Jonathan Briggs Online

Nuclear Medicine Service Engineer plus Computing and Photography Enthusiast

A few notes on the some of the software I enjoy using on my Windows 7 computer. All the software detailed below is available free of charge unless otherwise stated.

• Anti-Malware Software - Avast! I'm now using this excellent anti-virus and anti-spyware program. Has minimal impact on my PC adding only a few seconds to the boot time while it's daily quick scans typically take only a couple of minutes and don't interrupt your work, unless of course it finds something nasty!. Paid-for versions are also available with more comprehensive features.
• Web browsing - Currently I find that Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) does easily the best job of correctly rendering and just as importantly printing the websites I regularly visit. But IE9 doesn't have a user interface that I enjoy working with so I've switched to using Lunascape for web browsing as it uses both the same rendering engine as IE9 plus it provides the faciliity to easily switch rendering engines to either that used by Firefox or the one used by Chrome/Safari. It also provides online bookmark syncing so it's easy to maintain the same bookmarks on my desktop and laptop computers.
  
• Email - Mozilla Thunderbird. Allows multiple accounts, different signatures for each account, you can define rules to filter your incoming emails and warns you if you forget to add an attachment to an outgoing email.
  
• Quick launcher - Object Dock A great way to keep your desktop tidy while allowing quick, elegant access to regularly used programs and folders.
• Personal Information Manager - Evernote (free for personal use up to the monthly limit).
  Evernote is great for storing all sorts of information and syncs your notes to "the cloud". This means you can have Evernote installed on multiple devices and easily keep them all in sync without for example having to fiddle with USB sticks.
  
• Photo manager and raw photo developer - ACDSee Pro. Does a great job of both managing and editing your photo collection. Includes comprehensive raw development capabilities.
• Compiling this website - SeaMonkey. A very easy to use web page editor.