I just got a new laptop, courtesy of the lab. Naturally, it’s of the fruity kind. One of the first steps: install essential software.
I thought I’d make a list of software I consider absolutely essential on any new computer, and it became longer than I thought.
General use:
NetNewsWire for news reading
DropBox for file syncing
OmniFocus as a task organizer (the GTD methodology actually works — it has liberated me from reciting a long list of things to do in my head all day long)
CircusPonies Notebook for note taking
iStat Pro for system monitoring
If I want to develop software:
Fink and MacPorts so I can get various unix tools (I can’t settle for one or the other, since some tools are in one of them only, but normally Fink is nicer since the packages are precompiled)
Apple’s developer tools
If I want to read and write papers:
So these are the “absolute essentials”. Of course web apps like gmail count too, but they require no installation. Anything I’ve missed?
One thing I do not install, but perhaps should, is Apple’s MobileMe. Considering how fruity my environment is, there ought to be some benefit. But between Dropbox, my own DAV server for calendars, and built-in syncing of apps like OmniFocus, I can make things stay in sync anyway, so MobileMe is probably not worth the cost… I think.
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