Essential tools for productive remote work in 2021


In the past two years, the way that most of us work has changed forever. Remote work is no longer an outlier. It is very much a norm. So here are some tools that will help you be more productive in 2021.

All three of the above are virtual conferencing tools. All have free versions with different degrees of restrictions.

At whiztal, we use all three. Teams comes with Office 365. But since its Linux version is still an experimental beta, we also use other two. If your platform is Windows and you already have Office 365 subscription, Teams is a no-brainier.

For internal chat, we use slack. It works great for us. Other solutions are Google Hangouts and even Microsoft Teams has very good chat features. We used Skype in the past, but as you know, Microsoft owns Skype and they are investing heavily on Microsoft Teams, with Skype seriously lagging features and is outright dated in many ways.

Google Drive is great if you use chrome as default browser. We use Firefox due to its enhanced privacy features. If you don’t mind Google Drive acting sometimes weird, then its fine ( for us, privacy trumps minor hassles in use once in 2 months). We are heavy users of Google Drive too. OneDrive and Dropbox are also great.

We use G-Suite at Whiztal. Office 365 online is also great. Their free version apps can sometimes look tacky. For example, free Microsoft Teams will sometimes show you ads which really looks weird.