Last updated: Monday, April 29, 2008
Stuff I Use
I do my work on a 5 year old HP running XP. (I have a Dell Vista laptop; but I don't program on it. It's just a handy little computer to carry around as needed.)
My ISP use to be Earthlink. I hated to leave the company. They did a great job of shutting down my spam problem. I highly recommend Earthlink. However, QWest made me an offer I could not refuse. I live in a rural area, and had endured a 28.8 dial up modem for years. In December of 2005, QWest finally provided minimal DSL. I simply love the speed of my (slow) DSL. The package offered MSN. As money was an issues; I now use MSN as my ISP. Good luck to Earthlink! I hope they continue to do will.
When I released ColorMorph, I signed up with RegNow, a division of Digital River to handle the sales of ColorMorph.
I use NoteTab, ClipMate, WinZip. I program with .Net 2008 C# and C++/CLI. WSMaze and WSQuiz were written under Visual Studio 6 MFC. ColorMorph was written using Visual Studio 2005 C++/CLI with just a bit of C#. It requires DOT NET Framework 2.0. My future work will be in C#.
I believe one should pay for shareware if one uses it. Hence, I want to recommend the following few programs which I use and have registered. Get them -- they are good!
NoteTabPro www.notetab.com -- Really helps keep ones text files in order. Lots of great features! Highly recommended. (Shareware)
ClipMate www.thornsoft.com -- So much better than the MS clipboard it isn't funny. I could not work without it! (Shareware) (BUY THIS PROGRAM!)
Now I user MS's Expression Web. But in the past I used WS_FTP www.ipswitch.com -- This FTP is quality! (Commercial)
And who can function without the famous WinZip www.winzip.com (Shareware/Commercial)
In December of 2005, I signed up with Microsoft's Empower program and became a Microsoft Independent Software Vendor. This to further the commercialization of WedgeSoft. If you are an aspiring programmer or net entrepreneur you should look into Microsoft's Empower program. I was amazed at what I received for the cost. But, the program is limited to only two years, and my two years of subscription has expired. It was nice having access to the latest and greatest software offered by MS; but I can not afford a full MSDN license. As the years go by, form here on, I'll just fall behind, or pay for my own upgrades.
For years my site was very word oriented with few graphics, and created using Word 2003. But I first I acquired a license for FrontPage 2003 to support my progress toward a more commercially oriented site. And in July of 2006 began to use a few more graphics. And now I have Expression Web. (In many respects, I preferred FrontPage to Expression Web.)
I have an HP of reasonable size, Media Center (now 5 years old). I don’t recommend Media Center. But the HP is a good computer. (In time I had problems with Media Center and abandoned the operating system shipped with my HP. I formatted my disk, and installed a vanilla Windows XP Professional.)
My latest and most loved computer feature is (are?) my dual monitors! Love them! When I purchased my old 95 machine I paid big bucks for a quality 19 inch monitor. Christmas of 2004, my wife gave me a Princeton 19 inch LCD. (Princeton is an off brand sold by Costco – likely made in China; but it works.) I purchased an ASUS V9570TD dual graphics card. (I’m not a gamer; but this is a gamers card.) Now I have dual monitors. Put my IDE on one, and run my tests on the other, move the mouse from screen to screen. I would hate to go back to a single monitor. If you want to expand your computer: first buy memory, then disk -- then I recommend dual monitors!
Then, Christmas of 2005, my wife bought me a 300 GB disk. And Christmas of 2007 a Seagate FreeAgent external USB disk drive. Another 300 GB's! ( Oh yes! She’s a keeper!) I use the FreeAgent to backup our various computers.
In 2005, I purchased a 9100 Dell with a gig of memory for my wife. She didn’t really feel she needed it. But she works with images and she needed it! She loves it. And in early 2008; we bought another Dell, a Vista laptop. Guess I just love computers.
Of course I use Word and Excel. I use IE rather than Netscape. (In the past I preferred Netscape.)
If you are interested in code: visit www.CodeProject.com – a great site for programmers. There are lots of examples.
WedgeSoft Maze is virus free, and will remain so, as long as Norton does their job. Thus far I've been lucky and have never caught a virus. (Hope I never do!)
I use to use MS's Help Workshop and the InstallShield's V6 which came with Visual Studio 6.0 (www.installshield.com). Now I use the install program built into Visual Studio 2008. I purchased Help Scribble to write the help pages for ColorMorph. Help Scribble is about ninety dollars. A low end help creation program. (I am on a low end budget!) But, it works ok. I rather like MS's installer; built into VS2008; but it is also a basic solution.