What software?

[Saracen999]

If you had a completely clean sheet, a totally fresh start, what "productivity" software would you pick?

As part of resetting my computing, and of retiring pretty muvh fully (might do an odd job, more or less for fun) I'm freezing my old methods snd starting afresh. So old stuff that sould be too ecpensive to adapt or convert, like my email setup, will be on an old mwchine just in case, but going forward, I'm starting "clean sheet".

I mean, my old email system, Eudora, was heavily configured for my business needs, but development of Eudora stopped, oh, a decade or more ago.

Contacts were handled via a heavily customised CRM/database for my specific workflow. Which I no longer need.

What I want now is maximum benefit of today's tech, such as W10/Android cross-platform sync'ing of email, contacts, calendering and appointments, etc.

I do have a old (2013, maybe 2016) version of MS Office so I have access to Outlook. And I'll need Word and Excel on PC,but old versions are OK.

Free is ideal, but within reason, I'll pay if need be.


What would you recommend, in a clean sheet situatiom?

[kalniel]

Obviously it depends on what you need to be productive and what limitations you have about certain suppliers.

In my experience some sole traders and small companies get by fine on GSuite. Others prefer integrated software by Apple or Microsoft or Atlassian etc. All of which are cloud solutions so handle synchronising etc. fine. I would say integration between apps isn't the be all and end all, but it does help when things link through easily.

There's no such thing as free though - you'll pay in access to data if not in $.

[spacein_vader]

As Kalniel says it depends on your needs. OpenOffice works fine for most things but can fall down if you're regularly exchanging documents with people using MS Office as formatting tends to get borked even if you're both using the same file format.

MS Office is an option, and the free Android version allows opening and basic editing of files. You can't do things like pivot tables but I can't think of anything worse than trying to do complex excel work on a touchscreen anyway. The Premium Office365 version (included with the desktop sub) does allow this if you're a glutton for punishment and hell really has frozen over.

Email, depends again. Are you using an existing email address already hosted (by yourself or elsewhere,) that needs POP3 or IMAP or will webmail do? Proton mail for example do secure webmail if you want to set up a new account, if not Outlook (and its Android version isn't bad either,) will look after an existing POP3 or IMAP account.

[matts-uk]

What would you recommend, in a clean sheet situatiom?

If you expect to make a couple £K or more a year from working, I would recommend Microsoft 365 Business (formerly Office 365 Business Premium). Put prejudice aside and do a proper cost/benefit and it sells itself.

For our more budget challenged customers, publishing the church gazette, sorting the bridge club rota and organising WI recipe mornings on Zoom, Libre Office and Thunderbird cover the desktop apps and that just leaves the biggest headache, which is their e-mail provider. (Nobody should still be using POP). We used to recommend g-mail but see so many struggling to tame IMAP settings and 2FA , we are back to recommending Microsoft's Outlook dot com. Which by the way comes with a bit of OneDrive, the online versions of the Office apps and a smart phone / tablet app for all but aging flavours of Android and iOS.

Enthusiasts, who like to flit around multiple services and accounts, they don't need my recommendation.

[Saracen999]

It's fundamentally personal use, not business. If a few comissions drop into my lap, and it's something 'fun', I might do them. But I'm not actively looking for work, and if a commission sax offered on somdthing I'm not intrrested in, I'd decline.

So work might well be £0, and if it's more than that, its because it's fun anyway. Really, this is about post-retirement personal use.

Minimal or zero document-sharing and/of collaboration. Again, personal use.

Email? Existing provider, POP/IMAP collection. I want emails downloaded and, either read and deleted, or read and stored locally.

[Jonj1611]

I use outlook and pop with yahoo for email but I also use zoho with pop as apparently they are secure email

[jim]

If you're going to embrace Android, then using Gmail, Google Docs and Calendar (via Chrome in Windows 10) makes life easy. I'm very familiar with it from a professional perspective (and it is staggeringly good), and I'm using MS Word and Excel less as a consequence for personal stuff.

Gut instinct - if you're going to use Gmail, then try using GSuite as a starting point and see how you get on. You'll still want a version of Excel installed (2013 would be fine) for the odd occasion that Google Sheets doesn't handle an Excel-designed spreadsheet properly.

If you're not planning to use Gmail, then you can go down the Office365 road and you'll no doubt have a good experience in terms of interoperability with Windows 10. I know there's a Google Play app out there to sync your Windows 10 install to your Android phone, but haven't tried it out yet.

For the average person I really don't think that desktop-based email clients add much (for full disclosure I still use Outlook, but I can already see how it typically makes things more complicated, and I'll probably try ditching it for my next machine build).

[ik9000]

office365 if you really use it - still the best IMO. I have 365 via work and 2010 locally at home and they seem to play ok together so I imagine 2013/2016 will be fine.
google docs
a music player of your choice (VLC?)
notepad++
7zip
adobe pro (assuming you still have a perpetual licence?)
adobe bridge, photoshop and lightroom (or gimp if you really object to paying for photoediting suites)

[Helios451]

Subscription basis is the way to go, cost effective, available, lower tech needs, configurable to what you need and want, flexible to scale up or down to what you want.

Jim said it - with Gmail, Google Docs and Calendar it really is so easy and straight forwards to use, and syncs with a phone if you want one of those. If you use the phone to take pictures, these can by synced back to your account, held in the cloud.

Office 365 on a subscription basis is pretty cheap, and others have pointed out the stripped down Android versions as well.