CONVENIENT COMPUTING:
(back
to John Miyamoto's homepage)
Over the years, I have found a number of tools that make computing
easier that, unfortunately, are not well known to most computer users. Most of
these tools are shareware or low cost software. Other tools include useful Word
macros, SPSS tricks, and R functions that I have written and am happy to
distribute for free. This page is dedicated to communicating these tools to the
general public. It is not subsidized in any way by any of the products
mentioned here.
Helpful (Somewhat Unknown) Software
ZTREE (http://www.ztree.com/html/ztreewin.htm)
is a utility for organizing files. Its purpose is similar to Windows Explorer
or MyComputer, but it is much, much, much better than either of these
products. The only downside to Ztree is that it takes a bit of effort to learn
to use it. Once you learn a few of its functions, however, you can organize
files, move them from place to place, reorganize your directory structure, find
out information about files, change their attributes, ...., with
extraordinary ease. ZTree is one of the most useful pieces of software in
my repertoire, and perhaps it will be so for you, too. You can try it for free.
If you like it, you can pay for it ($30 as of 3/14/2012), but if you don't,
then don't pay. Ztree is the most useful computing "secret" that I
know of.
Notepad++ (http://notepad-plus-plus.org/) is a free text editor. It is a good programming editor but it is also convenient to use for all sorts of general purpose text editing.
ThumbsPlus (http://www.cerious.com/) is a nice program for organizing and editing jpg and gif images. It is especially useful if you want to organize photo images. You can easily create electronic photo albums complete with expandable thumbnail images of photos. You can download it for free, and pay for it later if you like it.
Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com/) is a free photo
organizer and image editor. It does a
good job and he price cannot be beat.
MathType (http://www.mathtype.com/) is an equation editor. It is very similar to the equation editor that is distributed with Microsoft Word, but it has many features that are not included in the Word equation editor. Mathtype is not needed by the average user, but if you need to write a lot of math text, e.g., because you teach statistics, then it is a worthwhile investment.
DATA from TreeAge (http://www.treeage.com) is software for creating influence diagrams and decision trees, and computing decision analytic results from such diagrams. There are a number of competing products that serve this purpose. I don't know the strengths and weaknesses of these products, but DATA from TreeAge does the job for me.
R (http://cran.us.r-project.org/welcome.html) is an excellent free statistical package. For more information about R and how to download it, take a look at my R-notes. R has Windows, Mac, Unix, and Linux versions.
Restore your Desktop icon configuration: Ever had your layout of icons on the Desktop suddenly changed by a new piece of software. It's pretty annoying to have to put all of the icons back to where you want them. Here is a small utility that saves the current icon configuration and lets you restore if it something alters it unintentionally. Go to Midiox.com; click on MIDI TOOLS; click on Desktop Restore (or scroll down the page until you find Desktop Restore); then choose between DSREX.EXE, DSREXU.EXE and DTCMD.ZIP. Download the software and install it. I use DSREXU.EXE, and it appears to work fine.
PicPick: Screen capture program. Download at www.picpick.org.
Crosshairs: Toggle crosshairs on and off. The crosshairs intersect at the current cursor location.
It amazes me that my friends and colleagues are pretty ignorant of the capabilities of Microsoft Word despite the amount of time they spend using this program. There are four Word features that are especially useful and under appreciated, namely,
· templates & styles
· autotext
· customized keyboard shortcuts.
· macros
## I intend to start putting word processing suggestions here. ##
<Need usage notes on: Word macros, Word key customization, Word autotext. MathType.>
Return to John Miyamoto's Homepage