old computing 1

My first computer was an Amstrad 286 running DOS, of course.

It had 1Mb of RAM and a 40Mb HDD. Nothing much these days.

On it I ran Word 5, mainly, a few shareware packages and Timeline 3, I think it was.

I replaced this with an Amstrad 386 shortly afterwards and added Windows to the mix. It was necessary to run Excel, which I did.

I added a couple of other packages over time: I was fascinated with Hypercard on the Mac, and bought a Brightbill Roberts knock off named Hyper Pad. It was very buggy. I also bought Toolbook thinking it would do something similar, but it did not.

On both I relied on Norton Commander for file management, although I added XTreePro Gold for some of its nicer functionality. Commander was my mainstay.

For pure text processing I used Boxer; very handy for making batch files, which I found very neat speed ups for a lot of system level work, starting programs, etc.

Kitting up a Mac

Kitting out a Mac for a high school student:

The basic kit that comes with the Mac is fine, but to go finer, here’s what I’m adding:

Quicksilver: best for quick keyboard access to everything. If that didn’t work so well, Alfred but the productivity pack is a payer.

Finder is pretty good for everyday work, but to really lift the hood on the file system: Pathfinder.

Evernote, but with Alternote/Simplenote/ Notational Velocity as a front end…not sure which yet.

Itsycal: a calendar on the menu bar or Day-O/Fantastical

ihomework to keep track of the dredded

Kindle for Mac: for all those books you don’t want to carry

Dropbox: for files, along with a google account for

Google Docs

We’ll still need a quick local word job: Bean

For serious writing either Scrivener or Ulysses. I’m familiar with Scrivener, having it both on Mac and Windows machines, but Ulysses does look nice.

Skype, Adium, Chrome for communicating/web.

aText for text expansion
While we're on 'text', how about a plain 'ol text editor: Textwranger. There are others, but this is my favourite. 

Skim for PDF annotation, although watch out for the SourceForge malware/crapware.

VLC and Handbreak for media

EagleFiler for storing random stuff, DevonthinkPro Office for organized storing of stuff

Back up system: Crashplan has been well reviewed, but I’ll also look at: Backblaze, Carbonite…

The great void in the Mac world is for a cheap simple relational database system…not essential, but can be useful for collection and analysis of structured data…candidates are idatabase by Apimac, Kexi (an open source offering) or MySQL, but that’s complicated. Tap Forms? iList Data? Firebird?

GraphicConverter to convert graphics

Image editing. I’d like open source, but I can’t get past Photoshop Elements and Premier for hitting the price-performance sweet spot, but as it bloats, I may look elsewhere.

Audacity for sound processing (also Audio Hijack and Fission)

I’ve played around with a few search tools, as Spotlight is rather a blunt instrument; current favourite is Flashlight, but I used to use HoudaSpot, which was pretty good.

Hocus Focus to manage a screen full of windows.

Dictionary extension: Terminology

Stats package: Wizard standard, by Evan Miller

General maths; Mathematica (of course), student edition

Lastly, some hardware: a wireless scanner: Iriscan Book 3 Executive is just the ticket.

Ideally I’d like to have a tiny camera: lens linked by USB to the laptop. Useful for snapping the blackboard/whiteboard (if not smartboard).

Of course, some Bible software would be great too.