While we were in Berlin last year, I decided that I would discontinue the at-least-two-cars-per-family saga so popular here in the U.S. (The fact that the only taker for my own car before we left was a car-salvaging charity had almost nothing do with it -- really!). Anyway, last week I finally made the plunge and bought a new electric bike with which I can zip from home to my office and back every day. The first thing I did when we came home with my new treasure was get out my tool box to tighten things, transfer a number of things from the sad skeleton of my last bike, and just sort of make it my own by working on it. And while I was doing that I felt pretty proud of my well-stocked tool box, which had just about all the little tools I needed for my purpose.

This made me think that the title of this newsletter -- The Tool Kit -- and of my ebook -- The Tool Box -- may not be so bad after all: In the end, it's not about which computer you use or having the coolest software program; it's about being equipped with the right tools for the right task. If a particular project comes in that requires a little extra imagination, we don't panic --  we just look in our tool box to see which of our tools we can use to crack that nut (so to speak).

With this in mind, I went through the depths of my main computer to find out which tools I truly need -- not necessarily the ones that are nice to have for those super-exotic projects that come in every other year, but the well-constructed screwdrivers, hammers, Allen wrenches, and pliers that, in combination with each other, take us where we need to go.

In this list of basics, I'm not including the foundational tools that I take for granted: tools to enter data (either a keyboard and/or voice recognition); an office suite with word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation abilities; an email system; browsers; and, of course, a translation environment tool (TEnT).

For communication purposes, I use these tools:

• Skype as my instant messenger/telephony tool: In fact, I haven't even opened other IMs for a long time because virtually everyone seems to have a Skype account these days. A few weeks ago I was at a conference where one of the speakers complained about the technical ineptitude of translators. He proved this by saying that "while most have Skype, they don't even use it to its full extent -- they just use it as an instant messaging tool." It's true that there are many other ways that Skype can be used (it's my favorite way to set up conference calls), but the fact is that it seems to have become the preferred IM tool in our community -- and that's not a bad thing.
• An FTP client: I know that file transfer to or from an FTP server can also be done with most browsers or FTP-replacement services such as YouSendIt.com, but I find it much easier to have all my addresses and passwords for FTP locations of my clients (and my own) stored in one location, which then gives me instantaneous access. The version that I use is WS_FTP Pro, but there are a number of other equally good applications out there including the open-source FileZilla.

Much of what my tools are used for is dealing with text-based files. And interestingly, some of those tools can even be used for exactly the kind of files that they were not built for (remember the "magic numbers" of binary files I mentioned in a premium edition of the newsletter a few weeks ago?). Here are my tools for these files:

• Obviously you need a text editor, and there are plenty of good ones out there. I like EmEditor for its superior code page handling ability and UltraEdit for the rest. I am not even going to go into what they can or can't do, only this: just about anything that your limited mind can imagine doing in unlimited ways to alter and modify text. (Did that make sense? If not, I was trying to say that these tools can do a lot.)
• I also like tools that cut large files into smaller ones and the reverse, i.e., combine many text-based files into one. For the first task I use the awesomely named Chainsaw (I would like this tool for its sound effect alone even if it failed to cut apart files -- you guessed right, it's a howling chainsaw that you hear when you chuck your files). To combine files I use Twins File Merger. The latter tool continues to frustrate me because it tends to "forget" its registration code, but once I remind it, it does what it is supposed to do: it glues many text/xml/html or other files into one. This can be very helpful when aligning a huge number of files, comparing files, or simply combining them for storage purposes.
• With indexing tools now even included right in the operating system (Vista or, of course, all Mac OSX), text-based search tools may not be quite as valuable as they once were, but I still wouldn't want to miss tools like Search & Replace that allow you to search instantaneously through a large set of files that you can determine on the fly. Of course, there is the "Replace" part also -- a dangerous but sometimes welcome feature.
• Tools to quickly search online and offline content like IntelliWebSearch may not really belong in this category, but since I don't know where else to put it and I definitely want to mention it, here it is.

The text tools mentioned above are good for converting text-based files, but there are also other conversions that regularly need to be entertained:

• Measurements: I use the recently much discussed Convert.
• PDFs: Another thing that we've talked about a lot in the past is still the best choice for converting PDFs into Word files: ABBYY PDF Transformer. I would love never to have to use any of those darned PDF conversion programs, but there is simply no way around it, I guess.
• File names: This is not really a conversion, but once you see how easy it is to change 1500 file names in one fell swoop, there's no way not to have a tool like 1-4a Rename.
• Tools to convert translation file formats: The utilities that come with Heartsome and Swordfish are an amazing resource to convert between TMX, TBX, and CSV, and their main translation editors are great ways to convert all kinds of files to XLIFF. Olifant is an excellent tool for converting between Trados and Wordfast TMs and TMX, and that seems to be just about a complete tool set in that area.
• Tools to convert into translation file formats: This is mostly for file formats with hard-to-get-to text, like desktop publishing and graphics formats. Again, there are a number of options, but ECM Engineering has a nice system for this right now (see the article down below).

Graphics are not my forte, but there is one graphics tool that I use day-in and day-out to capture, annotate, modify, and send screenshots (images of dialog boxes or my screen). That tool is SnagIt. In fact, I've found that in asking my clients questions or communicating anything computer-related or computer-based, a tool like SnagIt could almost be in the category of communication tools. What do they say? A picture is worth a thousand words.

Security stuff: There is, of course, the Internet security suite, or alternatively the assembly of tools for all ugly matters dealing with viruses, spam, or spyware, but there are also some other security tools that I use fairly regularly:

• The Windows-internal System Restore (Start> (All) Programs> Accessories> System Tools> System Restore) has saved me many a time. No, it's not perfect -- and, yes, there are more comprehensive third-party tools -- but I have been well-served with this Windows tool so far.
• Password cracking tools: This sounds worse than it is, but a number of times each year I have to deal with password-protected .zip or .doc files -- files that I need to work with when the client has already gone home or simply doesn't know the magic open-sesame charm. Well, the tools from Elcomsoft can usually help me in no time.

For quoting or project evaluation purposes, here is another favorite little tool set:

• A Web spider to download complete websites: While tools like Teleport or HTTrack don't do their magic on most dynamic websites, static websites are downloaded to your hard drive in a snap and can then be evaluated according to word and translatable vs. non-translatable graphics count. And that brings us to . . .
• Word count tools: There is a whole variety out there; in fact, it sort of boggles my mind that this relatively niche practice can apparently feed so many tool providers. The one that you choose should be able to count a wide variety of file formats, including PDF, XML, and HTML (and, of course, the MS Office formats). But they also should be able to emulate Word's word count parameters -- not because they are necessarily so great, but because it has become a standard.

• Graphic browsers like XnView give you a quick and thorough overview of all the graphics in any given project and let you single out those that need to be translated.

You will have found no expensive power tools in this list, but I promise that you can go very far with a combination of tools like this!