Windows Programs

[billbenson]

I built a new pc and screwed up. I use linux, but the mother board is a windows only at this poiint. So I put windows on it which I haven't used in 5 years. Not all bad, each has their benifits. Its a 64 bit system with 16G of RAM.

I put Avast on it as an antivirus. Jeez the upsell on avast was worse than Godaddy.

notepad seems to still suck as a very basic program. What do people recommend as a text editor that is good for code as well.


If I decided to get photoshop, where should I go and what version? I hate gimp and never did really figure it out. I used to be able to go back a few versions on ebay and get a decent version for my purposes which is mostly resizing images and screwing with them. If I want a knockout image, I'll pay someone.

php editors. This kind of goes back to the text editors, but anything that finds missing brackets is great.

I'll put open office or libre office on it, but if someone thinks I can go back a couple of years and get a decent version of MS office I'm interested. Open office and libre office don't work as cleanly, particularly for excel. But then I don't do anything exoctic. thats what databases are for.

this by no means I am abandoning Linix. It just means I have both. I'd like to take advantage of both.

I'm sure I'll be keeping email on my Linux machine as it gets zero viruses. Probably do surfing fot that same reason. There are programs I want to run on the windows machine that are a pain on the Linux machine. The inverse is true.

CB Steve, you come to mind. Aside from Dreamweaver, what would you put on the windows machine. Actually, would you put an older version of DW or even Photoshop? Maybe even a new version if you could convince me.

One of my objectives is to become competent in the newer web technologies which I have been ignoring for several years. Maybe a copy of dreamweaver is a good learning tool to bring me up to date?

MyITGuy. you are biased towards windows. That being said, what recommendations do you have?

[MyITGuy]

For AV in a home consumer environment, I've been using MS Security Essentials (Possibly combined with Spybot Search and Destroy).
For an all around good editor, check out NotePad++ and install any plugins you feel you need.
While Office 2007/2010 are nice, 2003 should fit all your needs if you don't need to exceed 64K records in excel.

As far as other basic installs, Chrome for a web browser with AdBlock+, iDrive for backups and LogMeIn for remote access to the machine.

[billbenson]

I have an old version of ghost, 2003 I think. Will it still do a disk image?

[MyITGuy]

I have an old version of ghost, 2003 I think. Will it still do a disk image?

You may run into some compatibility issues, especially if you need to perform a complete restore and it comes to booting up the PC as you may need to manually edit the startup files, if you can boot at all.

[nealrm]

I have an old version of Photoshop CS2 that I can transfer the licence.It will handle what you need to do. Email me and we can discuss. Look at the Google doc package for a word processor. It works great with the Chrome browser. For PHP I would go with Dreamweaver.

[billbenson]

I'm interested in the photoshop offer. I'll PM you.

Dreamweaver does php editing?

[cbscreative]

OK, here I am.

I guess I'm biased toward CS5 since I just switched, but it's because every productivity enhancement I can get is useful. Since you're running a 64 bit OS, Photoshop CS5 is the only version that can take full advantage of your RAM. A 32 bit version can only use 3.8 GB of RAM no matter how much your system has (everything before CS5 is 32 bit). If speed is not too important, all previous versions of Photoshop have their advantages. The CS2 mentioned will probably suffice. I'm not sure if CS2 had Photomerge, that may have been a CS3 introduction. There is a ton of info out there showing the capabilities of each version.

Yes, DW will work for PHP or any other code editing. You can use code view if you prefer the simplicity of a text editor with some functionality not found in Notepad. Another simple text editor is called NoteTab which has a free version with no nag screens, and the nicer Pro version was about $30 last I knew.

For DW, CS3 is the first version I was fully pleased with, all the previous ones I didn't use much. CS4 and 5 have some great enhancements, one I particularly like is when you open any web page file, all associated files (like CSS, scripts, etc.) are automatically open with it. When working with PHP, DW won't show much in the design pane, you'll either need to upload to a live site or set up a testing server. But the ability to simply code is unhindered. You may like the time savings of "code hints" too where you type one or two characters and it gives you a list of options specific to the code you are using.

If you want more than 2-3 Adobe apps, getting a suite is recommended. Check out the Adobe site for which suite is best for your needs. You can even download a free 30 day trial of any of them. Be sure to check out some of the videos there too demonstrating the products...very useful.

In case anyone else reading this thinks you have to have a 64 bit system to use CS5, the suites include both 32 and 64 versions and Photoshop is the only one so far to offer a 64 bit option.

[nealrm]

I use Dreamweaver for PHP and it works well. I never use the design window, just the code window. If you are running Windows 7 pro you can set it up as a test server really easy. Here is a link for the install PHP on IIS7 : The Official Microsoft IIS Site (http://php.iis.net/). Once installed, tell Dreamweaver what browsers you are using and it will open the webpage up in that browsers. I keep the major browser installed so that I can see how the page renders in each.

Dreamweaver also has a built in FTP. So once a page is ready you can move it directly to your site from Dreamweaver. There are also addins that allow for version control.

[billbenson]

When I think of php as a code editor, I think of something that highlights and checks Syntax. Finds opening and closing or missing brackets etc. I wouldn't expect a gui interface to help much for actually writing code. How does DW work from that perspective?

As far as Photoshop goes, I see myself resizing images in batches, removing backgrounds, etc. But nothing a lot fancier than that. I do wonder about using 32 bit programs on 64 bit machines from a conflict / comparability issue. If 64b applications are available, maybe I should stick with that.

Neal, do you recommend the link you mentioned over XAMPP? I used XAMPP (apache, php, mysql) on my linux machine and it always worked great even though php and the others were already present in the standard os install.

When I used php locally on a windows machine a number of years ago, I had all kinds of problems with globals ie $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] etc. As I recall it was related to spaces in the path ie "program files" not "program_files". Been a long time though. That was never an issue when writing code on my linux machine.

[nealrm]

Dreameweaver does a good job of checking syntax. It highlights the line number with the error in red and also displays a prompt at the top of the screen. You can also set highlight colors for other items. I like to have my comments highlighted by a yellow background for example. The error catching is not perfect. It does a good job catching missing ')' and ']', but if you are missing a '}' or '?>' it will always state the error is on the last line.

I never had an issue using a 32 bit program on a 64 bit machine. I currently am running a 64 bit version of windows and use many 32 bit applications.

On the PHP. That worked really easy for me. I had it up in about 30 minutes. But I have also heard many good things about Apache. I don't think either way would be an issue.

My wife is verifying that we have released the licence on the Photoshop and determining a fair price. Will get back with you next year :D.

[cbscreative]

I do wonder about using 32 bit programs on 64 bit machines from a conflict / comparability issue. If 64b applications are available, maybe I should stick with that.

Compatibility issues are rare. When I made the switch, I only had two apps that put up a fuss. My CorelDRAW X3 was buggy, but I wanted to upgrade anyway so that didn't bother me. X5 runs perfectly even though it's still a 32 bit.

The one that was kind of annoying was an old version of Cute FTP that I was using before. Since FTP is not fancy or complicated, I never considered an upgrade to be necessary. When I went to install the app on Win7, it wouldn't accept the registration number. After researching, I found the problem was known, but there was no fix for it. Since DW has built in FTP, I usually just use that even though I prefer the simplicity of an FTP client. Filezilla works well, and it's free, but I do miss the Cute FTP.

Considering the number of apps I have installed, I thought 2 casualties was acceptable for the gains that were made. Knowing how much difference there is in the way the OS's function, I wondered if it would be worse myself.