Carl Tyler's Blog :: Tools you'd find it hard to live without...

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We've all had them, some more than others, that's right tools that we found so useful we couldn't imagine how we ever got along without them. The first real tool I had like this was Lotus Magellan, in fact there are still times now where I really miss Magellan, especially when I'm trying to find out the files that are taking up the most space on my hard drive. We used to dread Lotus Magellan calls (not as much as Agenda) in tech support as we were always terrified the person using it had deleted their hard drive, two clicks was all it took.

Today my list of tools that I find really helpful no longer includes Magellan, although I wish it did, consists of:

VM Ware - This reminds me of the Virtual Machines that used to be in OS/2 2.0, if you need to test on different Operating Systems or want to run as different users for a demo on the same box, this can't be beat.
Sizer - A great free utility that allows you to size windows to specific sizes, this is great for testing web pages at different sizes, or applications at difference sizes.
Notes/Domino - It will still be a few years until anything can let me do what I do with Notes/Domino today without a team of developers. Truly one of the greatest pieces of software ever.
PaintShopPro 5 - I think they're up to version 8 now, but I've never felt the need to upgrade, I can fly around version 5 pretty quickly, and it does what I need. Compared to Photo shop at the time it was just so much better value.

What tools do you miss or use?

Comments

1 - That's bizarre, I had a real comment there, wonder how it got lost.
Anyway, I miss PC Tools. Everyone in my dorm had a pirated copy

. I was a big fan of disk defragging -- it felt like taking a cleansing steam bath.
I also remember having to park the heads on the monstrous 20 MB hard drive of my Zenith 8088 before turning it off. those were the days

Posted by Ed Brill At 08:12:41 PM On 08/08/2003 | - Website - |

2 - oh yeah who can forget SD, UN and all those other great utils of two letters. In the early days at Lotus we had some Compaqs whose heads once they were parked would lock up, we found a drop of about 8-12 inches would fix it

Posted by Carl At 08:43:20 PM On 08/08/2003 | - Website - |

3 - The calls I dreaded the most were calls for 1-2-3 on the DEC Rainbow....remember those? Anyway, I really liked Magellan as well. Do you know about the curse? Products that had names that began with the letter "M", or codenames that began with the letter "M" were jinxed and doomed to fail - Magellan, 1-2-3 for Mac, "MadDog" (LotusWorks), the list goes on and on. Wow, I am really dating myself (well not really, I date someone else!)

Posted by Liz McKay At 09:01:14 PM On 08/11/2003 | - Website - |

4 - Liz, how could we forget the M curse...and as for 1-2-3 for Dec Rainbow, remember all those other 1-2-3 versions for IBM compatible PCs

And who can forget SET DOS16M= commands, and to anyone who ever supported the OS/2 products, "Oh you're trying to print, turn of the print spooler and I'm sure it work", and my most popular phrase to other people on the hotline that would come and ask me question.... "have you checked on bluefish". Hey congratulations I heard your news the other day, I'm very very excited for you! Now how did you come across this site?

Posted by Carl At 09:26:09 PM On 08/11/2003 | - Website - |

5 - I can do you one better - do you remember the size of the 123.com file before and after copy protection was removed for 1-2-3 R2.01??!! Jeez, I need to get a life.

Thanks for the well wishes....we have a long way to go, the little one isn't due until March, so my misery (and Steve's!) is just beginning! Rob Ingram pointed me here and I have gotten lot's of laughs daily! Keep 'em coming. Oh by the way, how the weight loss percentage going?

Liz

Posted by Liz McKay At 08:18:03 PM On 08/12/2003 | - Website - |

6 - Yes Liz, that is sad, I'm glad to say that I don't remember that (or do I), but I can pretty much remember, the 1-2-3, Freelance and Graphwriter menus from memory

Finger memory is a powerful thing.

Weight loss updates happen on Thursdays

Posted by Carl At 01:25:06 PM On 08/13/2003 | - Website - |

7 - Carl,

You hit my favourite - Paintshop Pro - I did just upgrade from v. 6 to v8 and it is worth it for a great one step photo enhancer. You click on it and it goes through about 6 different enhancements - it really works and I've tried a lot of different photo products.

And to Ed's point about PC Tools - I used to love that and now use a product called Systemsuite (now from v-com.com) that does almost all the same things as PC Tools - definately the compaction and my favorite is a tool that shows the the sizes of all of your directories and sub-directories.

cheers,

Neil.

Posted by Neil Agate At 08:53:01 AM On 08/20/2003 | - Website - |