Best Apps for 2010

I took a long look and thought about it quite a bit, which apps are the best for 2010. That is a mighty broad question, but here are some of the apps I love and use every day.

Firefox – IE is pure crap and Chrome is just too fragile

Roboform – Real password management

AnyDVD/CloneDVD – The only real solution for putting your media on a device

Xilisoft Video Converter Ultimate – The best solution for converting media

7-Zip – For controlling all those damn archives

Ashampoo Burning Studio – Makes burning DVD easy again

There are lots of other apps out there which are great, yet so many of them are interchangeable, but without these I would be totally lost. I really don’t know where I’d be without Firefox. Chrome really isn’t good enough for me and IE is, well, it’s IE.

And the worst app for 2010? Well, that would easily be Windows 7. I’ve tried to like it. I’ve tried to come to terms with what it offers but ever after all this time I still can’t stand it. It’s still nothing more than a service pack to Vista and you need to keep throwing so many tools at it to make it useful. And despite what Microsoft says I find Win7 to be unstable as hell and it needs to be constantly rebooted to keep it running. It’s a ridiculously bloated and bug ridden piece of refuse. It’s a dung heap and I hate using it. There is not a single feature of Windows 7 that I like or find useful. Everything has to be compensated with a 3rd party app.

Also losing luster is OneNote 2007. Since I can’t get my notes between OneNote and the iPad I’ve been forced to find alternative solutions. That has curbed my OneNote usage. I still love it and store notes in it, but I fear that our time together may be drawing to a close. It’s all about working across platforms and OneNote just isn’t able to do that.

As we move forward I’m moving away from Windows. There are just too many device choices out there for me to be locked in to such incompatibilities.