--- title: Software I currently use date: "2014-05-09T17:19:34Z" lastmod: "2014-05-09T17:23:31Z" categories: - top-10-lists wp_id: 2861 description: I share my go-to Windows software toolkit, covering essentials like Sublime Text 3 and Console2 alongside specialized data science tools like Anaconda, RStudio, and Open Refine for analysis and visualization. keywords: [sublime text 3, anaconda, open refine, rstudio, autohotkey, cygwin, data science tools, windows software] --- Every few years, I review the software I use. Here are some of my [earlier](/blog/software-for-my-new-laptop-2/) [lists](/blog/software-for-my-new-laptop/). Right now, among **browsers**, [Chrome](https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/) is my primary browser. What’s interesting is that [IE 11](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-IN/internet-explorer/download-ie) has overtaken [Firefox](http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/) in terms of usage. That’s partly because we’re working with Microsoft a lot, but also because Firefox has a number of weird bugs like IE6 used to have, and is slowly lagging in the race. Next to browsers, I spend most of my time on the **command prompt**. I use [Console2](http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/) for tabbed console windows. Given the number of command prompts I open, this is often necessary. I use bash in [Cygwin](http://www.cygwin.com/) as the default shell. Haven’t had the need for PowerShell. The only **text editor** I use is [Sublime Text 3](http://www.sublimetext.com/). This is the only text editor I’ve used for the last 3 years. The only plugin I use is [PlainTasks](https://github.com/aziz/PlainTasks) which I use as my todo list. I write my blog posts in [Windows Live Writer](http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=8621), which makes blogging offline quite painless. For **image editing**, I use [PicPick](http://www.picpick.org/) to capture screens and basic editing. Since I haven’t upgraded to Windows 8, I don’t have the [snipping tool](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-in/windows/use-snipping-tool-capture-screen-shots). But PicPick also lets me pick colors from the screen, which is pretty useful when copying designs. For slightly more serious editing like changing colours, adding annotations, etc., I use [Paint.NET](http://www.getpaint.net/). It’s close enough to Photoshop for most practical uses. On rare occasions, I’ve needed to power of [GIMP](http://www.gimp.org/) – especially to [remove background on images](http://docs.gimp.org/2.8/en/plug-in-colortoalpha.html). But when even this fails me, it’s [ImageMagick](http://www.imagemagick.org/) to the rescue, with inscrutable command line options that can morph Obama into Osama. If I want to edit icon files (to create favicons, for example), I use [IcoFX](http://icofx.ro/). For vector graphics, I use [InkScape](http://www.inkscape.org/en/), which has a steep learning curve but doesn’t seem to have a good free alternative. To edit shapefiles, I use [QGIS](http://www.qgis.org/en/site/), and [Shape Viewer](http://www.qarah.com/shapeviewer/) to view them. For **music and movies**, I’ve kept it simple: I use [VLC](http://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html). It lets me stream on to my iPad. I can also watch/stream movies as they are being downloaded via [μTorrent](http://www.utorrent.com/) – which is probably the coolest feature feature of any torrent client. I store all my music in one large folder, and keep .m3u playlists. These are rsynced periodically into my [Android phone](http://www.xolo.in/). For **audio editing**, [Audacity](http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) remains my best bet. However, for **video editing**, my needs have changed. It’s usually screen-recordings I need to create, so I don’t use [VirtualDub](http://www.virtualdub.org/) much. I’ve moved from [CamStudio](http://camstudio.org/) to [Microsoft Expression Encoder Screen Capture](http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=10732) (long name for a rather nice piece of software that works reasonably well.) To read **books**, I’ve started using [Calibre](http://calibre-ebook.com/), simply because it can read both ePub and .mobi formats. Since then, I’ve been using [Kindle](http://www.amazon.com/gp/kindle/pc) less. I continue to use my old copy of [Microsoft Reader](http://www.microsoft.com/reader/), even though the product is dead, because I have a lot of .lit files. (That’s one of the advantages of software over online services. Even if they pull the plug, you can use an old copy of the software. And it works!) To read PDF files, I use [Foxit PDF Reader](http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/). On the extremely rare occasion that I need to print PDF files from a software that does not support PDF printing, I use [CutePDF Writer](http://www.cutepdf.com/products/cutepdf/writer.asp). For **file sharing**, I use [Dropbox](http://www.dropbox.com/) for files. It’s simple, popular and just works. I tried [BitTorrent Sync](http://www.bittorrent.com/sync) as a peer-to-peer alternative to Dropbox, but the interface has a long way to go before it’s usable. I do hope something emerges. For **screen sharing**, I use [TeamViewer](http://www.teamviewer.com/) (which is fast) or [join.me](https://join.me/) (which doesn’t require a client). Though I use [Skype](http://www.skype.com/) for calls, I don’t find its screen-sharing fast enough. I play around with **data** a lot. This is mostly done in Python, for which I use [Continuum’s Anaconda builds](http://continuum.io/downloads) – they have most of the useful packages built-in. When I need to scrape Javascript-based websites, I try [CasperJS](http://casperjs.org/) on top of [PhantomJS](http://phantomjs.org/). This is particularly handy for the several ASPX based Government websites. I also have [node.js](http://nodejs.org/) installed, but don’t really use it much. I use [RStudio](https://www.rstudio.com/) as my R IDE. I’m experimenting with [Tabula](http://www.tabula.com/) to see if it’s practical to extract PDF tables with it, but my current preference is to use [xpdf](http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/download.html) to convert PDF to text and then process it. For data cleansing, there’s only one tool that I know that’s effective: [Open Refine](http://openrefine.org/). For network visualisations, I use [Gephi](https://gephi.org/), though [NodeXL](http://nodexl.codeplex.com/) can do a small but useful subset of that within Excel. For **compression**, I use [7-zip](http://www.7-zip.org/). The 7z format provides the best compression across most file types that I’ve seen, but even if you want to use ZIP files, 7-zip creates smaller ZIP files. For **image compression**, I use [kraken.io](https://kraken.io/web-interface), which offers the best compression I’ve seen. On the desktop, [TruePNG](http://css-ig.net/articles/truepng) and [jpegoptim](http://freecode.com/projects/jpegoptim) do the trick. There are several small **utilities** I use. [WinDirStat](https://windirstat.info/) tells me how my hard disk space is used up, helping clean drives and Dropbox folders. [ClipX](http://bluemars.org/clipx/) lets you copy and keep multiple items in the clipboard. [Restoration](http://www3.telus.net/mikebike/RESTORATION.html) can undelete even permanently deleted files. [Truecrypt](http://www.truecrypt.org/) keeps files encrypted. [Putty](http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html) lets you connect via SSH if you don’t have cygwin. But the mother of all tools is [AutoHotkey](http://www.autohotkey.com/), which I use for everything ranging from typing my signature to resizing windows to storing our conference bridge numbers. I’ve a number of **web servers** on my system. I use [XAMPP](https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html) for Apache, MySQL and PHP, but also have [nginx](http://nginx.org/) handy. But the simplest, easiest and smallest web server is perhaps [Mongoose](https://code.google.com/p/mongoose/). Just run it in any folder to start a web server. `python -mSimpleHTTPServer` does the same for developers. I also have [Fiddler](http://www.telerik.com/fiddler) installed as a proxy – partly to monitor what URLs my applications access, and partly to simulate slow speed connections for the web apps I build. Apart from MySQL in XAMPP, I have a few **databases** installed: [SQL Server](http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/products/sql-server/), [SQLite](http://www.sqlite.org/) and [SQLite Studio](http://sqlitestudio.pl/) to read the sqlite3 files. Of course, some of my apps apps have moved online, and my earlier post on the [A-Z of my browsing history](/blog/a-z-of-my-browsing-history/) covers that. But there are a few applications that I’ve **hosted** which I must talk about. [WordPress](http://wordpress.org/), which [this blog](http://www.s-anand.net/) runs on, is the primary one on the list. I also use [gitlab](https://www.gitlab.com/) as an internal alternative to Github, [slideshare.net](http://www.slideshare.net/) to share slides, and [etherpad.mozilla.org](http://etherpad.mozilla.org/) to chat / collaborate on code. But the application that I spend the most time on is [selfoss](http://selfoss.aditu.de/) – an RSS reader, my replacement for the late beloved Google Reader. --- ## Comments - **[Pravin](http://v-pravin.github.io)** _10 May 2014 8:04 pm_: Try Sumatra (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumatra\_PDF), it is a reader that supports PDF, EPUB, MOBI, i suspect its support for .lit files but you can give it a try as it is very lite on the system(It opens my Excel 2013 Bible e-book in less time compared to Foxit PDF Reader). - **Jason** _7 Sep 2014 1:59 am_: Hey what happened to mDesktop? ;) - **[Nipun](http://nikhco.in)** _10 Jul 2014 11:02 pm_: Get a mac, this list will be much smaller then ;) - **Vang Lian** _28 Aug 2014 8:52 am_: I use notepad++ as editor. Now sublime text looks very interesting. Thanks for the recommendation - **Raghavendra** _14 Apr 2016 5:39 pm_: Hey Ananad, hope you remember me. I know only one data scientist so far n its you. Happy to read you blogs. - **Khair** _30 Mar 2016 5:29 pm_: Since I haven’t upgraded to Windows 8, I don’t have the snipping tool Snipping Tool is available on Windows 7 as well, I just assumed you are on Windows OS ! :( - **Vigneshraja** _7 Jun 2017 7:34 am_: Try Canopy for python - **rpv** _8 Aug 2017 1:46 am_: What is the ereader of your choice if not Kindle?