Useful Windows Tools for Productivity Tasks

It is perhaps not the most popular topic in some quarters, but as I used the copy of Windows on my gaming PC to write the initial content for my Gemini capsule, I felt that it was only fair for me to share some of the productivity tools that I found useful while I was doing that.

Some of the programs listed below require a paid license and may not be available on Linux or macOS:

• AutoHotkey for automated scripts.
• Corel WordPerfect for old school word processing.
• Directory Opus is a premium file manager with powerful search tools.
• IrfanView is a flexible and versatile image viewer.
• FileZilla is an SFTP and SCP client.
• Lagrange is a cross-platform gemini browser.
• Microsoft PowerToys provides various useful power user utilities.
• Notepad++ is an excellent source code editor.
• Paint.NET is a handy entry level mage editor and drawing program.
• Pegasus Mail is an old school email client.
• Microsoft PowerShell is a powerful administrator terminal.
• Quattro Pro is an old school spreadsheet program.
• Visual Studio Code is a fast and free integrated development environment.
• VideoLAN Client is mature and flexible media player and podcast client.
• Windows Subsystem for Linux is a built-in bash schell and Linux compatibility layer.
• Windows Terminal provides a tabbed GUI for mixed terminal sessions.
• WinGet is a fully supported package manager for Windows apps.
• WinRAR is a premium archiving tool.

I am pleased to see that Windows Terminal and WinGet are now included by default in Windows 11, but it is annoying that users still have to manually upgrade PowerShell.

While it was fun experimenting with Pegasus Mail and Corel WordPerfect, I quickly reverted back to using Mozilla Thunderbird and LibreOffice instead. Fortunately, the Windows ports for both of those open source programs are excellent.