The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group
Malcolm’s Favourite Tools
Malcolm Dean


Malcolm Dean offers a description of four tools he uses frequently — to help maintain his productivity

NoteTab Pro Back in the days of DOS, I used Qedit as my favoured text editor. It had much more to offer than the old Edit.Com that came with DOS and later with Windows. These days there are literally thousands of freeware/shareware windows based simple text editors, and little wonder since building one of these is one of the first learning projects done by most Windows programmers.

So why would I choose Notetab? I still keep my old favourite Qedit (these days called Semware Editor Junior) up to date - but it is smart to make use of the extra tricks available in the windows environment. NoteTab Pro is a tabbed text editor, that is you can have many files open, each accessible via its own window tab.

NoteTab Pro can be used just to make/edit simple text files, but can also be configured as a programmers editor. It also comes with an enormous library of coding tools/tips - for example to create HTML - and will allow you to hand cut code and view in a browser.

The nice thing about NoteTab Pro are the extensive set of file/text tools, its simple but highly configurable user interface and the fact that it fires up quickly, handles large files and sits happily in the background.
A stable, bug free program currently at Version 4.95

pdfFactory Pro
  • Shareware

  • Creates PDF files from almost any source

  • http://www.fineprint.com

  • Free to try, US$99.95 to buy

  • The non-pro version is US$49.95
At US$99.95, pdfFactory Pro is not cheap - but it is still a fraction of the price of Adobe Acrobat.

This product will produce PDF files from almost any Windows product
(I haven't found one yet that does not work).

The PRO version has most of the key features found in Adobe Acrobat - compile multiple sources into one document, add delete and rearrange pages within a PDF document, enable/disable the copy, edit, save, password etc. features of Adobe Reader, Auto Index files and so on.

These days, we need to be able to distribute files in a finished form - so they are not changed, and increasingly PDF is the format of choice for distribution for many types of documents and forms.

I have also purchased and occasionally use 602Software Printpak - which is cheaper, and has only some of the features of pdfFactory Pro - but in my view and for my purposes the quality of files is not as good.

For a very strong feature set for production of PDF files, in an easy to use product - pdfFactory Pro is a winner.

Beyond Compare Back in the days of DOS, and in the same way that I used Vernon Buerg's LIST program to do large scale file manipulation, I used a small utility called DIRCOMP to do comparisons of disk/directory/files and carry out synchronisation tasks. Very necessary in the software development and problem solving areas; as we moved into Windows and particularly into long file names and 32 bit systems.

A couple of years ago, I did an Internet survey of Windows based directory comparison tools. I downloaded about five of those that appeared to be the best developed and most supported. After doing a side by side comparison of them all for performance (lack of bugs and compliance with Windows standards), productivity, intuitiveness and interface usability, I selected Beyond Compare. It has turned out to be a little gem. At US$30 it pays for itself very quickly. It is stable, bug free and currently at Version 2.0.1.178. I use it to do problem solving at a PC level or across the LAN. It is used to manage e-mail boxes across the LAN. It also works across the Internet and can be used to synchronise Web pages with those on an external Web server - and then do the FTP work as well.

I think in this case the best features are the very effective user interface and very powerful and easy to use and highly configurable features.

V Fileviewer Back in the good old days when we all used DOS and had our favourite DOS utilities, Buerg's LIST program was one of the best file viewers and managers around. As Windows took over, the stubborn amongst us continued to use the DOS command line and a variety of utilities when any serious file manipulation was to be carried out. For me this continued all the way through to Windows ME. Eventually a tool is required to carry out heavy duty file work under Windows - but one that respects those of us who do not like using a mouse. So V is the perfect solution. There are literally thousands of shareware file managers around. I came across V back in Windows 95 days. I never did get the hang of Windows Explorer and V offered a much more intuitive approach to the typical move, copy, delete, search type tasks.

Additionally it set out to operate via the keyboard - so anyone used to Buerg's LIST program could just continue on with V - but now in a Windows environment with all of the additional tricks that are possible there. It is mouse compatible as well.

It is fully Network capable, fires up quickly and sits happily in the background.

Its built-in file/text searching tools come with the full set of regular expressions.

At US$20 this product has paid for itself several hundredfold over the years I have been using it in productivity terms. Currently at version 2002 SR2. An extremely stable product, bug free program which I would rate as 5/5 for Productivity, Intuitiveness, Interface and Features.

The developer, Charles Prineas provides excellent support and has incorporated many of my requirements into the product over time. V makes handling files of all types easy and it seems to anticipate your next move in a lot of cases - which is not a mystery, just the product of incorporating all the best ideas its many users have requested. The product has been around for years now and has undergone many updates.

Reprinted from the September 2003 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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