The software that I use.
Hi everyone, Leo Notenboom here for Ask Leo.com. I get asked often,
what kind of tool do I want to use for this?
What software should I use for that?
I thought it might be interesting to share some of the software that I
actually have installed and use myself every day, or almost every day.
Now there are a couple of caveats I have
to throw out before I run through this list.
And for the record, this list you'll find
as an article on askleo.com/130154.
I'll mention that again at the end. Point being, though, that this is a long list
of a bunch of stuff, and I've got links to all of them in that article.
The other issue is that it changes.
One of my jobs, if you will,
is to try new things to play with different pieces of software.
When I updated this article this time
around, this is actually an update to an article I wrote many years ago.
I was amazed at how much of the software I was relying on daily at that time that I
no longer use and actually hadn't used in a long time.
And of course, there's replacements.
There's new software on the list that I do use and use regularly.
So I want to make sure that you understand
that the article is probably the more canonical list
of what I'm using today, whenever today is for you watching this video.
The other thing I want to clarify is that
these are, in some cases, formal recommendations.
I actually have some recommendation articles written that I'll be pointing
to or talking about when I recommend something.
It's not because I get monetary kickback for doing so.
That doesn't mean that I don't.
But that's not why I recommend something.
When I have the opportunity to use what's
called an affiliate link, I may get a cut of the purchase price.
If you're buying a piece of software
through that link, that is not a piece of free software.
Obviously, what's really important to realize is
that my recommendation does not rely on there being an affiliate link.
And in fact,
many of the things I recommend that do cost money don't have affiliate programs.
They don't offer this.
I recommend them anyway.
That's the point.
The point is that this is software I've
either used myself or continue to use, or it's software that in a few cases come
so highly recommended from people that I trust, I feel confident recommending.
Now, the other stuff that I talk about,
the other tools, I'll just call them honorable mentions.
They're kind of recommendations because
obviously I'm using it and I'm telling you about them.
But it's a different level, right?
These are tools that I am comfortable
talking about, that I use to solve certain problems, and that I have no problem
suggesting that you might want to investigate.
But I really do reserve that formal
recommendation term for things that are a little bit more vetted by myself.
So with all of that out of the way, let's just go down the list of some
of the things that I've talked about here on Ask Leo, some of the things that I use
and some of the things that this first list I recommend.
Now there are no particular order.
This is not an ordered list in terms of priority.
And in fact, from looking at it, the way I put it on the page, it's alphabetical.
So the only thing the order represents is
my ability to put things in alphabetical order.
And indeed, when I reviewed the article
that I had written years ago, I even got that wrong.
So 7Zip is my Zipping utility.
That's what I use instead of the zip program.
Or it's also what I use instead of Windows own built in Zipping abilities.
I find them. They're okay.
They're good for just like opening a zip file and looking at it.
But in terms of creating a zip password,
protecting a Zip, doing other things with a zip file.
Seven Zip is a significantly more powerful program, and it also has its own
proprietary format, Seven Z, which is actually more compressed than Zip.
I use Auto Hotkey all the time.
Auto Hotkey is my tool of choice
for creating keyboard backgrounds, so that if I add my signature to the end
of an email, it's like three keystrokes for me, not the entire signature.
One of the reasons I do that, of course, is because I wear multiple hats and I have
different signatures for the different roles I play.
I use it for other things as well.
I use BoxCryptor heavily for ensuring
that the private information that I throw in Dropbox stays private.
The only thing that gets uploaded that ever leaves my machine is the fully
encrypted BoxCryptor versions of those files that allows me to use cloud storage
for anything, anything that I might want to see.
CCleaner I use occasionally for general cleanup, because it does clean up some
of the things that Microsoft's built in disk cleanup won't.
It too will clean up some of the things
that CCleaner won't, but together it's a good package.
More often lately, I've been using it to uninstall the things
that Windows doesn't let you uninstall by default.
Some of those little apps that come
with a machine that you've never, ever used, some of them can be uninstalled.
Some of them can't.
CCleaner has a list and will actually uninstall them for you.
I use Dropbox a lot, and I use it for my personal stuff.
I've got like a terabyte of my photos up there.
I use it for sharing things with my staff.
I use it for just about anything,
getting information across multiple machines very easily.
I store portable utilities on it so that once I install Dropbox,
then all of a sudden I've got a bunch of these other command line utilities
that I use that show up on whatever machine I might have installed it.
You probably know I use LastPass to keep track of and securely manage all
of my passwords and credit card information and other things.
Macro Reflect is how I back up.
I use both the free version on a couple
of my machines, and I have the paid version on my primary machine.
I use both primarily so that I understand the differences between the two so that I
can report back or write properly about their behavior.
But I definitely use them.
Process Explorer I find myself running actually automatically whenever I start.
Windows Task Manager has gotten better, absolutely.
But Process Explorer has more information and more detailed information.
Admittedly, more geeky information that I just find more informative, more useful.
More like I say, useful in the situations where I want to use it.
Recova is a tool you never want to use, right?
That's the tool that tries to undelete
files tries to recover files from potentially damaged media.
You never want to use it because you never
want to be in a situation where you need that kind of a tool.
On the other hand, every so often it happens.
And that's the tool I reach for first.
Snagit is how I do my screen captures again.
Windows has improved their screen capture ability a fair amount over the years,
but I still find Snagit a very convenient tool to use a tool that allows me to do
things like the torn edge effects that you see in a lot of the images I create.
It's just one of those things where I just use it all the time.
And honestly, if I were to prioritize
the list Snag, it would probably be up near the top.
And finally, on the recommended product
list, Thunderbird is how I back up my email.
I have it running on my desktop machine,
even though I interact with my email via the Gmail interface.
Thunderbird is here in the background, downloading everything as a backup.
So that's the recommended list.
Now I'm going to run quickly through the other list of what I'll call honorable
mentions or other tools that I use simply because there are so many.
This would be an incredibly long video if I were to talk in depth about each one.
Audacity is what I use for audio editing.
Caliber is what I use for ebook manipulation and reading.
When I create an ebook,
that's what I use to produce the PDF and the EPUB and the Mobi file formats.
Canva is the tool that I've been using
for about the past year that creates the graphics that are at the top of some
of my articles and other graphical type of things.
Chrome, the web browser I use.
Camtasia Studio is the tool that I have been using up until recently for all
of my screen recording and all of my video editing. Cyberduck is a graphical FTP/SFTP
program that I use when I want an Explorer like interface.
Davinci Resolve has a free version.
It's a video editing package that is
incredibly powerful, and it's what I personally have been moving to.
Most of the videos that you see here are being edited, still in Camtasia,
but the things that I'm editing myself on my machine, I've been moving towards
DaVinci Resolve as being, like I said, much more powerful and pretty impressive.
Firefox is not my primary browser anymore, but I do keep it installed for
some separate contexts when I want to have one browser that has this Google account
and the other browser has a different Google account, and also for answering
questions, testing things out, and so forth.
GNU Privacy Guard, or GPG,
is how I will encrypt files that I might want to send to somebody or where I really
want that extra level of true high quality encryption not using it as much.
Zip has improved a fair amount,
but GPG is still there and still highly recommend it.
HP16C is an emulator for an old
calculator that I absolutely love and have on my desktop.
Hyperv I used to use VirtualBox for all of my virtual machines until I moved
to this machine and installed Windows Eleven.
I now use HyperV, which is actually free
virtual machine software that comes with Windows.
A little trickier to set up, but I've been very happy with it.
Imagemagic is a set of command line tools that allow you to manipulate images.
If you've ever seen any of my personal,
personal photos, like maybe on my Flickr account, you'll notice that they have
a little Copyright transparency down in the lower right hand corner.
I've got a batch file that adds those it
actually resizes images, throws the transparency on it.
It's all done with Image.
Magic Notepad ++ is my go to text editor of late,
although I still occasionally find myself falling into Vim or Gvim or VI.
If I'm on a Linux system, Microsoft Office, I use it all the time.
I've got it installed.
Excel is probably the number one tool
that I use, simply because that's how we manage the Ask Leo publishing schedule,
along with my books and a bunch of other random things.
Obs or Open Broadcaster software is what
I'm now using to record this video, and if I'm ever recording something
with both myself speaking and a desktop that too is now being done using OBS,
it's free, it's incredibly powerful, and I'm having a lot of fun with it.
I've recently moved to Obsidian as my note taking app.
You'll notice that Evernote was not on the list.
Evernote is a fine program, and I still use it for some things,
but Obsidian is significantly better in several different kind of obscure ways
that I really feel a lot more comfortable with.
Photoshop is what I use for my photo editing, especially my personal stuff.
Cropping adjusting colors, lighting, all that kind of stuff.
And yes, I do have a subscription to Creative Cloud,
so I've got all of that Photoshop and Adobe software associated with it.
Putty is the SSH client that I use.
In other words, when I try and set up
a command line interface to the Ascalio server, it's Putty that I end up using
to do the SSH connection, proving that I can't do alphabetical
correctly, I just read it in the wrong order.
Pocket Cast is the podcast player I use.
I like it because it allows me to listen on different
devices my desktop, my phone, my tablet, whatever, and it synchronizes my state.
In other words, if I listen to the first five minutes of a podcast on my desktop
and then get into my car and fire up my phone, it's synchronized.
VLC is the primary media player I use.
If I'm watching a video, chances are it's going to be through VLC.
xnViewMP is the image viewer that I use.
There's a lot of good image viewers out
there, and I don't want this usage to be taken too strongly.
But because it is multi platform, it works on Mac, Linux and PC.
It's a fine interface for just browsing
images if you've got a folder full of images and want to do things.
It also has some limited editing editing
capabilities, which I don't use very often, mostly because I've got Photoshop
and I've got Snagit to do the editing for those particular scenarios.
And xplorer2 is
a Windows File Explorer replacement that I use exclusively.
The big thing that it brings to the table is that it's a dual Pane Explorer.
In other words, you've got two Windows instead of just the one.
Yes, I know you can have multiple
Windows File Explorer Windows on your desktop and so forth.
This is just a little bit more intuitive
to have them right there side by side automatically all the time.
I do use Windows File Explorer still occasionally for some random things,
especially answering questions, but when I'm manipulating files,
when I'm using something where most people would be using Windows File Explorer,
I find Explorer Two to be more powerful and useful to me.
So that's the list.
Like I say in on the article on the actual
article page, I'm sure I've missed something.
I've mentioned a couple of things
that aren't even on the list so far, and that's fine.
But that's a start. Those are the kinds of tools that I use.
Those are ones that if someone were to ask me, What Photo editing do you use?
I use Photoshop.
What media viewer do you use?
I use VLC.
That's the answer to this set of questions.
As always, like I said when I started, this list changes over time.
So for updates, for related links, because I have links to almost everything
that I've talked about here for comments and more that would be at
askleo.com/130154
Hope. It's helpful.
I'm Leo Notenboom.
This is askleo.com. Thanks for watching.