DO OFFICE TASKS ON THE GO
Collaborate on a newsletter
Minimum USB: 256MB
Club members working on their organisation’s latest fliers or newsletters, for example, often work together at each others’ houses or in coffee shops to share the workload. But there can be problems if someone doesn’t have the correct fonts, pictures or layouts to hand. The simplest solution is to keep them all on a USB stick, along with the software you’re using to lay out your literature. This ensures that whoever is working on your newsletter will have the program needed to edit it, as well as all the linked images and other elements required.
Scribus ( www.snipca.com/32525, see screenshot above right) is the perfect tool for this job. It’s free, comes in a portable version and has some impressive features.
Liberate Libreoffice
Minimum USB: 1GB
One of our long-time favourite programs Libreoffice ( www.libreoffice.org) has just been updated to version 6.3 (see Issue 561, page 18), which introduces smart new features like full-page backgrounds (previously you couldn’t get rid of the annoying white border), chart imports from Microsoft Word documents, faster document saving, integrated document redaction tools and more. It even has a neat new interface.
Unfortunately, the portable version ( www.snipca.com/32526, see screenshot below) is still at version 6.2.5 at the time of writing. We expect it to be updated to 6.3 soon, but it’s still worth installing on a USB stick - you’ll then be able to access a full (and familiar) office suite even when using a public computer in a library, for example.
If you prefer something that looks more like Microsoft Office, consider Freeoffice. Once installed on your hard drive, you can reinstall on a USB stick. Download and install the Windows edition from www.snipca.com/32527, then click Start and navigate to ‘Install Softmaker Freeoffice on a USB stick’ and follow the prompts. You can then launch the component tools by double-clicking their executable files on the stick – ‘Textmaker. exe’ for the word processor, and ‘Planmaker.exe’ for the spreadsheet tool.
Get more done by avoiding distractions
Minimum USB: 512MB
In the days before Windows, everything was distraction-free. We ran one application at a time, it took up the whole screen, and if we wanted to browse the web… well, we couldn’t. Today, many of us multitask when we ought to be focused on the job in hand. Emails arrive, music plays and then we just have to browse the web for that non-essential purchase.
Focuswriter looks to change all that. As a full-screen word processor, it puts your work front and centre, and its controls are simple. You can still use common formatting shortcuts to bold up, italicise, underline and so on, and you can change the theme, but that’s about it.
It also comes with an integrated timer, which lets you set a working window during which you’ll not look at any other device or program window, and it tracks your productivity against targets, too, which is great for novelists or anyone who needs to keep track when chipping away at their word count every day (see screenshot above). There are installable and portable versions to choose from. To opt for the latter, select the ‘portable’ edition at www.snipca.com/32546. By loading it on to a USB stick, you could quickly resurrect an old laptop and use it solely as a word processor.