What 3rd Party Software Do you Use?

[savvy]

There has been references to additional software that makes life better/easier for OD offices.
Examples are CutePDF, OpenOffice, Modzilla etc.

What do you use and why?

Cheers!!!

[enamelrod]

Ms word. sorry open office lovers it just does a better job at letter merge. Letter merge ,although I see it will have a slow demise with the panacea approach of sheets, does has its advantages.

And although some seem to fight MS word and also QB I feel there really should be closer integration. If Adobe has been selected for its acrobat then I feel that WORD and QB should be given a chance to fully integrate. Many of the anti QB say what they may there are some benefits to QB. ie ( most accountants recommend it, it allows for check processing, automatic monthly credit card processing, Payroll integration, online statement generation just to name a few) . THere is also movement away from linux support also but few are fighting that. I dont see what the big deal would be to have a tighter integration OPTION available for Word and QB users. Everyone moans and groans about paying for another copy of MSword but almost all of you still go out and buy and learn all these other programs last time I checked apteryx cost me money everytime I add a computer.

I will never make these a formal request because this would never gather support so i have never mentioned it. Its like the conversation i wrote about sheets and why reinvent the wheel when pdfs could do most of what was trying to be integrated through the sheets. Does anyone fully understand sheets yet?

having a list of these programs from users may help others better understand how they are using these programs as work arounds for what should probably be future upgrade request.

[Rickliftig]

I agree 100% about msword - it really is a good program these days. almost as good as the DOS days!. I also use QB. My acct can easily import my data and work with it as necessary. QB needs a re-write, desperately, it's clunky, too - but it's universal. It also does payroll.

I have Dropbox on all of my desktops. This is a file sharing program that synchronizes all your computers. It's a lot easier and more secure than carrying around a USB key all the time.

I still use a program called DxRPT that generates a patient letter after an initial consult. It's a visual basic program taht allows you to select various disease/condition states and generate a letter. It was developed by a consulting firm named "Prosynergy" - Sandy Roth, I believe. The program is long in the tooth and much of it could be supplanted with AUtonotes or EZnotes Pro.

Tried Easynotes Pro and found that it didn't provide the ease of use that autonotes did. BUT, I can see using this as a Cue sheet type add-on for Open Dental (see anotehr thread). If I have time, I might re-install it and see how it adapts.

I use GIMP for images, but don't really like it. Picasa is a very good program, though and I might go back to that.

And I need to plug Camtasia. I did my videos with it - GREAT software. Moderately priced, but the professional results are worth the expense.

Also, CCleaner =- essential utility.

I'll add more as I think of them. Over time, I have found myself dropping add-ons and utilities in favor of keeping the interface clean and the chances of crashes fewer. Windows 7 has been a big plus.

[murmsk]

I use Karens Replicator, truecrypt ,Mysql Administrator, and CrashPlan for off site backups

DropBox to transfer files home.

tinyPDF to make a readable copy of ortho txPlans from Cephx for storage in OD

Wife uses Quickbooks for financials ( I agree this could have closer integration )

steve

[Rickliftig]

Oh yeah - Karen's Replicator is a must have. Also, we use Logmein all the time to access the system from home.

[Mifa]

OpenOffice Writer for 1-month recall cards (user query in OD sends patients' info in a temporary table, accessed by OO through ODBC)
OpenOffice Calc for real-time practice performance monitoring (with ODBC link to custom tables generated with a -very long- user query) key performance indicators such as net production, hourly production per practitioner, YTD revenue vs. budget, payed hours vs. production hours for hygienists, etc.
Navicat and MySQL administrator for MySQL admin and special queries
Picasa (very heavy though), PhotoFiltre (freeware version, a lot easier to use than GIMP), MS PowerPoint (97!!!) and Jpeg Lossless Rotator for images and ads.
xplorer2 for managing files (I've never been able to use Windows Explorer, doesn't make sense to me)
PDFill and PDFSam for PDF edition, printing, spliting, merging etc.
ACEhtml, Notepad++, WebCEO and FTP Commander for website editing, updating and ranking analysis
GnuCash and SimplyAccouning (by Sage) for accounting
Logmein for remote access and support
Videolan VLC for our patient education videos on the intranet
FreeMind for drafting ideas and plans (very neat little app)
Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird for internet access and emails
Comodo Firewall and AVAST anti-virus suite
Windows XP with Absolute unistaller for getting rid of applications from time to time, Ccleaner for getting rid of temp files and junk and Auslogic Disk Defrag for smoothing up everything
Cobian backup for... well the name says it all.
From time to time, I confess that I still use Office 2000 (word and excel)... I'm so used to my custom toolbars, I haven't been able to get them exactly the same in OO yet.

[cheroxy]

I use syncback instead of Karen's. Karens would mess up my jpg's and takes forever! Try the free version of syncback for much better accuracy and speed.

[jordansparks]

I think there is strong support for Word. We are supportive of integrating with it. Our inability to archive a copy of the Word document is simply a technical matter. We pass control over to Word, so then we're not sure how to grab a copy when the user prints. One area I've been excited about is the possibility of putting a rectangle on a sheet, and having a Word document within that rectangle. And, of course, multi-page sheets is very important.

[enamelrod]

ONE to add to this list is OPENFILER AND FOG, tversity and soon a macro writer program(any suggestions?) to automate things. Fog is AWESOME for imaging computers!!!!, and HUD lite oh i would love to integrate this into OD and Spark a great IM program. maybe I can get a user bridge that passes the users info to the login script from spark and hud lite.