It's all well and good to talk about the most significant developments, but which applications did you actually use most?

Here is the list of the five applications I used most during 2007 (roughly in the order of most to least:
Firefox
Thunderbird
ConnectedText
Above & Beyond
Word

After that:
NoteTab
Brainstorm
The Journal

Happy New Year to All,
Manfred

OneNote
thelaw.net
Clipmate
MindGenius
Word

iRider
Brainstorm
Evernote
Outlook
CaseMap

(in order by intensity of use, as opposed to total use, to avoid penalizing late-adopted programs - except, MaxThink is not included, because of very late adoption)

Programs I use daily for work:
- QuickBooks
- Internet Explorer
- Outlook Express
- PageMaker

Information managers/text processors I use daily:
- Zoot
- OneNote 2007
- NoteTab
- Word

Programs I use semi-regularly:
- The Journal
- EverNote (I expect to use EN more frequently now that I've bought the portable version)

Steve Z.

Firefox
Yahoo Mail
Google
Hotmail
MyBase
Jot Plus

Recently started writing a book using NoteMap, but am less than thrilled with it. If GV were as easy to use in XP as it was in Win 98, I'd be using it. Maybe I'll switch to Inspiration, even though it is also less than ideal.

-c

UltraRecall
Internet Exporer
Excel
Mind Manager 7
InfoZoom (data analysis / reporting)

others:
Word
Eclipse


Dominik

UltraRecall
Firefox
IDImager
The Bat!
AB Commander

Firefox
Barca
MyInfo
ECCO
Notemap

Information managers I used regularly, most days, during 2007, most to least:

Firefox (with, among other extensions, Scrapbook)
Thunderbird
DT Search
NoteMap
Notezilla

Bonsai
Zoot
DayNotez
MediaWiki

Ike

Programs I use at work:

Outlook
MLS System
Ultra Recall
Excel - Word
Pagemaker

Some overlap when I bring work home, for personal projects:

Ultra Recall
iMatch

Browser is IE7 (work) IE6 (home), mainly so that I can offer support in both places. May switch to Foxfire at home, curious to see what it's about.

The software I used for work (non-fiction writing, translating, consulting, training) on my Windows PC:

1. OpenOffice.org Writer and Calc
2. The Bat
3. Firefox
4. Langenscheidt Office-Bibliothek (dictionaries, reference books)
5. Infoselect
6. Thumbs Plus (image handling)
7. Powerpoint
8. Mindgenius Business (brainstorming and presentations)


The software I used in 2007 on my Mac (fiction writing):

1. Scrivener
2. ...
3. ...
4. ...
5. NeoOffice

This will drastically change in 2008 as I am going to switch my work over to a new Mac next week.

Franz

If only I could limit it to five!!

Firefox/Opera
Outlook/Eudora
Visual Foxpro 6 & 9
Word/Excel/Powerpoint/OneNote 2007
Zoot/Sciral Consistency/The Brain/Ultra Recall
Direct Access
Whizfolders

... and so many more!

Graham

Firefox
Pocomail
UltraRecall
MyLife Organized
TimeTo

SlickRun (my program launcher)

Brainstorm (for just about any kind of writing)
UltraRecall (contact / project database, rather underused considering its power)
The Bat! e-mail client
Opera browser / LinkStash bookmark manager

Recent additions: EverNote and Zoot (32bit beta)

In the background: ZoneAlarm, Antivir, HarePro (which does a great job of speeding up the PC)


A few notes of caution on the above:

- Brainstorm: I use it for much more than it has been intended for. I have a huge file with my academic notes and the program has began to crash on me recently. I need to use something else as my long-term information archive; Zoot is probably what I need, but I am still learning.

- Opera: it has been my favourite browser since version 4.0 (when it was still shareware). To my surprise, I recently discovered that it is very processor-hungry and am trying out alternatives. I do wonder whether it's just version 9.2x that has this issue.


Cheers
alx

Happy New Year, Manfred and others...

My five most used programs for research and other writing in 2007 were:

Zoot (and Zoot32)
Grandview
NoteTab Pro
Word 2003
KeyNote (occasionally)

Other helper programs:
Outlook 2003
Firefox
dtSearch
Web Research
Biblioscape 7
Clipcache

Tried out MyInfo and WhizFolders, but find KeyNote adequate.
Still trying to find a proper place for Brainstorm, but if I give up GV it will probably be for Maxthink (Windows).
Use Evernote for occasional quick notes (but should really use Zoot for this).
Use Qucken (DOS) and Moneydance (Windows) for financial stuff.
Linkstash for bookmarks.
Security: ZoneAlarm (free), F-Prot AV version 6, WinPatrol.

Derek



Outlook
Firefox

Alex, I have been so frustrated with Firefox gobbling memory, songs being interrupted, slow responses to commands, etc. that when I saw your reference to Hare Pro, I immediately downloaded it. It indicates it is working, but I am not clear whether it is a continuous process or not. I do find that the computer seems to be a little faster and using less memory.

What's your experience with it, apart from being obviously good?

Do you recommend using the mem doubler and the registry tools that come with it?

Thanks.

Daly

Here's my list. My time is spent pretty evenly between doing reading/research and creating presentations/speeches.

Firefox
Inspiration
PageFour
Word

Apps I keep coming back to (wanting them to be used), but they just aren't right for me

Evernote
ndxCards
TreePad (Business)
ZuluPad Pro
ConnectedText
Word

(note: Yeah, MS Word is in both lists, I use it, but its just not right for what I do)

Alexander Deliyannis wrote

A few
notes of caution on the above:

- Brainstorm: I use it for much more than it has been
intended for. I have a huge file with my academic notes and the program has began to
crash on me recently. I need to use something else as my long-term information
archive; Zoot is probably what I need, but I am still learning.

Creating a database is a supported use of Brainstorm. How big is too big a file? Do the developers agree the file is larger than Brainstorm can handle?

- Opera: it has been my
favourite browser since version 4.0 (when it was still shareware). To my surprise, I
recently discovered that it is very processor-hungry and am trying out
alternatives. I do wonder whether it's just version 9.2x that has this
issue.

Version 9.5, in beta, is supposed to address infrastructural issues. The beta isn't suitable for work use, as it is somewhat unstable and annoyingly incomplete. But it is noticeably faster, at least subjectively the fastest browser on my system. My guess is process usage has improved, but I haven't looked at it.

Cheers
alx

My list is constrained by a strict SOE at my workplace:-

MS Office 2003 - especially Outlook and Word
MS OneNote 2007 (I managed to convince them to install it, and I'm enjoying the additional benefits)
IE Explorer 6
MindManager 6 for brainstorming and occasional presentations
Some corporate systems

As Alex commented, one of the developments last year was the increasing emphasis on portability. I try to get around the SOE with running these ones from my USB:-

Brainstorm - I would use it more frequently if the product is improved
Page Four - now that I have OneNote running, I'm not using it as much
Spartan Multi clipboard

I'd like to try ConnectedText but the portable version is quite expensive.
I'm still in the market for a good one-panel outliner that will run from a USB.

When I have the luxury of working from my own laptop, I also use:-

PowerDesk
Firefox
Project Kickstart
XMind (testing it out as an alternative to MindManager)
X1

Happy New Year to you all. May 2008 be productive!

Jack

Information gathering/management, writing, more or less daily:
Firefox, with Plain Text to Link extension
xplorer2
OneNote
Ultra Recall (purchased recently at a discount, rapidly replacing OneNote for most things, though I still like OneNote a lot)
Outlook / Gmail
Slickrun
ClipMate
Windows Live Writer
SnagIt
Less frequently Brainstorm, Notemap and Photoshop

Data cleaning, crunching, programming, for work and pleasure, more or less daily:
UltraEdit
Excel
Komodo
Dreamweaver
MySQL
Access
Less frequently SPSS and R

Still longing for a Zoot that can handle long documents, rich text, images and PDFs better

MS Office 2003: Excel and Word
SwordSearcher5
FireFox
NoteMap
Launchy
AlphaFive
SmartScore
NoteWorthy

I do so much my daily work out of my HP4705 PDA.
TextMaker 2003
PocketThinker
apmemo
NewsBreak
Laridian's PocketBible
JournalPro
ClearTemp

gB

Top 5, based solely on usage:

Firefox - almost not even an app for me, more like an operating system; if I am at the computer it is running. Of course, core browser functionality isn't all that interesting in itself, but the wide range of available extensions makes this the one to beat.

Ultra Recall - despite lots of experimentation, I seem to always come back to this as my main working data store. It has a surprising amount of flexibility. Only Zoot is more seductive as an information manager. I wish I could come up with a sensible way to use both at once without having a lot of overlap, but I haven't figured out a way yet.

Dreamweaver - not my favorite editor, but we use it due to the check-in/check-out functionality.

Notepad++ - my favorite text editor (and it's free).

PocoMail

Runners-up:

Zoot - I really love Zoot. Will it win out over Ultra Recall in the end (on my machine)? It depends on which day you ask me.

BrainStorm - I'm really enamored of the general idea and focused clarity of BrainStorm. Unfortunately, I just can't seem to find a consistent spot for it in my workflow. I don't really create that many documents. I like to write fiction but usually do this in a plain text editor. I do brainstorming but tend to just do it in my main info manager for the sake of having it easily accessible with all other data without having to jump through hoops.

Key concepts to strive for in '08:
Continuity - Any system, regardless of perceived functionality or utility, consistently applied over the long term, has to be more useful than haphazard switching and "experiments" with different setups. Why can't I ever learn this lesson? Arrrgggh.

Plain text backups of as much stuff as possible - Regardless of what other nonsense I'm attempting, at least if I have a plain text backup of everything, I can use desktop search and/or text editor searches to find stuff this way.

Daly de Gagne wrote:

... when I saw your reference to Hare Pro, I immediately downloaded it. It indicates it is working, but I am not clear whether it is a continuous process or not. I do find that the computer seems to be a
little faster and using less memory.

I have used it all the way from Windows 98SE, through 2000 to XP. It has always had a positive impact on stability (though I admit that I found 2000 and XP mostly reliable anyway). I don't know what this implies about the Windows operating system, given that Hare replaces the native kernel!

What's your experience with it, apart from
being obviously good?

Hare can give lots of power to your currently active application, reducing what is taken by background tasks. This alone seems to make a lot of difference. I don't think there's anything more annoying than typing in Word and not seeing the letters appear on screen because of some background indexing or whatever.

Do you recommend using the mem doubler and the registry tools
that come with it?

The memory doubler should probably be of little use in modern systems with 1 Gb or more (on Windows XP). In my older ones it did seem to have an effect. Annoyingly, every once in a while a pop-up would tell me that it's 'washing' the memory and then how much memory it has recovered.

The registry tool will probably have been surpassed by more recent dedicated tools. I personally prefer the ones that warn me of the specific changes they are about to make (Hare doesn't). If you don't have one, use it. The registry is often the cause of many problems. CAUTION: Even though I had no problems with it, do set a system restore point / backup your registry before you run it (the operation is not reversable).

alx

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

Creating a database is a supported use of Brainstorm. How
big is too big a file?

It's more than 1.5 Mb which by Brainstorm standards is rather huge. However, I think the problem lies in it having too many namesakes.

Do the developers agree the file is larger than Brainstorm can handle?

Not quite; unfortunately I haven't be able to reproduce the problem consistently. In any case, due to the size and the way that Brainstorm works, some of operations such as search/replace are simply too slow. That's why I say that it wasn't intended for such work; Zoot or other programs using indexing would speed along.

I have another problem with Brainstorm, which remains my main tool notwithstanding; the new version which has been re-engineered on a new and more powerful framework ( http://www.brainstormsw.com/weblog/archives/268 ) is no longer compatible with Greek characters. So I have a choice (a) switch to the new version for my English-language academic work, for which I find it irreplacable, and give it up for my Greek professional work, or (b) maintain the previous, no longer developed version, for all my needs.

>- Opera

Version 9.5, in beta, is supposed to address
infrastructural issues. The beta isn't suitable for work use, as it is somewhat
unstable and annoyingly incomplete. But it is noticeably faster, at least
subjectively the fastest browser on my system. My guess is process usage has
improved, but I haven't looked at it.

Thanks, I will wait around until it's completed and available. I found even IE7 much lighter (processor-wise) than Opera. I have the feeling that they have put too much under the hood, compared to other browsers that have a swift core and one can add functions on top. On my notebook I tried K-meleon ( http://www.k-meleon.org/ ) which uses the Modzilla Gecko engine, and I didn't even notice that it was running. Very impressive - until I started opening several layers (tabs) and it consumed the browser's full memory footprint X the number of layers...

alx

Chris Murtland wrote:

BrainStorm - I'm really enamored of the general idea and
focused clarity of BrainStorm. Unfortunately, I just can't seem to find a consistent
spot for it in my workflow. I don't really create that many documents. I like to write
fiction but usually do this in a plain text editor. I do brainstorming but tend to just
do it in my main info manager for the sake of having it easily accessible with all other
data without having to jump through hoops.

I've used Brainstorm very well along with UltraRecall; for every project I have a Brainstorm file called xxxproject-notes. This is maintained in the project directory and linked/imported within UR.

This way I have all my project notes at hand as long as I have my main UR file with me (it's always in my USB stick) and I can update them anywhere. For text notes, I don't think anything beats Brainstorm. Now, if it could work in OLE mode, one could actually see the content from within the UR window...

alx

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

So I have a choice (a) switch to the new version for my
English-language academic work, for which I find it irreplacable, and give it up for
my Greek professional work, or (b) maintain the previous, no longer developed
version, for all my needs.

... or (c) wait around until the new version's Greek character problems have been solved. (Which is what I am doing). But unfortunately development is rather slow on that front :-(

alx