Whatever business you are in or whatever your focus, there will be times when you need a bit of kit to help you achieve your goals. Sometimes that will be physical kit like a spade or grab bag, other time a bit of software, something to knock out an infographic or a quick poster.

In this series we will be looking at tools and in particular Tech4Good, Environmentally friendly laptops, mobile devices and in this case low cost yet fully fuctional software.

We all know that software is not cheap to produce, hundreds of hours goes into writing code, days of testing and the multitude of platforms and configurations is mind numbing. so its great to find a suite of tools and software that is priced at an affordable level and that delivers – today im talking about MyDraw from Nevron – its a straightforward drawing package that have a wide range of templates and tools allowing you to develop the classical business type models like flowcharts and organisation diagrams a free 30 day fully functional evaluation, (it adds a watermark on diagrams), but there is more…

Oh Yes! Infographics straight out of the box – now in our social value world where we are communicating ideas and concepts to a wide audience – sure accurate diagrams are useful, yet far better are simple clear infographics. They convey concepts and ideas easily (if done right) and there is no better way to start than with a solid template MyDraw provides a number of these which you can modify or subdivide as you need. it’s a great way to get the message across to a wide audience.

Unlike many software packages you can buy MyDraw outright and live with it as it is, that’s a simple one off cost, or you can buy a subscription model and go down the upgrade route – more and more packages are switching to subscription only and I personally don’t like this – maybe I want to live with my legacy kit and sweat those items for way beyond thier supposed life; With a subscription model that sometimes isn’t possible but if I have the purchase option it is. For this reason I like companies that give me the choice. Average life of a laptop is three years, I’ve got laptops that we have recycled that are over 10 years old – Ok, not the fastest or running the latest flavour of OS yet functional and meeting a purpose. Some of the software on there is equally a decade old. Moving from Take, Make, Replace to Reuse, Recycle and Repurpose isn’t just about tin, it can also include software and systems. In that vein Nevron have a great list of compatability, from Visio imports to a long list of export formats to moe your work between platforms easily. Its also running in the browser using Nevron open vision so Linux and, maybe, Ipad version are not far behind although in truth it isn’t a full SaaS / Web based application so if cross platform web software is what your after other tools are out there.

At under $70 the software is well priced (subscription prices are available) – with MAC and Windows versions, 2 machine licence and a huge selection of icons, primatives and out of the box templates, not to mention the Visio compatabilty and multiple export / print formats MyDraw is a serious consideration for your software toolbox.

Nevron offer a free licence for Mydraw if you are interested, it involves either a Blog post like this, or getting 5 mates to download the software – the intention is to build the MyDraw community. For transparency Nevron is a company we do buy development tools from (NOV) and therefore have a working relationship with, however they have not requested nor sought this Blog post and we are not reviewing the MyDraw software for commercal gain.