Entrepreneur’s Software Arsenal
Oct 2nd, 2007 by jared
I’ve put together a list of software that help me be productive. I wish there was one place you could go to download all of this for one price. Google is kind of leading the way with its Pack, but it still doesn’t cover half of the tools an entrepreneur needs.
- 1. Adobe Acrobat 8 Pro: Creating, editing, and managing .PDF files is a must for any businessman. This is not just the best program, it’s the only program. Get it!
- 2. AIM Pro: Most everyone I know uses AIM, so why not get the best AIM program? AIM Pro has business–grade security which is very important for me. It also integrates with Outlook so you can get all instant messages and calendar events, and can send email, in one convenient place.
- 3. Dreamweaver: Macromedia makes this product, and it really is a must-have if you do any kind of corporate newsletter creation or template editing. I even use Dreamweaver sometimes to update our website when our webmaster is not around.
- 4. Firefox: Even though I don’t use this as my main browser, it’s always good to have Firefox handy so you can test your website to make sure its compatible. It is gaining a lot of market share.
- 5. Gimp: If you are like me, you always need a good picture editor so you can crop and resize images. I used to use Photoshop for this, but it’s such a large program and I don’t need 95% of the features. Gimp is a free program that really does the trick!
- 6. Glance: I covered this in a previous post, but if you want to run online demos for customers, this is a very simple program and you don’t have to download anything.
- 7. JConnect: I have a public fax machine at my office, and nothing is worse than a co-worker picking up a secure document. Using this program I can get faxes sent directly to my desktop and even create a PDF that can be easily emailed.
- 8. Kaspersky: I have been using this as my anti-virus software program. It costs $60 per year but you get regular updates for new viruses. It also scans your email.
- 9. Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000: If you do any video conferencing this is probably the best camera to have. Also you can record everything and turn it into a movie, which is great if you want to vlog or throw stuff up on Youtube.
- 10. Office 2007: This is light years ahead of 2003. It’s a must have! See my vlog about how to get this suite for quite a bit less than retail price.
- 11. Skype: I do all of my international calls with Skype. Get a Bluetooth USB key and use your cell phone Bluetooth headset to make your calls.
- 12. Sprint Mobile Broadband Card: The EX720 Express Card by Novatel Wireless, used with Sprint’s mobile broadband, is truly incredible. I was driving through the mountains of Santa Barbara last weekend and surfed the ‘Net with speeds as fast as my office. I didn’t realize that technology had come this far. You have to pick up this card if you cannot live without the Internet. The service is $60 per month for unlimited use and the card is about $350.
- 13. Quick Books Pro 2008: Maybe you aren’t doing your books anymore, but it’s always nice to get an update from your bookkeeper so you can run reports and see where you are at for the month. This even allows you to send emails via Outlook through Quickbooks, which is nice for customer invoicing.
- 14. Winamp: I don’t know about you, but when I am not on the phone I love listening to music—it drives me and makes me work better. I used to use iTunes but it takes up so much memory, is bulky, and crashes a lot. Winamp is light and gets the job done, plus you can have playlists within playlists. Think about that for a second.
- 15. Winrar: You need to have a good program to compress files. Even though windows comes with a zip program now, you still need Winrar especially if someone sends you a .rar file.
- 16. X1: This pretty much changed my life. I can find any email, file, contact, calendar appoint etc. within a few seconds. It takes up a lot of memory but blows away any other hard drive search engine on the market. It used to be free but now they charge $50.00 for support. It is so worth it!
I would love to hear more about programs you use. Please start commenting!
Great list. I’d add:
EditPad Pro - for messing the texts around. It can do amazing things.
and a couple of great plugins for Firefox:
RankQuest and Virtual Real Estate Toolbar. Both are free and will help a lot with getting more useful information on the sites you are visiting as well as help with lots of other tasks on the web.
Hey Jared - I forgot about winamp, thx for the list!
It’s been a few years…OK almost a decade now since I used it :).
-Ryan
PS: Having this also setup never hurts:
http://www.ymarketing.com/blog/2007/09/i-took-red-pill-to-hack-my-own-life.html
PSS: lunch next week?
Haha Ryan that is great. I bet in your spare time with all of that computing power you hack russian missle defense systems. In my office I mounted a 37″ LCD on the wall and use that as a second monitor so someone can sit on my couch and watch demos etc.. That is the most “pimped” out I have made my office thus far. Ymarketing.com seems very interesting, lets talk about a partnership!
Shav thanks for the suggestions. They are duley noted.
LOL!
heard you and mr nosek had a great convo…i should have sat in on it but we’ll probably meet up under more casual circumstances next time (someone we know getting married? :).
I agree with you that photoshop has alot of features that are not in use but its sooooo vital. I dont think i could ever give it up.
I use a Mac so alot of these programs aren’t really useful for me but if you ever want to do a blog about great Mac stuff…let me know:)
I really like that fax program though….im going to look into that today!
Google Desktop….
Regarding Office 2007. I’m sure you’ve worked around this, Jared, so this is for everybody else’s benefit. If you run Office 2007, make sure you downgrade your docs to an Office 2003 format. Many people still run the prior version of Word, Excel, etc, which means they can’t read your docs without a special download.
Good point Ryan. This happens to me all of the time. I had to make it a habit to save excel files as 97-2003 format.
[...] I do for organization is use a program called X1. You will find out more about this in my post, “Entrepreneur’s Software Arsenal.” It’s only $50.00, and it will change your [...]