A boring list of tools for Windows: 2016 edition

  • \o/

A boring list of tools for Windows: 2016 edition

Sun Jul 17 2016
3 minute read

I had this list halfway finished, when I actually took a look at the 2014 list and to my surprise I a) wrote it basically 2 years ago and b) hardly anything has changed.

So I'll start with the changes:

  • Browsers:
    • no more IronPortable for Facebook, but a dedicated profile and -no-remote
  • Audio/Video:
    • haven't used Mp3Tag in ages
  • Editors:
    • I never fully warmed up with LightTable
    • still unimpressed with Atom
    • used Visual Studio Code for some Rust stuff, it's cool
    • not using eclipse for much these days
    • gVim for special tasks that Notepad2 can't do
  • Jabber:
    • Gajim (like on Linux) instead of PidginPortable
  • Misc:
    • SyncThing on my NAS instead of BTSync
  • Programming stuff:
    • leiningen, Rust and Github's git cli client (hardly ever the GUI)
  • PortableApps:
    • Didn't need Audacity in the last 2 years I guess
  • Random stuff:
    • Been using VirtualBox more for work stuff (when working from home)
    • Gow seems cool, but I don't really need it on Windows when a linux is just a putty away
    • Started using Launchy again

And here are the newcomers:

  • Spotify - Free user, listening to an album once in a while when I might buy it
  • Wordpress.com - Surprisingly handy if you post to a blog on wordpress.com
  • cmder - Finally a proper terminal, although ConEmu isn't too bad either
  • Discord - Tried it out for a while, but no community where I feel I belong to, so on hiatus again
  • Juice - downloading and keeping track of Podcasts (JuicePortable)
  • PicPick - awesome screenshot tool (PicPickPortable)

And some stuff I hadn't mentioned last time:

  • KVIrc - when testing irc stuff, used to my default client before Quassel (KVIrcPortable)
  • Pidgin - also for testing, jabber stuff (PidginPortable)
  • Skype - had to use it twice this year already...
  • Notepad2_lua - Notepad2 version with a Lua lexer, should be replaced if I found something proper and small and wrote more Lua

The wishlist:

  • Something to really quickly share screenshots (and files) - picpick (or copying file) + syncthing is nice, but not perfect
  • A bigger 2nd screen, IRC really does take up some space

Pinned items on my task bar (which is on the top of the second, smaller, monitor):

  • Chrome
  • Firefox
  • Explorer
  • Quassel
  • Thunderbird
  • foobar2000
  • Notepad2
  • PuTTY
  • TweetDeck
  • Steam

Everything not under changes above is still the same as in the 2014 list. How unexciting.