Clients frequently ask me to recommend products and services to support their computing experiences. To date, my short list of external displays, printers, online backup service, password manager, and others has mostly been in my head.

However, I have just published the list on my website for anyone to view, with links to websites for download/purchase. Some of these links are tied to referral or commission programs that kick back proceeds to me.

What new product, service, or application are you in search of? I can help you research options, choose one that I think would best fit your needs, and help you get started with it.

Displays

Currently, there are a couple 27” external displays I recommend: a ViewSonic and a PHILIPS. These contain high quality panels and adjust in various directions but won’t break the bank.

The PHILIPS is particularly notable for having a lot of ports for other peripherals as well as the ability to daisy-chain multiple units.

Printers

In the land of printers, my clients are liking Epson EcoTank models for inkjet printing with photo quality images and Canon imageCLASS models for laser jobs with fast output. Both series are available in multi-function models that also scan and copy — and sometimes fax — and have a variety of connection ports and easy Wi-Fi setup.

Duplex printing tends to be standard among most of these printers and Epson and Canon are known for good customer service and longer support of older printer models, compared to other manufacturers.

Data Security

I recommend Backblaze for online backup of your whole computer and any directly attached external drives (except Time Machine volumes). I’ve written about Backblaze several times before, including in I Got Caught!, where I shared the story of a time I unexpectedly lost data and then recovered it using Backblaze.

For password management, I recommend 1Password, which I have also written about repeatedly, such as in Changing Passwords. It would be near impossible for anyone (read: any computer) to hack customer data stored in 1Password vaults because of the number of encryption keys involved, their respective complexity, and that one of them is generated on-device.

Productivity

For contact management and calendaring, I recommend Flexibits. This developer makes Fantastical and CardHop, each of which I reviewed a few years ago, heralding their flexibility and ease of use.

The company’s Premium subscription is very affordable and provides access to both apps on all Apple devices.

Fantastical’s Openings is its new killer scheduling feature that integrates with my existing calendar to identify my availability. As a result, clients find it much easier to book time with me.

More Cool Stuff

For decades, I’ve been a customer of Other World Computing, a prime source of Mac upgrades, especially for storage, performance, and connection. In fact, I remember installing a memory upgrade from OWC back around 2000 and speaking with a tech support person at Apple who’d never heard of the company nor its great reputation.

For the handful of clients whose iMacs I’ve upgraded in the last couple years with an external SSD to replace the internal drive, I extended their lifespan by a few years using OWC’s Elektron.

My list of recommendations will continue to evolve and expand as I discover new offerings and hear from clients about their successes and failures.

What items or categories do you think are missing from this list? What would you like me to consider adding?