I am curious as to what programs you use for your real estate business and what Operating system you are running on your computers. What do you feel is the best e-mail program to set up and manage your contacts?

Does anyone have any input they can share regarding my question?

Well, I am not a Realtor so not sure I can offer much in the way of best applications to use.

I am running Win7 and using Office for the bulk of my business needs. I work in High Tech by day and starting an app development business on the side and these are pretty common tools for what I do. I have become very comfortable with Outlook for email and the contact magament is OK. There are probably better tools out there and outlook can get a little clunky for managing contacts. However, it does integrate well with my iPhone so syncing contacts between them works pretty good.

I have seen Top Producers Systems on Facebook and seems to be popular with Realtors there as a contact management system, but I have 0 experience with it so it may or may not be good.

Might be worth looking into.

Regards,
Jay

Thanks Jay, I appreciate your input especially since non of the Realtors seem to offer any info.

Hey, Pugs...
I use XP Pro; Office 2007; Quickbooks Pro; Adobe Acrobat & Photo Elements; Delorme GPS Mapping; 360 Egg and about a half a dozen other programs to do my work.

Thanks! What are some of the other programs?? What do you use for your contact info? Do you use programs like Excel and Powerpoint?

There are literally over 40 differnt Real Estate specific contact management/CRM programs available. I am a reseller for most of them and have studied them all in great detail. One of my top favorites depending upon your needs, and the one I use, is http://AdvantageXi.GaryDavidHall.com

Excel and Powerpoint are part of MS Office so if you load office, you do have access to those programs. Whether they have value to a realtor or not, can't comment.

I would speculate that Excell may have some value but not sure how often a realtor might need to do powerpoint presentations.

I prefer working with Mac, but due to compatibility issues also have a laptop with Windows Vista. I upgrade most programs (i.e. Adobe) to the pro version, but that's merely a preference as there are numerous tools to get the same benefits free. CRM would be most dependent on user needs, but I can recommend something if you'd like (shoot me a PM).

Hi

I use Xp and Open Office , Google Docs.

I use:

Windows 7
Open Office
Google (Mail, docs, calendar)
FLEX-MLS (our MLS program has some terrific tools)
Photo Editing: Paint Shop Pro for complex; Picasa for simple
Virtual Tours: Real Estate Shows
Windows Live Movie Maker

Websites I use: Facebook, Realbird.com, YouTube


iPhone apps - Genius Scan, Evernote