I'd be interested in hearing from people about software they've found to be especially useful for any aspect of the math research enterprise. I'm getting a couple of new laptops, and I'm trying to figure out what to install on them. I've got some access to funds from my university, so price is not necessarily an obstacle. Some programs that are fairly indispensable to me already are LaTeX (for typsetting) and Maple / Mathematica for computations (I prefer Maple but am training myself to use Mathematica as well). I'm hoping some of you will steer me towards programs that, a few years from now, will have become just as indispensable to me! (or, failing that, will at least be a lot of fun). One thing I could really use is a good system for creating illustrations. Fifteen years ago there was a simple little Mac drawing program called idraw that I loved, though everyone else I knew preferred xfig; nowadays there's something that calls itself idraw, but I don't think it's related to the idraw that I used back then. I admire folks who are proficient in PostScript, and maybe I'll be one of them someday; for now, I'm tooling along with pstricks, and spending far more time creating pictures than I ought to have to. (As an aside, I'll mention that I've managed to do some non-trivial math research in Excel. I would not ordinarily have thought to do this, but frequently I find myself with no computer more powerful than my Treo, and my Treo happens to have a version of Excel running on it, and one finds ways to get by with whatever one has.) While we're at it, I'm also open to suggestions for software that people have found useful for their teaching. I'm also open to suggestions for hardware. I already own a couple of flash drive sticks, and they've gotten me out of a couple of tight spots by permitting me to give a talk on someone else's laptop at the last minute. I have a hard time believing that flash drives aren't a product of extraterrestrial technology. Are there other things as cool as flash drives that I don't know about? I'm also open to suggestions for websites. Of course I already use OEIS. Speaking of which, three cheers for Neil for deservedly winning the latest Robbins Prize! Since back in the 1970s, the Handbook and Encyclopedia have made math research both more productive and more fun for me than it would otherwise have been. Jim Propp