My new laptop

At the bottom of one of my cupboards, I found my old Toshiba laptop. It isn't much, it's got some ram.. not a lot.. some diskspace, not a lot.. and it's got Windows XP.

As a decent computer user, I prefer to only put legal software on my computer. Of course, that software has to function correctly and give me the features that I need.

I'm not a rich man, so I decided to go for the Open Source software that's around.

The first thing I decided on installing was office. I'm not planning to spend too many of my precious Euro's on office -- I won't be using it much on this laptop -- only to consult files that I receive from people mostly.

Open Office -- of course. A swift download, an install, and I have Spreadsheet, Wordprocessor, Image editing soft -- the lot.

Site : http://www.openoffice.org/

So.. what other software do I need. I develop websites -- so I need a webserver -- a database server --  content management -- blogs.. the choice is quite easy : MoWes (fka WoS)

Site : http://www.chsoftware.net/en/useware/mowes/mowes.htm

Great -- now I have a complete development environment with PHP, MySQL and all the nice stuff that comes with it -- but how will I be writing my webpages..

I searched the web over and found a long list of indivual tools like : NVU, Aptana, Selida -- none come close to a decent webdesign tool -- Aptana is coding -- I'm not planning to code my pages by hand if I can help it. Selida offers layers, but you can't do something simple like drag the layer to the desired location..

Site : 25 webdesign tools

A browser. I love Firefox, but the almost nihilistic interface of Chrome got me. Especially because in chrome, you can save a shortcut to a website on your desktop or in a folder. When you open the icon, you get that website in a window without navigation -- in practice, it looks like a windows program has been opened and not a website.

Site : http://www.google.com/chrome

Now I have my e-mail as an icon on my desktop -- I surfed to GMail with Chrome and saved the site as an icon -- it looks and acts like a windows program, with an important downside -- you have to be online to read your mail.

I did the same with the google calendar, google Picasa and google notepad. To store my office documents in a place where I can always reach them, I have also added Google docs -- easy.

site : www.google.com

I blog. So a decent blogging tool would come in handy : Windows Live. It contains LiveWriter in which I'm writing this article, live mail.. live messenger -- Live mail will come in handy to read those mails that are not accessible over a website.

site : http://get.live.com/writer/overview