

Essential Applications for Phd  students - codemechanic
http://tangibletips.blogspot.com/2010/09/essential-applications-for-erudite.html

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alatkins
Meh. You don't need too many fancy tools.

The ones that got me through my PhD were:

\- LyX (<http://www.lyx.org>) for my thesis/conference papers etc. It's the
greatest tool available for preparing any document longer than six pages and
that needs to look good.

\- Gnuplot for preparing figures and charts (gnuplot on its own isn't that
pleasant to use, but gnuplotme is a script that makes life must easier
(<http://www.jamjoom.net/tools/gnuplotme/gnuplotme.html)>).

\- BibTeX for references (although Zotero is more current and excellent for
collecting references online - it's a Firefox plugin and exports BibTeX if you
want it to). I can also vouch for Mendeley as mentioned by another commenter,
although I've only used it briefly.

\- JabRef for managing my BibTeX database.

\- Source code control! I wasn't as organised as I should have been with this
and regret the amount of time it wasted me. Set up an svn/git repository as
soon as you start developing any code, and use it!

\- A good text editor: I know I'd be loath to suggest one on here so that's
all I'll say on the topic :-)

\- Dropbox wasn't around when I did my PhD, but it would be a must-have tool
for a grad student. Backup your work!

\- Powerpoint/Impress/Keynote. Don't get seduced by the LaTeX Beamer
templates. They will get you geek cred but that's the only benefit.

\- A calendar/organiser: Not that I ever got organised enough to use one, but
if you want to finish within four years then it'd pay to get yourself
organised.

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spcmnspff
It doesn't mention Mendeley Desktop, which gets huge raves from a PhD student
I know.

~~~
tnai
I'd second this! Mendeley (<http://www.mendeley.com/>) is great. Metadata
extraction from pdf papers is a huge time saver.

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codemechanic
I know some of them are using Onenote

