1. IT support

Everything, including how to setup your phones for emails, can be found at https://it.leeds.ac.uk/

2. University IT shops

Most software available on university desktops are available to staff and students for free at https://store.leeds.ac.uk/product-catalogue/the-it-shop

Another place to get Windows, MS Office and other software very cheaply is : https://uleeds.onthehub.com/WebStore/Welcome.aspx

3. Virtual Windows Desktop

The latest version of Remote Desktop (replacing Desktop Anywhere) is based on Windows 11 and is very fast. This means that doing serious office work with Remote Desktop is perfectly acceptable. The apps are available within via AppsAnywhere

The guide to installing and running this service is here and here.

4. AppsAnywhere

The university has a host of licensed and free software which are accessible by using this web link: https://appsanywhere.leeds.ac.uk/. Unfortunately, this only works on Windows PCs. Many of them are very useful, particularly Endnote.

5. Useful software

These changes all the time as technology improves. The current potentially very useful software are:

• Topspin (https://www.bruker.com/en/products-and-solutions/mr/nmr-software/topspin.html) from Bruker: Best software for NMR processing, with very advanced features for power users. Now free for academic use and can be installed on Windows, MacOS, and Linux.

• LM Studio (https://lmstudio.ai/): The software you need to run a local LLM model on your desktop computer. The other option is Msty.

• Zim wiki (https://zim-wiki.org/): Free, open-source and portable wiki which can be put inside a folder in your OneDrive account, giving you access to all your notes (including images) from anywhere, any platform. Zim wiki is also very simple to understand and manage.

• Sublime Text (https://www.sublimetext.com/) is available cross-platform, fast and can be customised for coding. Once set up, it can manage conda environments, has full Anaconda IDE capabilities and run Python script directly.

• Visual Studio Code: Slower than Sublime Text, but with more bells and whistles, if you like that sort of things.

• OneNote is an extremely useful cross-platform note-taking software. It's greatest advantage is that it sync with your university account, and the notes are sync across all devices, including your mobile phone.

• Freefilesync (https://freefilesync.org/download.php) is a very useful and free synchronisation tool to back up your data. An encripted 32 or 64 GB usb stick is recommended for this (in addition to your OneDrive).

• Insync (https://www.insynchq.com/) is a cheap tool to sync with your OneDrive in Linux, allowing seamless transition between the computer at work (Windows desktop) and your own Linux computer.

• mechaSVG (https://github.com/ricalmang/mechaSVG) is a very useful tool to produce nice pictures of computed reaction pathway.

• Overleaf.com: This web tool is for writing Latex documents (theses, reports, and manuscripts), including collaborative writing. It works across all operating systems and is very convenient when moving between different computers. The draw-back is the need for internet access. University of Leeds as a pro license for all students and staff members.