Nine productivity tools essential to work from tablets or hybrids with Windows 10

Although when they launched the first model a few years ago not everyone understood the movement, in the end the Microsoft Surface range is causing more and more manufacturers to match Microsoft’s proposal and launch convertible and quite capable laptops with Windows 10 as operating system.

They are especially useful devices for those who at work occasionally attend events or conferences, so it is important to have a good repertoire of productivity applications in it. Today we are going to propose nine of the most basic and essential that every portable computer with Windows 10 should have installed.

Nine productivity tools essential to work from tablets or hybrids with Windows 10Todoist, managing and organizing your tasks

One of the most important things when working is to be well organized, and for that many users turn to applications to create and manage task lists. In this field, which is undoubtedly one of the essential applications is Todoist, which has a universal app for Windows 10.

It has an interactive tile that you can add to your Microsoft system start menu, and has recently been updated to add smart features. For the rest, you have tasks and subtasks, synchronization in real time and the possibility of making them public to work as a team. You can also visualize your productivity and create priority levels. In addition to Windows 10, it is available in Android, iOS, macOS and in the main web browsers. You also have other interesting alternatives like Taskify or Wunderlist

RemindMe, simple and effective reminders

RemindMe is a small application dedicated exclusively to help you manage reminders in Windows. In fact, part of its charm happens precisely because of its enormous simplicity, since it is made so that anyone regardless of their knowledge can organize without any problem.

When you create a new reminder, all you have to do is enter a text on the left side and edit when you want it on the right side by selecting date and time. You can also make it recurrent, that it emits a sound when it appears or that it appears in the calendar of a certain color. Nothing more, but nothing less.

Poki, one of Pocket’s best customers

Pocket has become an essential tool for everyone who likes to save some of the articles we find on the web to read or work on them. Unfortunately Microsoft does not have any native application in your Windows store, which makes us depend almost exclusively on the web version.

Poki is a third-party application that comes to fill that gap. It does it with an almost impeccable design that takes advantage of the width of tablets and ultrabooks with a friendly interface for your fingers in the touch mode. Synchronize your Pocket list, and it allows you to navigate between tags and favorites, and you can edit the files you have attached. It also has a payment mode with extra themes, background synchronization and multi-timing

Edge and Drawboard to take control of PDFs

Another element you may have to manage on your laptop and convertible, although depending on your needs you have different alternatives . For example, if you are going to limit yourself to reading three or four PDFs a week, you have more than enough with Microsoft Edge, since the browser has native support and is present on all computers with Windows 10, so it is not necessary to install external software

But if what you need is a program that allows you to edit the PDF to add texts, signatures, write notes with a digital pen or mouse or even highlight fragments, Drawboard PDF is one of the best alternatives you can get. It costs about 10 euros , but in return you have a versatile and powerful tool.

WritePlus, basic and minimalist text editor

In Windows 10, as in the previous versions, if you want to write texts quickly and easily you have the basic option of the notebook and the slightly more advanced WordPad, but there is nothing with the simplicity of the first and the advanced functions of text edition of the second. This is where WritePlus comes in, a powerful application for taking notes.

It is a minimalist app that offers basic editing options such as bold, italics, titles and appointments, but with a simple and extremely clean interface. One of your best options is that it does not matter font formats, something annoying if we work with advanced text editors, although the basic formats of bold italics and so on.

Slack, Hipchat, Asana or Trello, essential

If you work in a large team it is very possible that you use one of these four applications. The first two, Slack and HipChat have official clients for Windows, although they are not universal applications. These are group chats with the option to create several channels to manage your work teams as if you were setting up your own IRC, and which also allow you to perform various types of interactions with the team.

On the other hand, when it comes to organizing tasks we have two other highly recommended applications, Trello and Asana. Unfortunately none of these two has an official client, so you’ll have to use it through a browser. Even so, if we have made an exception it is because having any of them is nowadays almost essential for any work group.

Snip, vitaminising your screenshots

Almost a couple of years ago we told you that Microsoft had created a new screen capture application for Windows 10. This is still not the default option of the operating system, but the application continues with its ongoing development and is very useful when creating and editing screenshots.

The application is called Snip and its operation is simple but complete. On the one hand, the application allows us to select a specific element of the screen to capture in case you want to make the cropped and not complete capture, and the capture can be a static image or a video. You can make annotations in the captures, and includes a system to share them through a URL.

Adobe Photoshop Express, basic and lightweight edition

No, Adobe Photoshop Express has nothing to do with its big brother, since it is not by far such a complete and capable tool for editing photographs. But it is a light and free alternative that may interest you to have installed for those quick fixes that we all have to do from time to time.

You can choose from 20 filters for your photos, crop them, rotate them, adjust the color, eliminate red eyes and share them quickly. It also allows you to adjust the tone, brightness or white balance with its perfect sliders for touch screens, all without having to pay anything. It has application for Windows, Android and iOS.

Office 365, Office Online or its many alternatives

And of course, at the time of working very often office tools are still necessary. Here one of the most powerful is Office 365 for having an ecosystem of applications supported by the cloud, but you also have several alternatives at your disposal that are not far behind, such as LibreOffice if you are looking for an offline editor or Google Drive if you do not care not have physical applications installable on your computer.

Bonus: Steam, because you also have to disconnect

And we end up with a small bonus, because not everything will be working in this life. Personally, as a lover of DRM-free products, I always prefer GOG.com, but as it is possible that if you have a convertible this is not your main team, I have decided to add Steam to your place in the list.

The reason is that Steam has a good system for saving games in the cloud, and although not all titles are used by those who do, they make the difference. The GOG community is insisting that they also add this feature, so it would not be surprising that in the coming weeks it will also arrive

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