Shit I Run On My Computer

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Oh blagoblag of mine, I’ve neglected you. And you know what? I’m going to continue to neglect you.

Here’s a quick list of shit I run on my Windows PC. I’m talking about Windows because even though I own a Mac, I use Windows at work and that’s where I spend most of my time doing Serious Business. I’m a programmer by trade so obviously I’ll have programmer tools here.

1. Firefox

Because. Firefox is better. Arguments between Firefox and Chrome, Opera, Safari or even Internet Explorer 8 are, to an extent, like debating about your favorite brand of toilet paper. It doesn’t really matter as long as you’re spending the time to wipe your ass. But Internet Explorer 7 and below is kind of like the really thin, single-sheet and single-ply toilet paper you find in the cheapest of public restrooms. One day, there’ll be shit on your fingers and you really should have known better.

Favorite Firefox extensions: Adblock Plus, IE Tab and Delicious Bookmarks. I will also break out Firebug when I’m doing my HTML/CSS/Javascript thang.

2. Digsby

Digsby is the new thing for managing all your IM. It talks to all the popular ones like MSN, AIM, GTalk and it even does Twitter and Facebook and checks all your email (including Gmail). I like it a lot because it’s minimalist and doesn’t show ads.

3. Lookout

Lookout is something I need at work. It’s a staggeringly fast search engine for Microsoft Outlook and it stays the hell out of my way until I need it.

4. Vim

Here’s where shit gets geeky. Vim is my text editor where I do everything. Some people love emacs, that’s cool. I deliberately choose vim because if I’m going to devote my career to learning an editor, it may as well be a cross platform one. Same goes for command line, I generally install *nix versions of command line utilities on my Windows machines so I don’t need to re-learn command switches and suffer at the hands of crippling DOS commands.

5. Enso

I can’t really recommend Enso because support for it grows thin. It’s basically a way to start programs without grabbing your mouse and clicking. The start menu is so yesterday; keyboard is the new black. For people interested in this kind of thing, I’d recommend they try out Launchy, which is the crowd favorite.

6. Rak

Rak is a way to search across large numbers of text files from the command line. It’s my grep replacement. Grep is hopelessly outdated and it’s hard remembering all the command line switches and it’s just not as friendly as it could be.

What applications do you guys find indispensable?

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Dennis

I use windows at work too.. Launchy is a favorite of mine, especially with the putty plugin. I can’t remember the last time I clicked on the start menu… :)

I’m also a VIM user, but I use jEdit as well for more heavyweight editing tasks. VIM works great in a putty window, mousing works just fine.

Rak looks cool too, I use Ack which I think is kinda similar.

I also couldn’t live without KatMouse (http://ehiti.de/katmouse/). It changes the scrollwheel behavior so that it scrolls the window under your cursor, not just the window that has focus. It basically means that you can scroll a firefox window in the background without losing focus of what you’re working on in the foreground.
Karan

I’ve not used Enso, though I’m about to give it a try - Launchy does a fairly good job for me, though it’s not nearly as good as Quicksilver.

MWSnap is a slightly shady looking and older program that doesn’t seem to be maintained any more, but it’s a free alternative to a screenshot program like SnagIt (gotta love cap-ex restrictions).

FeedDemon is my can’t-do-without feed-reader for internal company feeds - mostly to keep an eye out for support issues and such, but it’s a very good desktop reader (& surprise, it’s free!).

I tried to look for an Expose-style app switcher for Win XP, but didn’t find anything stable and/or capable… maybe it’s just me that finds that useful, though.
chicky

i use chrome… its shiny :)
chicky

aww no i don’t well yes i do use chrome but not because its shiny. its fast and simple and its fast. and its not always breaking down on me like firefox is

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