Operating system: Windows XP, Vista

Bibliographic database:

I clung to ProCite for many years after its demise. The free Firefox add-on Zotero is intriguing and very good at scraping records off the web, but appears far from ready for serious academic or professional use. I tried Biblioscape a few years ago but it crashed my system a couple of times and I haven't given it another chance. Instead, I've taken up the apparent market leader, EndNote, and have been very happy with it. The extensive output-style customization and solid integration with Word are selling points for me.

Encryption:

I once used PGP when it was free. Currently looking for other solutions.

File management: Total Commander. Embarrassing name but good program.

File synchronization:

For a long time I tried to keep all my files based on just a single system, aside from backups. But it makes much more sense to keep mirrored copies of critical folder trees on each computer in use, as well as on a server drive. Careful synchronization then becomes a must. I use Super Flexible File Synchronizer; the pro version supports SFTP.

FTP: FileZilla Client

Password management:

KeePass is free, open-source, thoughtfully done — in short, lovable.

Photo utility:

Irfanview has long been an impressive freeware utility for photo viewing and basic editing and format conversion. Note in particular the batch processing functions, e.g. for resampling or renaming a large number of photos or image files at once.

Text editor:

EditPad Pro, while not free, is elegant and efficient. I use it for many things, including writing Stata do-files and html pages like this one. Its fine features include good syntax coloring, keyboard shortcuts, and sophisticated text encoding options for dealing with different character sets such as Unicode, GB, and Big5.

Statistics: Stata 9

Web browser:

Firefox, with these add-ons: NoScript, for self-defense against malicious code; Flashblock, for getting control over the visual cacaphony that many sites throw at you, and Xmarks, for effortlessly synchronizing bookmarks among different computers.

Word processor:

I was a WordPerfect dead-ender, cherishing the memories of versions 4.2 and 5.1, which got me through college. The realities of academic publishing and collaboration, along with the need to work with Chinese-language material, made me reluctantly switch to Word. As I learned more about it, and particularly since installing Word 2007, I came to embrace its paragraph-based, object-oriented ways. For those not already familiar with Word's finer points and the essential but widely neglected use of paragraph styles, definitely see Shauna Kelly's site, and also the MVP site.

Miscellaneous utilities:

Speedfan for monitoring system temperatures