Personal software choices for the Amiga

These are the pieces of software I personally use so I recommend them. Usual disclaimer: I act as the Canadian registration site for Vaporware so tend to use their tools by preference.

Internet Tools

• Miami Deluxe -- Brilliant dialup TCP/IP stack. It's a dream to configure and works pretty much right out of the box.
• Voyager 3 -- Very capable webbrowser.
• Telser device v1.40 -- Serial device replacement so you can use normal comms programs for telnet/rlogin
• AmIRC v3 -- IRC client (MUI based)
• Microdot II -- Excellent news and email client

Local Area Networks

• Peer to Peer
  • Envoy v2 -- Supports most necessary details; light on security due to the Amiga's filesystem
• Assorted
  • NetProbe -- Find out details about your Envoy network
  • Sanamon -- Sana 2 packet monitorer. Good for network debugging

Games

• Check out my games page.

Graphics

• 3D Rendering Packages
  • Cinema 4D -- Intuitive, straight forward, pretty powerful and makes great looking images. Here're a few examples.
• Bitmap Paint Packages
  • Deluxe Paint v4.5 -- The old fall back :)
  • Brilliance v2 -- Quick, good interface
• Vector Based Drawing Packages
  • ProDraw v3.03 -- Older drawing package, but fast and easy to use
  • ProVector v3 -- Amiga's answer to Corel Draw
• Graphic Manipulation
  • ArtDepartment Pro 2.5 -- Unsupported but still extremely useful.
  • Photogenics 1.25 -- Photoshop for the Amiga. Excellent, but you'll need AGA or a graphics card.
  • ImageFX -- Graphics manipulator par excellence
  • ContactSheet -- Creates mini-sheets of picture directories. Neat one, Bryan!
• Presentation
  • Scala MM400 -- The ultimate presentation package (until the next one!) Buy it.
• Viewers
  • FastView -- Fast accurate multiple format viewer
  • FastJPEG -- Fast accurate JPEG viewer
  • PhotoCDAGA -- Handles PhotoCD up to about 700 pixels
  • TIFFView -- Handles those annoying TIFF files (and BMP and ...)

Publishing & Text

• DTP Packages
  • Professional Page 4.1 -- Unsupported, but easy to use and nice GUI.
  • PageStream 3.1 beta -- Heavy duty, nearing completion
• Word Processing
  • Final Writer 4 -- One of the two best graphical word processors on the Amiga
  • ProText 5 -- Really fast, Wordperfect 5.1 like. Ascii only.
  • GoldEd v3 -- Fast extendable text editor with programmer support.
• Font Manipulation
  • TypeSmith 2.5 -- Excellent vector font editor; supports TT, Type 1, CG, DMF, bitmap

Productivity

• Communications
  • Term v4.6 -- Monster of a comms program, but has everything you'll even need (and then some)
  • GPFax v2.346 -- Older fax program, but still works really well
  • RIPGraf -- RIP editor. Although RIP has essentially been killed by the web, this is a good editor if you need to handle it
• Database
  • Twist 2 -- Excellent relational DB with user interface builder.
• Spreadsheet
  • FinalCalc -- Very usable spreadsheet with decent printing

Programming

• Hispeed Pascal v1.20 -- Good TurboPascal 5 compliant compiler
• SAS C++ 6.56 -- The premiere C compiler for the Amiga

Emulators

• Apple 2000 -- Excellent Apple ][+ emulator
• Shapeshifter -- Perhaps the best Apple Macintosh emulator ever; definitely the best software based one

Sounds

• Music Creation
  • OctoMED v5 -- Tracker with 8 voice support
• Samplers
  • Megalosound -- Inexpensive homebased sampling package
  • AudioMaster 2 -- Ancient sample, but I still use it because I know it
• Utilities
  • AmiSOX -- Sound conversion between assorted formats
  • AMFC -- Conversion of music modules between formats
  • Play16 -- Plays back samples in different formats
  • DeliTracker -- Excellent multiple MOD format player
  • Multiplayer -- Standard ProTracker player. nice interface though.
  • YACDP -- Good CD audio player

General Utility

• Disk Management
  • DiskSalv 3 -- Extensive disk recovery and repair program.
  • Quarterback v5 -- Back up partitions
  • AmiCD -- Freeware Cd-ROM file system.
• Directory utility
  • Directory Opus 5.82 -- Replaces Workbench, sings, dances, even juliennes. I love it.
• Monitors
  • AIBB -- The better of the two performance monitors
  • ARTM -- Keep a close eye on everything that's happening on your Amiga, and then fiddle with them :-)
  • Dashboard -- Cute little graphical CPU/memory meter
  • SnoopDOS -- Essential file monitoring utility (assuming you want to see what your Amiga just tried to find and couldn't)
• Scheduler
  • On The Ball -- Compact but effective addressbook, diary, scheduler and so forth
• User Interface
  • Magical User Interface -- The infamous MUI :-)
• Assorted
  • AZap -- Hex editor. Better than NewZap.
  • BorderBlank -- For that nice clean black border.
  • CXHandler v3.3 -- Replacement for the Commodity Exchange
  • Degrader -- Make your nice highend machine comply with those hardware banging games
  • Iconian -- Brilliant icon editor.
  • PowerManager -- Combines disk caching, power management, screensaving and so on.
  • ToolManager -- Create pop up docks and menu items