Five of My Must-Have Utilities

Some of my favorite utilities have been part of my arsenal for a long time and some have earned a place in a very short time. All of them are utilities I use on my system and they are used nearly every day if not multiple times a day. I'm listing the five in no particular order and I've provided a link to a previous blog post where I described the utility in more details.

• Office Tabs for Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 and 2010. This one is a new entry in my must-have list because I almost always have multiple Word and Excel files open at all times. They are so easy to manage with this free add-on.
• GoodSync. This one was discussed as part of my series on setting up a computer system. I have it set to run nightly (while I'm sleeping) to back up my data drive to a network drive. It has a small cost, but it was worth every penny for the peace of mind it brings.
• Irfanview File Viewer, Converter and Editor. When I need to quickly look at an image, I turn to Irfanview. It is also great for batch converting/resampling of images. This one has been used many times daily for years!
• Turbocharge File Copying With TeraCopy. It seems I am always copying files from one location to another and I can't imagine someone using a computer without copying files on a regular basis. TeraCopy makes it much faster and even allows the process to continue after an error.
• ColorSchemer Studio 2. I don't use this one as often, but it is incredibly useful when I do use it. When you need to build a palette of colors that work well together, this great utility will help you get it done quickly!