Software and Hardware Reviews: Tools for Practitioners
Our hardware and software reviews are ‘real world’: we typically work with a product for several months in a real business setting before offering our reactions and assessments. (Please see our Review Policy.) In offering these impressions, we recognize just how significant technology is becoming in the lives of many mental health practitioners — whether for working online with clients, for strategic marketing using the internet, or just for helping our practices to run more smoothly.
Software Review: Leap
The latest version of Ironic Software’s Leap helps tagging live up to its hype as a solution for making sense of your collection of digital data, whatever it might be: combine OpenMeta-based tagging with the Mac’s built-in Spotlight, and you may have all you need to keep track of it all.
Software Review: Versions
The version control system known as Subversion brings great power, and with great power comes great hassle and complexity and annoyance. At least, that’s been my experience — but no longer. Thanks to the imaginatively-named Versions, Mac users have a graphical Subversion client that does things ‘the Mac way’: Subversion just works.
Software Review: DEVONthink
DEVONthink 2.0 has now been in public beta for several months, with the final release right around the corner. The new version brings a host of feature enhancements and interface and usability improvements. But while this superstar of Mac OS X information management is more capable than ever before, advances in tagging technology and search in the underlying operating system itself threaten to shrink the potential market for this software down to just those who are truly taking advantage of the software’s sophisticated AI core.
Software Review: BBEdit 9 Upgrade
With a new ‘projects’ capability, text completion, non-modal find and a persistent scratchpad, the latest release of BBEdit — at version 9.0.2 as of this writing in December 2008 — provides new tools that allow it to move farther into the space occupied by full-fledged coding environments, without losing the simplicity that makes it a good fit for much smaller scale tasks.
Software Review: Project Time Tracking with OfficeTime
Having evaluated literally dozens of different project time tracking applications, I’m convinced that for my purposes as an individual practitioner and consultant, OfficeTime is exactly the right one for me.
Software Review: Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac
As a Universal binary, the Microsoft Office suite now runs natively on Intel Macs, offering a big step up in performance for those on Intel-based machines. Visually elegant interface changes appear throughout the suite, and new or intermediate users will now find it easier than ever to discover and apply the software’s capabilities. The competitive landscape has shifted significantly since Office 2004, however, and some users in small mental health practices may find Microsoft Office less indispensable than it once was.
Software Review: Adobe Creative Suite 3
Could this be Adobe’s best upgrade yet? And does Adobe Creative Suite 3 have a role to play in your private practice or other small business? This first part of our review focuses on Dreamweaver CS3, while Parts 2 and 3 cover the other Creative Suite components.
Read more…Tools for Practitioners: Logitech Cordless Trackman Optical
We could have used Logitech’s top trackball for just a day or two and our conclusion would have been the same as after many weeks of testing: this is a great pointing device. If you’re looking for help avoiding repetitive stress injuries, or if you just plain prefer trackballs over mice, this one is worth trying out.
Tools for Backup: LaCie and Maxtor External Hard Drives
As described in our article on basic backup strategy for your private practice and our case study in backup strategy, an external hard drive provides an attractive storage medium for fast, secure, and reliable backups. We take a look at two leading contenders for external backups: the LaCie d2 and the Maxtor One Touch II. Although similar in many ways, each drive offers particular features that make it more suitable for particular groups of users.
Tools for Practitioners: Kensington Expert Mouse Wireless
Is your mouse giving you grief from too many hours spent pointing, clicking, and dragging your way across a desktop? If you’re a mental health practitioner working extensively with clients online, you probably cannot avoid the pointing, clicking, or dragging — but you can avoid the mouse. Just turn it upside down, cut off the cord, and call it a trackball instead. Or, like Kensington, call it the Expert Mouse Wireless.
Tools for Practitioners: Kinesis Ergonomic Keyboard
For mental health practitioners working extensively with clients online — particularly using text-based modalities like email or chat — it is probably only a matter of time before keyboard comfort becomes an issue that cannot be ignored.
Reviews of Older Products
Although they might have been great at the time, these products have since been superseded by newer releases reviewed here:
- DEVONthink 1.3.2
- BBEdit versions 8.5 and 8.0
- Microsoft Office 2004 Professional
- Dreamweaver 8 and GoLive CS2
- Dreamweaver MX 2004
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From the In Practice section of our main blog:
- The Weirdest People in the World? (Has Psychology Research Gone Wrong?)
- Two Software Reviews, and Some Funky Facts About Greg
- The ‘Ten Commandments’ of Character Development, Number Two
- Disturbances of Character: The Most Pressing Issue of Our Age?
- Online Therapy With Young People
- Humor and Health: 4 Ways to Get More Laughter, the Best Medicine
- Is This the Age of Irresponsibility?
This page was last reviewed by Dr Greg Mulhauser, Monday, 26 October 2009.
The URL of this page is:
http://counsellingresource.com/practice/reviews/
