Sponsor's Message

This sounds like a useful piece of software in situations where one of the users is a bandwidth hog or runs P2P software that might otherwise monopolise the modem.

While I was reading that email, I got to wondering exactly what other little software gems readers might have discovered out there on the Web.

I know that most of the software I use today is either shareware, Open Source, or commercial code that I've downloaded and/or purchased online.

If there's one product that's ideally suited to selling by way of e-commerce, it's software.

Looking at my PC I see that I'm still using Multi-Edit as my preferred programming, HTML and text editor. I bought my copy (version 8.0e) quite a few years ago and it's still streets ahead of other editors I've looked at since.

My email program is Pegasus Mail a great Kiwi-made product and using this rather than MS Outlook has meant I've never once suffered from a mail-borne virus, worm or trojan.

My FTP client is WS_FTP, although I'm sure there are far better products available now -- I'm just too lazy to change.

Other utilities include s a genuine, registered copy of PKZIP, a copy of the CRT terminal emulator and Adobe Acrobat.

For graphics work, I'm still wedded to Paintshop Pro, even though my version is now quite old. It's cheap, simple and has all the features I need for the work I do.

Other frequently used icons on my desktop relate to the creation of video footage, either for my websites or for burning to CDR. These programs include Virtual Dub a great video editor and TMPGenc the most cost-effective MPEG/MPEG2 encoder on the market

Sticking to this theme, there's also a copy of the DivX player and codec installed on this machine.

And, look there -- it's a copy of POVray, a truly excellent rendering program I use to visualise ideas for engine designs and other objects.

And speaking of designing stuff, almost all of my plans and designs are produced with the help of TurboCad, a surprisingly full-featured CAD program I picked up at The Warehouse in a sale a while back for just $49.

As regular readers know, my regular browser is an old copy of Netscape, but I still keep Mozilla Firebird on hand for pages that just won't otherwise work.

And of course, over in the corner is a PC loaded with Linux and Free BSD -- for when I feel like doing some *real* programming ;-)

For word processing, I use an old (legal) copy of MS Word 97 although I will get around to replacing this with Open Office sometime in the near future.

As for stuff I have but seldom if ever use, the list includes: Macromedia Fireworks, Macromedia Flash, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Apple Quicktime (full ver$ion) and some other dross.

But that's just me -- what are the top two or three little nuggets of gold that live on your system and you couldn't do without?

If any Aardvark readers want to share an opinion on today's column or add something, you're invited to chip in and have your say in The Aardvark Forums or, if you prefer, you can contact me directly.

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