Previously I have written on budget (time and money) and also on organising your email routine. I would like to share some ideas on the basic tools or bits of software that will help you to be more organised and efficient.

There are a huge number of efficiency enhancing tools and products on the market the problem is deciding what you need NOT what you want or think might be cool.

The time wasted in learning a new tool or piece of software that is not really going to buy you much ROI (Return On Investment), is time that you could have spent tweaking your website or walking the dog or playing with the kids.

I will not try to convince you about buying stuff most of what you need is available free on the net the problem is finding it.

Your best bet is to take the time BEFORE getting too heavily involved in your project to think about what you might need to accomplish it. For instance an email tool OK these mostly come with your operating system and at the outset are powerful enough to do the job until you outgrow the basics and need to move on so, dont spend time and money looking for the ultimate email program.

Web browser once again, this is standard with your operating system although fairly soon you will need to get a tabbed browser, but I will write a separate article on this.

Word processors are also part of the package as long as you have a decent text editor like Notepad or similar and an HTML capable editor like Word to start with you are OK. Here you might like to get a free tool called NVu fairly soon this is a decent HTML editor which does not put all sorts of background HTML in your web pages like Word does.
Your next step up remember, only when you outgrow the basics would be a web site design and building tool like DreamWeaver or CuteSiteBuilder or similar. Here you will be paying for the software, so be sure that it is really needed at this time.

If you are looking to publish e-Books or similar, you will most likely need to get a text to PDF converter. Adobe has one but this is quite expensive, so look for a basic text to PDF PRINT ROUTINE or script. These are available free on the web. As you progress, have a look at getting one of the full PDF converters as these enable more functions and security on your creation.

Graphics tools are pretty much a personal choice once again though, your basic Paint or MicroGraphix should do for a while to create jpegs etc. Here again, as you start looking for the next upgrade, remember that the cost has to be met from somewhere. Fortunately, there are quite a few companies on the net who do graphics rendering of logos and images for you there are even a few that give a free trial (this is long enough for you to create your first logo etc so that you can get going)

If I can leave you with one thought for today:
Just as a plumber cannot do his work without the correct tools, he also does not carry around a whole workshop just for the sake of having stuff there. He chooses what he needs in his toolkit and that is what he works with. We should be the same think about what you need and not what you WANT!