What I actually think about places, software, and websites I've used.
AI has been starting to rapidly reshape the world of business and technology. Not knowing how to use these tools or refusing to use them is to put yourself at a huge disadvantage in the age of information. I've been spending some time getting to know these tools so that I can take full advantage and here's what I've found:
Gemini:
Terrible. I mean I really only trust this series of models to answer the most menial tasks and you can forget about agent mode. The upsides are that you can get away with some free usage every day and they have built in image and video generation models for creative projects. If you keep your expectations low then the content it generates is actually quite good.
ChatGpt:
Passable. It does ok in just about every category I can think of. It has the incumbency advantage of being the first to market and having a big recognizable name. But after fairly heavy usage, it feels like you get worse responses on average than Claude and you will hit subscription limits faster, which often means not being able to return for multiple days.
Claude:
The real winner here. Seems to do everything right to position itself as a frontrunner in the AI world. Has the best models with the best answers. Has a subscription that doesn't feel as limiting. Their pricing is near identical to ChatGpt but it feels like you get 2x to 4x more usage. I think the real downside is that they are really restrictive with their subscription users. My example of this is I cannot use Claude models in third party applications like I can with ChatGpt or Gemini. The only way to do this with Claude is to switch to a pay-as-you-go style pricing which suddenly isn't as much value as the subscription. When using the subscription you're forced to use Claude code as your agent and it has been an excellent conduit for AI productivity.
Microsoft PowerToys is one of the best-kept secrets in the Windows ecosystem. It has existed in one form or another for decades, yet Microsoft seems to have forgotten to tell most Windows users about it.
PowerToys is a free, open-source collection of productivity tools designed for power users. Rather than installing a separate application for every small task, PowerToys combines dozens of useful Windows utilities into a single, well-organized package.
Each utility can be enabled or disabled independently, and many can be assigned to custom keyboard shortcuts. PowerToys will even warn you when a shortcut conflicts with an existing Windows command.
Some of these tools solve problems you may not realize you have until you try them. After that, it becomes difficult to imagine using Windows without them.
My favorite PowerToys utilities include:
**Advanced Paste** — Paste clipboard content in different formats or transform it before inserting it.
**Always On Top** — Keeps any selected window above everything else. **Highly recommended.**
**Color Picker** — Instantly identify and copy colors from anywhere on your screen. **Highly recommended.**
**Command Palette** — Quickly search for applications, commands, files, and other resources.
**File Locksmith** — Identifies which application or process is preventing you from moving, renaming, or deleting a file. **Highly recommended.**
**Find My Mouse** — Quickly locates your cursor when it gets lost across large or multiple displays.
**Image Resizer** — Resizes images directly from File Explorer.
**PowerRename** — Provides powerful batch file-renaming tools.
**PowerToys Run** — A fast, keyboard-driven application launcher and search utility.
**Screen Ruler** — Measures pixels and distances directly on your screen.
**Text Extractor** — Copies text from images, videos, applications, and other areas where normal text selection is unavailable. **Highly recommended.**
PowerToys is free, lightweight, modular, and genuinely useful. For anyone who spends a significant amount of time working in Windows, it is one of the first utilities I recommend installing.
Tools that have long been in my toolbelt. In true windows fashion we like doing things our own way and ssh, and the associated ssh keys are no different. With a user interface that likely hasn't changed in over a decade, putty is a tool that allows you to communicate with just about any other device over a handful of supported protocols. Now it is great that you can use this tool to talk to embedded systems, but the most common usage is connecting via ssh to remote servers. The ui can be a little intimidating but it allows you to save connection information and credentials for follow up sessions. Using the associated tool puttygen you can also work with RSA public/private keys in a GUI. Using the two in combination is a smooth experience that means you can quickly access several servers at once. This combination of tools is frequently utilized within other applications as well.