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Over the years, I have found a number of tools that make computing
easier. Unfortunately, many of these 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 under a Windows OS. ZTree is the best little unknown software that I have on my computer. ZTree serves a purpose that 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 how 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. 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.
Crosshairs: Toggle crosshairs on and off. The crosshairs intersect at the current cursor location. This can be very useful when designing a diagram in Powerpoint. A free download is available at Mike Lin's webpage: http://www.mlin.net/CrossHair.shtml .
Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com/) is a free photo
organizer and image editor. It does a
good job and the price cannot be beat.
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.
PicPick (http://www.picpick.org/) is a free screen capture program. It is easy to use and does the job. The free version isn't fancy (I don't use the paid version), but if you need to capture parts of a screen, this program will do the job.
R (http://cran.us.r-project.org/welcome.html) is an excellent free statistical package. Of course, R has become very famous in the statistical community so it doesn't need much said about it here. 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. Icon Configuration Utility (ICU) is a small utility that saves the current icon configuration and lets you restore it if something alters it without your wanting this to happen.
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.>
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