Access Tools of the Trade
Note from
Kevin Anderson’s talk
CAUG, Sep.
2011
Inspiration -
Mike Gunderloy's blog: http://afreshcup.com/home/2009/10/11/my-tools-of-the-trade-2009.html
Hardware
Primary
development PC: moving to HP DV7 core i5 laptop with 6MB RAM, plus 4GB SD card
for ReadyBoost. Has extra bay for a
second hard drive, plan to use for Solid State Drive (SSD).
Backup
- Maxtor external drive for weekly local backups.
- Bare external hard drive with USB/SATA adapter for
quarterly drive image backup using Gparted Live CD and
rotated off-site.
- Cloud backup: JungleDisk, have used Microsoft Live
Mesh.
Software
- OS: Windows7 Home Premium 64-bit. Trying to get by with having to upgrade
to Ultimate/Professional. Was using
Ultimate before.
- Access/Office: MS Office XP thru Office 2010, but
mostly use Access 2003 – oldest version supported in Windows7 that has code
signing.
- Virtual Machine: Virtualbox
(free from Oracle). Faster, more
reliable than Microsoft XP Mode/Virtual PC, plus is cross-platform.
- Code signing: komodo – cheapest I’ve found, works
fine.
- Text editor: Notepad++, but still have Notepad as my
default.
- Terminal shell: putty. Use to setup SSH for secure Internet at
public wifi sites.
- Graphics: Photoshop Elements – can create icons,
stitch images together. Still use
MS Paint for screenshots.
- Accounting: Quickbooks 2002
- Source code control – WinZip ;)
- Project management/issue tracker – various text
files and spreadsheets
Web
- Browser: Chrome/Firefox. Use Firebug add-in in some web
development. Google Reader for RSS
feeds.
- Web-based office – Google Docs – great for sharing
simple files.
- Webmail: Yahoo! Mail, looking for alternative that’s
not gmail.
- Large file transfer: dropbox.com but shopping for
alternative.
Miscellaneous
- ImgBurn
- Virtual Clone Drive
- Fileshredder
- 7-zip