It is absolutely essential and indispensable.

I am beta-testing Office 2011 for Mac. Absolutely awesome. They finally got it right.

Postbib, I have a MacBook Pro but I beta-tested Office 2010 for Windows and it was fantastic. I only hope that Entourage gets the same kind of social connector features that Outlook 2011 has.

Edited May 31, 2010 by natsteel

[wordslinger]

Well, I finally did it and bought my official grad school laptop today... a MacBook Pro. I went with it because of the durability and reliability I believe it will have. I'm in English. I'll definitely be picking up MS Word for Mac. Any other recommended software, particularly for managing notes, sources, and pdfs?

[natsteel]

Well, I finally did it and bought my official grad school laptop today... a MacBook Pro. I went with it because of the durability and reliability I believe it will have. I'm in English. I'll definitely be picking up MS Word for Mac. Any other recommended software, particularly for managing notes, sources, and pdfs?

Good choice. After using PCs all my life, and being quite tech savvy with them, I made the switch to Mac back in January. I still have my PC desktop but I love my MacBook Pro. The available software is what convinced me to make the switch, along with the OS. There are no true Windows equivalents to stuff like Scrivener, and even when there is (i.e., Papers v Mendeley) I tend to find the Mac programs far more intuitive and more joyful to use. Also, the software which makes up my workflow, along with organizational stuff like Entourage/iCal, etc..., has SIGNIFICANTLY increased my productivity.

[natsteel]

Well, I finally did it and bought my official grad school laptop today... a MacBook Pro. I went with it because of the durability and reliability I believe it will have. I'm in English. I'll definitely be picking up MS Word for Mac. Any other recommended software, particularly for managing notes, sources, and pdfs?

Here's what I use:

Word 2008 for Mac

Papers (fantastic PDF manager - great integration with Jstor)

EndNote

Sente (also a ref. manager)

Scrivener (for drafting a project - amazing software!!)

[LockeOak]

PC

Microsoft Office

Mendeley (Free)

SyncToy (Free from Microsoft) - This very simple program synchronizes files between two or more folders. If you work on multiple PCs like I do, (lab desktop, home desktop, laptop) you can keep them synchronized with a flash drive. One click and it updates all the files on the flash drive and the PC, even if some are more recent on one system and other files are more recent on the other. I carry a flashdrive with me and plug it in when I sit down at my computer, update, and do that again when I go home. A huge savings in time and confusion.

SigmaStat/SigmaPlot ($$, forgot how much) - Mostly used for graphing

[Postbib Yeshuist]

2. Sugarsync ($$)

This program is worth every penny and is a lifesaver for keeping files automatically updated between my two computers. My files are all backed up plus I can access them from absolutely anywhere.

Not sure if that's a service or a software license, but Dropbox will do the exact same thing for free (though it all resides in its own folder). You might look into it.

[Postbib Yeshuist]

Postbib, I have a MacBook Pro but I beta-tested Office 2010 for Windows and it was fantastic. I only hope that Entourage gets the same kind of social connector features that Outlook 2011 has.

Entourage is out and Outlook is in. One reason I'm so excited.

[waddle]

Sorry to bring back an old thread, but I thought I'd add these.

Just an undergrad in the sciences; using the following to write papers, manage organizations, keep my computer happy, etc. --> keep me happy.

Windows XP (mostly) and 7; occasional user of Ubuntu Linux

• 7-Zip: free, file compression, (un)zipping
• AlfaClock: free, provides a handy customizable clock & calendar (useful for XP users who don't have the nice Win7 clock/calendar)
• CCleaner: free
• CutePDF Writer: free
• Defraggler: free, defragmenter
• F.lux: free, F.lux is great, saves your eyesight (& sanity) if you're working late into the night (adjusts your screen hue)
• foobar2000: free, probably the fastest, slimmest music player out there
• Gang Garrison 2: free, it's an 8-bit demake of Team Fortress 2, sure helps relieve the stress, and I don't have to pay Steam/Valve anything
• GraphPad Prism: $$, used for graphing & some statistics
• IrfanView: free, for batch image editing
• KeyTweak: free, I just use this for remapping CAPS to CTRL (keeps the carpal tunnel away , besides, who uses CAPS LOCK?)
• LaTeX: free, specifically, I use MiKTeX + TeXWorks
• Metamorphose2: free, handy if you need to do batch renaming of files
• Microsoft Office: $$$, can't get away from this, can ya? (I still use Office XP ... never liked the ribbon in 2007)
• Microsoft Streets and Trips: $$, a good investment if you despise those little 'portable' GPS's and prefer to use your laptop, but don't have an internet connection on the road ... one of the better Microsoft products (up there with WinXP, in my opinion)
• Mozilla Firefox: free
• Mozilla Thunderbird: free, surprised nobody's mentioned this (I think)
• OpenOffice: free
• Paint.NET: free, great for image editing
• PDF Split and Merge: free, does exactly what it says on the box ... splits & merges PDFs
• RocketDock: free, hey Mac users, I've got a dock too!
• Scribus: free, I use this to make posters (still somewhat unstable and inconvenient, but beats shelling out $$$ for an Adobe product or using Powerpoint or OOo Impress, which are even more unwieldy)
• SSH Secure Shell: free
• SyncBack: free, use mainly to sync/backup files onto an external hard drive
• Syncplicity: free, it's just like Dropbox; you have to be comfortable with your files being on the cloud, though
• TrueCrypt: free, keeps my disk encrypted, so my computer is safe from thieves ... well, at least the files on them are
• WordWeb: free, very very very handy desktop dictionary
  stuff I've tried for a bit:
  
  
  • If you're looking for a plain ol' text editor, Q10 or DarkRoom are nice (they basically go fullscreen & blank out your desktop--gives you a zero distraction writing environment (at least, in principle))
  • Tried out Mendeley for awhile, until it crashed and I lost most of my stored annotations. I'm just going to wait until Zotero Everywhere is released as stable.
  • I agree with phid (post #32); PDF-XChange Viewer seems to be good for making notes on PDFs, but I haven't used it much (I still prefer printing stuff out and scribbling all over).

waddle

Edited December 4, 2010 by waddle

[fuzzylogician]

I guess I could add my own list, then. I'm a Win7 user though I do some of my research on a mac. Most of what I use is on waddle's list but I'll repeat it anyway.

• 7-Zip
• CCleaner
• CutePDFWriter
• Defraggler
• Dropbox
• Firefox
• Google Calendar
• LaTeX: I use MikTex + TeXWorks
• LyX (for when I don't have time to do all my own LaTeX formatting..)
• Matlab (free through my university): for coding experiments
• Microsoft Office (free through my university)
• NotePad++
• R
• PDF-XChange Viewer
• PHP-SyntaxTree: this is a bit linguistics-specific but it's an easy and fast way to create syntactic trees

I also tried both Zotero and Mendeley and wasn't impressed with either. Especially Mendeley, which crashed not long after I installed it and I lost all the information I had on it.

[natsteel]

If we're killing time...

I use a MacBook Pro:

Office for Mac 2011 - waiting for them to give Outlook the social connector. Also waiting to be able to sync my iPod calendar with Outlook (amazing that wasn't ready at launch).

Papers - like iTunes for PDFs with full spotlight search capabilities. Fantastic!

DevonThink - This program will save my life in a few years' time. I import all the notes I take while reading books, and tons more.

Evernote - Syncs all my notes (text, voice, video, or picture) with my iPod.

EndNote, Sente - I have both but still can't decide on one and ditch the other.

Scrivener - great for organizing long papers.

Notebook - Literally, a virtual notebook.

xAct - for audio conversion

VisualHub - for video conversion.

OED - complete Oxford English Dictionary for Mac

Anki - flashcard app

Onyx - for OSX maintenance

Stuffit - for compressed files

VLC - media player

uTorrent

Not all of my software, but the main stuff... Open to alternatives to any of these if someone has any suggestions.

[Eigen]

I'm fairly simple, but I use all of these on a daily basis:

MSOffice 2007

Adobe Pro (gives all the editing/creating functionality for PDFs)

Endnote

Adobe Illustrator (end all program for creating slick graphics for publications)

Molecular Operating Environment (MOE): A molecular modeling suite (Ok, so that's specialized)

ChemDraw: again, slightly specialized

Firefox, Thunderbird, MS Outlook: The basics

Scifinder Scholar: on it 3 or 4 times a day to grab articles

And that's pretty much all I have installed on the computer.

[edwinksl]

Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional -- viewing and annotating .pdf files

Adobe Photoshop CS3 -- editing images

CPU-Z -- if you need detailed information about your computer hardware

Dropbox -- for cloud storage

Eclipse -- for writing Java programs when necessary

Google Chrome

Graphmatica -- for graphing

MATLAB -- for modeling and graphing

Microsoft Office 2007

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 -- for writing C++ programs when necessary

Mozilla Firefox -- most frequently used add-ons include Zotero, Tab Mix Plus, LastPass, Adblock Plus, Fasterfox Lite, HTTPS-Everywhere, and Lazarus Form Recovery

proXPN -- if you need a VPN

Sophos -- antivirus software

VLC media player -- plays almost any media file

WinDjView -- viewing .djvu files

WinRAR -- for zipping and unzipping compressed files

Edited February 25, 2011 by edwinksl

[Herbie]

I'm a prospective grad student for Fall 2011. Despite not being in grad school à la moment, I would like to note to any OSX 10.6+ Mac users that the new Microsoft Office - 2011 is awesome. It's less convoluted than MO'07 and previous - more commonly used things are easier to find/better customization/stability. In all honesty, I am not a fan of Mac software (I'm a Mac owner, and really opted for a Macbook to escape many hardware failures/viruses) - but MO'11 reminds me a bit of Windows Office XP. This is a good thing - @ least for me.

[waddle]

MO'11 reminds me a bit of Windows Office XP. This is a good thing - @ least for me.

Cool! I've been waiting for Office to revert back to something like Microsoft Office XP. In the meantime, I've been using Office XP for the past ... 8(?) years --never switched to Office '03 or '07. Meh.

[Kathiza]

Cool! I've been waiting for Office to revert back to something like Microsoft Office XP. In the meantime, I've been using Office XP for the past ... 8(?) years --never switched to Office '03 or '07. Meh.

I work on Office 07 and at work we have Office 2010 - and both are great! You should really switch. It makes life soooo much easier. You don't have to look for commands and buttons - they are all right there. And formatting a text is much quicker. I love it.

Although for my university work I use LaTex.

[ogopo]

Masters, macbook (a cheap old one

The one must have program is papers. And now papers2 is out! And they have cite as you write!!! That means there is no longer a need for endnote, refworks or zotero. Papers2 just came out this week so they are working on a few bugs but I was using it today and even with its flaws, I was bursting with joy.

Or maybe it was having coffee for the first time in a few weeks...