Personal technological Man Fridays...

Taking the analogy of 'stranded alone on an island and what would you carry' and extending it to a similar nightmare that has become all too real for us; the us including the ones who feel a massive withdrawal syndrome if our laptops and the related accessories go kaput one day.

Of course, it is very important to keep a list of passwords somewhere safe online. Along with this, a list of your favourite links should be available online (by using a service like del.icio.us) because you dont want to lose all those hours of browsing to go waste. In any case, most of our computing would be online in a few years. But not very soon...

Waking up from such a nightmare, I decided to list down the very basic requirements that I need up and running in case my laptop becomes a clean slate tomorrow. This list should get me on my feet and my life on track. This is an attempt to understand what my basic needs are and to filter out the unnecessary stuff that gets accumulated on our hard drives over the years, most of which we dont use after the first try.

Scribd uploader- Since all my important documents are stored on scribd, the site has become a repository and the uploader a handy tool

Windows Live writer - Its the best blogging tool that I have come across. Desktop publishing has never become more convenient. This was written on Windows Live writer only

Microsoft Reader and PDF reader- How else am I going to read the tonnes of e-books?

PDF converter - Text is usually too messy and obviously too unglamorous to read most of the times, for which I need this

Winamp - Since the first time that I listening to MP3, Winamp has had me hooked and nothing has made me change my loyalties over the decade. The releases over the years has only solidified the support (except Winamp 3 i.e.)

VLC Player - For watching movies, once you have used VLC, you wonder what the hell are the people behind Windows Media player or any movie player doing. No format is unplayable (except Real media, for which Real Player, unfortunately, has to be downloaded)

Microsoft OneNote - Collecting information in a systematic manner has never proved to be so convenient as when I started using OneNote. Adding functionalities like calendars and alarms would complete the picture.

Microsoft Visio - We are all visual animals and this is needed to make the other animals get the clear picture

Throw in an antivirus software , Winzip and iTunes and the basic Microsoft Office and my day is made.

And now when I look at the installed programmes, I think to myself that like life, the computer takes on dregs and flotsam that it cant throw and cant use easily either!!!!

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