Software Reference

Although we might spend most of our time struggling with applications that don't perform as well as we would wish, occasionally everyone finds a little gem. Some software is a pleasure to use. When you come to use a new feature for the first time, it just works! Why not share your experiences with other people here, spreading the word about well-designed software?

Here are some applications I particularly like:

• Vim – "Vi Improved". My text editor of choice, whatever operating system I'm using. <troll>Emacs, bah!<troll>
• Thumbs Plus. A great tool for organising and improving photos. I've been using it for years, and it's crammed full of powerful features.
• Firefox. Still the best web browser, mainly because of all the plug-ins. I'd still be testing Google Chrome alongside Firefox if it hadn't broken my Visual Studio, forcing me to roll back to a restore point. I'll probably give this another go once the Linux version comes out.
• Process Explorer from Sysinternals, subsequently bought out by Microsoft, blows Windows' own Task Manager out of the water.
• PuTTY the free telnet/ssh client is invaluable for managing Linux web servers from Windows desktop PCs.

That's my little list off the top of my head.

Please share your favourites and why you like them.