Ask HN: Thinking of quitting job with no plans for the future: bad idea? - <AUTHOR>

A little background (and I apologize for any vagueness, I'm a bit paranoid about coworkers that read HN): I've been a developer for about 6 years now, first and only job out of college. On paper it sounds like a great job: pay is above average, various perks, smaller firm, casual working environment, and I have a lot of autonomy. But my particular career path isn't really going anywhere anymore, and I find that over the last several months I've lost most any interest in my industry (not coding itself, but the field for which I write software for). The job itself has consequently become unsatisfying and thus emotionally and psychologically draining.
My goal is to join a startup, and go back to just plain building cool stuff. I am (or at least used to be) very ambitious, and I want to work with smart, ambitious people who want to build the next big thing. I'm just not sure if I'm qualified to be in that company right now - my skillset is so particular to the role I'm currently in I don't think I'd get very far (confirmed by some interviews I've had this year). I'd love to pick up web development again and work on projects in my free time, but it would take so much time away from the few hobbies I have that I'm pretty sure it would just make me feel worse.
So I'm thinking that maybe I should just quit, and do nothing for a while, try that whole "finding yourself" thing I never did. Maybe travel a bit, try and get some enthusiasm for life back. Everyone says not to do this without having your next job lined up, but does that apply if you're not looking for a traditional office job, if you seriously just need a break with no commitments? My big worry is that I don't figure anything out and find that a year later I'm having a very hard time finding a job again, and/or the economy is much worse.
Some important points: I have no wife/kids to support, not in a relationship, I rent, and I can afford to be unemployed for at least a year (at an acceptable level of comfort). If I leave my industry, I wouldn't bet on making it back in, certainly not at my current level because experience in my niche doesn't tend to be very transferable. I also have very few connections in the industry (sounds weird after all these years, but it's true). I've thought about grad school too, but I couldn't get more than one quality letter of recommendation at this point, so I wouldn't bet on getting into a top school.
So I'm at a loss as to how to assess this situation and figure out what's smart and what isn't. HNers seem to come from all walks of life and have collectively seen and done it all, so hopefully someone's been in this situation and has some wisdom to impart. <comment><USER2> What you're describing doesn't sound like a problem with your job per se, it sounds like depression. You might consider consulting a professional before making any life-altering decisions. Good luck to you, whatever you decide.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I actually already suspected that and will look to set something up with a therapist soon. I'm pretty sure that I still want a fresh start of sorts but it can't hurt to get an objective perspective on my life from a professional.

<comment><USER3> _But my particular career path isn't really going anywhere anymore..._

A good therapist would probably talk you through all of this, but look at your own self-talk first...

Your core belief is that you don't think your career path is going anywhere. If that is a rational conclusion you've reached then of course you'll have little motivation! In fact that's pretty damn normal, who else do you know will continue to enjoy a task they genuinely believe to be worthless / dead- end?

 _My big worry is that I don't figure anything out..._

You will figure things out. Take it a single day at a time. You can only move the mountain one stone at a time. In fact I would say take a good 2 weeks off to just say "I don't care" to the current job and go do some _relaxing_ travel. See what 2 weeks gives you, 1 week isn't enough to totally disconnect. When work sucks, start squeezing the joy out of other areas of life.

Depending on your situation, you may just be in for some life changes. I had a period of time about a year ago similar to what you described and I'm about your age... It was a large mix of things, but my own bullets may stimulate your thinking...

\- I gave up the whole mega-startup goal, I like doing smaller projects now with no care about huge exits

\- I reconnected with friends and now focus more on relationships

\- Stopped going on the computer once I got home from work and just doing more work. Going on the comp at home is now when I have nothing better to do, which is plenty.

\- Temporarily changed lifting routine to light cardio for stress relief

\- Got outside more.

\- Rode the motorcycle more.

\- Found a new hobby -> started learning piano. Tech used to be my hobby before it became my job. To me, a hobby is something you do for pure fun with no expectations.

\- Developed a new spiritual attitude about certain life situations.

\- Learned about life balance -- straight out of college up til that point I was a workaholic.

The key though to know is you _will_ figure it out. Everyone else in this world either has been or is in the same boat as you man, so you'll be OK. You'll come out of this 6 months later with a much better and whole new perspective on life. By the way, there's nothing wrong with choosing to quit or change directions, just make sure you make it a consciously-thought-out decision so you can rest solidly on that choice years later in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have a plan:

1\. What do you want to work on next? Take your time, and write it down if necessary. List out all the cool tech you want to get your hands dirty with.

2\. Have a deadline. Put down your best estimate of the date you going to walk out the company for good. Think of the time you need to update yourself with new tech, learn new stuff, get to know the right people, and start looking for opportunity.

3\. Now is the right time to go out and meet people -- attend conferences, give out your email, linkedin account whatever.

4\. Ask yourself where you want to work, or which company you want to go -- if not freelancing or starting your own.

Once you know what you want, when you want to go, and who can help you -- you are ready.

You can certainly drop off and go do some soul searching or travel -- it's really up to you, but I am just saying, you might want to start to work out a plan first.

Take it easy man.

:-)

</comment><comment><USER5> not sure if i am re-iterating the obvious, but if I were you I won't quit (at least in this emotional state). My recipe would be:

1\. Sit down with a beer, pen and paper 2\. Figure out what is the exciting tech that I want to work on 3\. Do I have skills for bullet 2 4\. If no can I learn it with my day job (something as trivial as writing 'hello world' in a new language) 5\. Communicate (talk to a lot of experts in the target technology/industry/area of interest) 6\. Generally the above steps should be sufficient to convince me what I want to do. Here one can probably take a break or ask the contacts from bullet 5 to help make a transition.

Obviously, like all plans this might not work ;), but I would start gaining better control of my life/career/aspirations.

Hope this helps... Cheers!

</comment><comment><USER6> I would agree with a lot of HN posts here, but I have a few additions.

You say your job is in such a niche market - is there something missing from this market? Maybe use your specialty knowledge in your favor by coming up with a good startup idea.

A lot of people don't like him, but maybe read a little bit of James Altucher - he has large sections about happiness and quiting if you are not happy. Now, this job might not be the cause of your sadness/depression/burnout, but I doubt it is helping.

If you want to email me to bounce some ideas off - feel free. Whatever you decide to do, best of luck. I hope you find what you're looking for.

</comment><comment><USER7> I just turned in my notice at work because I want to get out and do something on my own. While I don't have a drawn out plan, I do have a goal. I want to get into Techstars Boulder. I plan on moving to boulder and trying to get involved in the tech scene there. I think if you are going to follow through with your plan at least do yourself the favor of getting involved in a tech scene somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER8> Actually, it's good that you've sounded these things out: now you have a list of things you need to take care of before you head out.

Simple.</comment>


Cuba: No Internet, No Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02ybvly

<comment><USER2> The linked page is only to a video. There's no article to read.

I'm assuming this is describing the same "Packet" system that's been discussed before - a USB stick or other digital medium is loaded with curated internet content such pirated videos and music, and influential articles each month & brought into the country for distribution.

Previous discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9686468](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9686468)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9719492](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9719492)</comment>


Elaborate Email Hoax Causes Company's Shares to Drop - <AUTHOR> http://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/top-security-stories/elaborate-email-hoax-causes-companys-shares-to-drop/

<comment><USER2> By about 0.97% (that is still around £41m of value though).

Given how prices can fall _hard_ on bad news, I'm guessing the majority of people who can have a real impact on share prices do not focus on Twitter or mass media, but are instead glued to their Bloomberg terminals or similar?

<comment><USER3> The average daily absolute price change for the past year is 0.89%, and the maximum was 5.27%. I contend that to all intents and purposes this "elaborate hoax" had no effect at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't speak to the laws in Europe, but in the US I'm fairly certain this would be classified as securities fraud and would be subject to civil and criminal penalties. This is not a smart way to make money in the stock market.

</comment><comment><USER5> "The stock was trading at 268.9p at the time when the statement was sent. A half hour later, it had dropped to 266.3p"

Erm, what? That's normal fluctuation: seems like daily is ~.9% but has gone higher and lower on no news at all over the last year. I see no evidence to support a causitive relationship.

Sure makes for a good story though.

</comment><comment><USER6> would be interesting to know whether whoever is responsible took advantage of the price movements of that stock</comment>


Driver was streaming the Voice when Uber self-driving car crashed, say police - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/22/driver-was-streaming-the-voice-when-uber-self-driving-car-crashed-say-police <comment><USER2> A lot of people and news articles focus a lot on the fact that Uber disabled the built-in auto-braking features of the Volvo but don't seem to understand that 2 braking systems does not make a vehicle twice as safe in fact it can do just the opposite and can account for a lot of oddity in your self-driving code. Not to mention I don't expect Uber to use Volvo's with this exact auto- braking system (and version) for forever so it makes sense for them to disable it.</comment>


Unfollowed Me worm spreads on Twitter - stop allowing 3rd party apps - <AUTHOR> http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/04/19/unfollowed-me-rogue-application-spreads-virally-on-twitter/

<comment><USER2> What I find really iritating with Twitter and Facebook logins is that the rights an app asks for (e.g. post tweets, read DMs) is an all-or-nothing proposition.

It should be more configurable at the point of login so that you can refuse to grant something that a 3rd part app is asking (e.g. often I don't want 3rd party apps sending tweets as me), and let the app figure out if thats ok.

<comment><USER3> Geeks like us would understand that, but regular users (especially for Facebook) would be utterly confused. Any better ideas?

<comment><USER4> They'd be confused until they learned. Facebook was probably confusing for my mom until she figured it out. People are more adaptable than you think, when the information is presented in a clear way.

To put it another, harsher way - adapt or die, we need a better class of netizens who aren't completely baffled by non-binary decisions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how many non-geek users who read this article will simply disallow _all_ third-party apps, even legitimate ones.</comment>


Backgrid: A featureful grid UI for Backbone.js - <AUTHOR> http://wyuenho.github.com/backgrid/#examples <comment><USER2> Project author here. Ask me anything, constructive criticism much appreciated!

And much thanks goes Jeremy for writing Backbone.js and posting this!

(BTW, I'm looking for a job, so if anyone is interested, please email me myhnhandle [at] googlesmailservice dot com)

<comment><USER3> Chrome 24 / Win 7 - clicking in cells in the Date or Population columns changes the column width.

<comment><USER2> That's something I have to work on:

<https://github.com/wyuenho/backgrid/issues/5>

<https://github.com/wyuenho/backgrid/issues/6>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey this looks really cool! The last time I rendered some data in a table I used d3.js, but this looks much simpler for the more advanced stuff.

Do you have cvs support? That would be nifty because large table datasets are usually in csv not in json, so it would be nice to skip this intermediate step.

By the way, how did you make the documentation? It looks really nice.

<comment><USER2> No csv support. I didn't intent to make a full-blown web-based spreadsheet (but you never know :) ). The documentation is just plain old hand-coded HTML styled with Bootstrap + some well chosen header fonts. The code editor (not much of an editor now that I've put it in read only mode) is codemirror.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks awesome. I wrote Backbone.grid last year, basically some view extensions with a much lower level approach and many unresolved issues. This is were backbone (and other MVC) shines I think. Hope to see similar stuff in ember.js angular.js and so on with nifty gems for easy generation of admin section. kudos

</comment><comment><USER6> Awesome work man, saw this last night and definitely want to get it hooked up with LayoutManager <https://github.com/tbranyen/backbone.layoutmanager>

<comment><USER2> Thanks! I saw you saw it last night :D backbone.layoutmanager looks great too. Can't wait to see what awesome sauce the 2 projects can come up with!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hmm if I knew this existed literally a week ago I might have gone with backbone instead of Angular. Do you by accident know of an ediable-grid with angular directives and proper bindings?

<comment><USER8> Try ng-grid <http://angular-ui.github.com/ng-grid/> \-- to get editable cells, you just make your own cell template. Fairly straightforward. I just built something with this, and it worked out nicely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Examples does not show up on Chrome on Android 4.2.1. It shows a blank area instead of the grid.

<comment><USER2> I don't have an Android on hand to play with, is there an error log u can send me?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you use? - <AUTHOR> Inspired by the usesthis.com link, I thought it would be fun to see what hardware/software/etc. HN uses. <comment><USER16> Hardware:

      MBP 17"            - anti-glare FTW
      Mac Mini           - for code testing
      52" HDTV           - 2nd display
      iPad               - 3rd display w/Air Display      - avatron.com/apps/air-display/

Software:

      1Password          - multi-browser password manager - agilewebsolutions.com
      Base               - SQLite manager                 - menial.co.uk
      Cinch & SizeUp     - window management              - irradiatedsoftware.com
      ClickToFlash       - block Flash in Safari          - clicktoflash.com
      Colloquy           - IRC                            - colloquy.info
      iWork Numbers      - notes                          - apple.com
      Murky              - mercurial/hg GUI               - tinyurl.com/p4qf2g
      OmniGraffle Pro    - diagrams/flow-charts           - omnigroup.com
      Photoshop          - graphics                       - adobe.com
      QuickSilver        - app launching                  - blacktree.com
      SelfControl        - block distracting websites     - tinyurl.com/d4ca5a
      Snippet            - code snippets                  - fuelcollective.com/snippet
      TextMate           - coding                         - macromates.com/
      Xcode              - coding                         - apple.com
      you Control:Tunes  - "Menu Bar" GUI for iTunes      - yousoftware.com/tunes/

<comment><USER17> Did you know that Quicksilver development has ceased? I believe the original dev now works on QuickSearchBox at Google.

<http://code.google.com/p/qsb-mac/>

In any case, qsb is maintained and has many new features.

<comment><USER18> There's also Alfred: <http://www.alfredapp.com/>

<comment><USER19> There's also LaunchBar: <http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Most frequently used software:

Debian, xmonad, emacs, rxvt-unicode, conkeror, bash, git, perl, ghc, xmms2. Gnus for email, rcirc via irssi-proxy on a remote server for irc, bitlbee (via irssi) for Google Talk and AIM. Github and Gist for collaboration. (Github is such a good tool that I pay for it, despite not needing any of the paid features! Irrational!)

The idea is to reduce overhead; anything I want to do is always a keystroke away. Most of my time is spent working or relaxing, rather than fighting with my setup. It Just Works, and is easy to interactively fix. (Want a different window arrangement? Just code it and hit Mod-Shift-q. Want an Emacs utility? Just type it in and hit C-M-x. Easy. No overhead.)

Hardware:

Intel i7 (4 cores), 30G SSD for /, 1TB 3-way RAID-1 for /home, 24" Dell monitor, Embody chair, crappy desk, and iLift monitor mount. Topre Realforce 87U keyboard. HeadRoom Micro DAC/amp (fed from the digital output of an old EMU10K1 sound card) and DT880 headphones.

It will be the perfect setup when I get a Steelcase Airtouch desk, Ultimate Ears custom headphones, and a 30" monitor. First I need to win the lottery :)

<comment><USER21> Pretty close to what I'm running, except replacing emacs with vim because it plays with screen/xmonad more nicely.

Some day I'll probably find a way to get a real no-nonsense screen/xmonad/emacs setup together.

<comment><USER20> emacsclient -c on a new desktop. Done.

<comment><USER21> Not the method I was expecting, but I think it could work...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Inspired by usesthis.com and the response here I created this site: <http://hnsetups.com/>

<comment><USER23> new line -> <br /> pls!

<http://hnsetups.com/interviews/23>

<comment><USER22> Fixed newlines!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Who am I: Freelance programmer - mostly web stuff. Also working on a potential startup involving text classification.

Hardware: a Thinkpad W500. It's a very solid machine with lots of CPU, GPU and screen resolution. My only complaint is that the audio ports are on the front. No need for a desktop or any kind of subnotebook, though I do occasionally wish this machine had a couple dozen more cores.

OS: Ubuntu 10.10. Pretty much stock. Gnome, Compiz, etc.... A few notable oddities: I have the WM configured to raise only on title/border clicks; inner clicks focus without raising. That solves some of the same problems as tiling. I also have the whole trackpad set to work as a scroll surface, as I always use the trackpoint for a mouse.

Dev tools: Emacs, Git, Slime, Clojure, Ruby, Common Lisp on occasion, and sometimes I pretend to know Haskell. Occasionally have to deal with PHP, Javascript, Java and other cruft. Other languages on occasion as appropriate.

Other stuff: Chrome, Firefox, Quassel, Thunderbird (I actually like Evolution better, but it got unstable about my 3gb inbox), Virtualbox with WinXP and Win7.

Dream setup: the Thinkpad W510 looks pretty good. It's just like my W500, but with more memory slots, more cores and the audio ports on the side where they belong. It would also be nice to have a big, fast SSD and enough money that I could do all my heavy-duty number crunching on an EC2 cc1.4xlarge instance.

</comment><comment><USER25> Thinkpad X41 running OpenBSD, will be replaced by an X60-something eventually.

Acer Aspire One running (mostly) Debian and Windows 7, dual-booted. I found it cheap on craigslist, and it's light enough that I don't have second thoughts bringing it while biking about. I still prefer my thinkpad, but it's surprisingly adequate.

amd64/OpenBSD desktop, two Acer 24inch monitors, Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 (Dvorak), Kensington "Expert Mouse" trackball (the best left- handed trackball I've found, by far).

Another old, cheap, cobbled together computer running OpenBSD as a firewall / router / server.

A Haworth Zody chair and a fantastic wrap-around desk my father-in-law built.

Software: Emacs, Lua, dwm, dmenu, tmux, git, runit, w3m, mpd, nethack, xwrits, the usual Unix toolchain, etc.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm going to leave hardware out of this for the simple reason that given enough resources, as Paul Graham rightly said, we'd all want the fastest computer possible.

\- OS: ArchLinux 64-bit (personal), FreeBSD (servers)

\- Window Manager: awesome

Awesome is a great window manager because it's lightweight, robust, and _tiling_. I can't even explain how much my workflow has improved since switching to a tiling window manager. Awesome is much less intimidating than xmonad, and uses Lua as the scripting interface.

\- Editors: vi for small edits, joe for bigger projects

\- Terminal: rxvt-unicode

\- As far as peripheral software, I use:

lighttpd as my web server

Ruby as my scripting language of choice

nmap as my port scanner (RIP unicornscan)

ncat as my netcat varient

OpenOffice for reports (yuck!)

\- I prefer Xen to OpenVZ and VirtualBox to VMWare.

\- Oh, and I have an iPhone.

\- As a shameless plug, I also use <http://sleepyti.me> every day to figure out when to go to sleep or what time to set my alarm.

</comment><comment><USER27> \- Laptop: 13-inch Dell XPS, 4GB RAM. My original model (XPS M1330) literally went up in smoke and Dell kindly sent me an updated and upgraded version (Studio XPS 13) for free. I like the size, but it runs _very_ hot and has some terrible design features like the air vents which are half blocked when the screen is open. Next time I'm getting a Thinkpad.

\- OS: Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit. Rock solid. Launcher/dock: Gnome-Do, Browser: Chrome, Editor: Vim, Version Control: Git (though my Git skills are still a bit shaky), Music: Songird.

\- Special mention goes to Redshift (<http://jonls.dk/redshift/>), which is one of those colour temperature programs. Recommend you try it or f.lux for a few days. If I turn it off at night I can barely look at the screen it's so bright.

\- Second OS: Windows Vista 64. This was pre-installed. I can't stand using it (not sure which of the home/business/ultimate editions it is), but I've kept it around for occasional Sky Player (for watching Premier League games - <USER2> Silverlight), Photoshop and Portal.

 _Other electronics_ :

\- I _had_ a pair of Ultimate Ears Super-fi 5 Pro headphones and they were incredible: Total isolation and excellent clarity, even on the tube, but they have gone missing. I'm going to order another pair soon.

\- Nikon D300 Digital SLR with a few manual primes. I love the heavy, solid feel of these lenses. There's no going back to a kit zoom lens with a plastic mount after you've learned to focus quickly, which doesn't take long. My favourite lens by far is the 105mm f/2.5: [http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/companies/nikon/nikkore...](http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/companies/nikon/nikkoresources/105mmnikkor/105mm25.htm)

\- Mesa/Boogie Nomad 100 guitar amp, was going cheap in the local classifieds. Weighs a ton, is impressively loud, keeps blowing fuses and even doubles as an extra seat. In front of it sits a Crybaby wah, and I need to get a delay pedal to put in the loop.

\- A battered up HTC Magic phone.

</comment><comment><USER28> I've noticed that the more time I spend focused on work the more out of date I get with the cutting edge.

I'm on a 3 or 4 year old thinkpad (love the keyboard!) running gentoo linux. I use fvwm, xterm, gnu screen, chromium, firefox, ruby, rails, postgresql, mysql... Blah, blah, blah depending on the project.

But, please, don't copy me unless you want to be so _four_ years ago! : )

<comment><USER29> xterm is 'so four years ago?' I don't remember a time when xterm was 'sexy' and I've running Linux since 2000.

I'd be interested in good resources on fvwm though. I know that you can do a lot to customize it, but whenever I tried looking into it, I never knew where to start. fvwm? fvwm95? fvwm-crystal? Are they forks? Add-ons on top of fvwm? Which are/aren't maintained anymore?

<comment><USER28> My use of fvwm has become so minimal that I'd probably be better off switching to one of the tiling window managers.

I have chromium occupying an entire page of my virtual desktop with no window decorations. On another I have firefox (mostly for development with firebug). On the others I have 2 xterms side by side running screen.

For every project, I create a new screen config which defaults to opening / launching whatever I need for that project. For example, a rails project might have several zsh's already cd'ed to the models, views, and controllers directories (and probably the public javascripts and stylesheets directories). I'll also have script/console and either mysql or psql running.

In fvwm, I have a menu with an entry for each project that launches xterm and starts / reconnects to the right gnu screen session.

I have a bunch of keyboard shortcuts for navigating my virtual desktops and moving xterms around, etc. I only really use the mouse when I'm working with one of the browsers. Another reason I'd probably be better off switching to a tiling manager.

The nice thing about fvwm is that you can arrive at something that's highly personalized. I'm really efficient / comfortable with fvwm now, but it took a long time to get here. I'm not sure I'd start over with it.

<comment><USER29> You only use your session for your work? Or are you only talking about the config on your work computer?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> So far, only three people are using Windows (all 7) as their main OS. About 7-9 were using some flavor of Linux/BSD as their main OS, with the rest (all 10-12 using Mac OSX.

(There were 22 posts when I wrote this.)

</comment><comment><USER31> Who am I?

        Undergrad in CS at Florida Institute of Technology.

What Hardware am I Using?

        13" MacBook Pro, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB HDD.
        IBM Thinkpad x40 running FreeBSD
        IBM (technically lenovo, but branded IBM) Thinkpad x41 tablet, running FreeBSD

And what software?

        On the mac: Browser: Safari; Feed Reader: NewsFire; Music: iTunes;
        Android programming: Eclipse; Mac programming: xcode;
        Everything else: terminal.app

        On the bsd boxes: Browser: midori; music/movies: mplayer;
        Window Manager: awesome; everything else: xterm;

        On both: irssi for irc, ssh for doing a lot of work. vim for text editing,
        git for version control

What is my dream setup?

        I want to have a room-sized setup. I would like a mac
        pro, with two (or three, but that's pushing it) projectors
        as monitors. Aimed and positioned in such a way that
        there is no space nor overlap between either, and they both
        project vertically from the ceiling to the floor. A wiimote
        for the mouse, and (I'm still dreaming here, so why not?)
        voice recognition for the keyboard.

edit: fixed formatting.

</comment><comment><USER18> Who am I: Freelance programmer, Ruby, Python, Javascript for web apps, and Ubuntu administrations.

Hardware:

        * MacBookPro 13"

        * Acer notebook 12" for IE related stuff

        * Ergotron WorkFit-S ---> http://bit.ly/ctQt9z

Virtual hardware:

        * Linode for Ubuntu or RedHat work. And also for personal use.

        * S3 for backup.

        * GoDaddy for domain purchasing.

Software:

        * Text Editor: TextMate, Vim, Eclipse

        * Personal finance: mint.com

        * Office related: iWork

        * Browser: Firefox still, because of Firebug.

        * Collaboration with client: basecamp and campfire.

        * Code repo: GitHub + GitX

        * Image uploader: imgur

        * URL Bookmarking: http://mybucket.co (Disclaimer: I'm the founder)

        * Pasteboard: gist.github.com

        * Image manipulation: Seashore

        * Chat app: Adium

        * RSS Reader: Apple Mail

        * HTTP servers: nginx, unicorn, tornado

        * Debugging tools: gdb and strace

        * Terminal search: ack

        * Entertainment: Twitter

</comment><comment><USER32> Hardware:

\- a pre unibody MacBook Pro 17" with full hd resolution as the main machine.

\- Grado headphones for music

\- Contour Design Shuttle pro (<http://retail.contourdesign.com/?/products/23>) for video editing

\- Panasonic GH1 with a firmware hack and adapted pentax 110 lenses for photo and video

\- an Ipod with aTimeLogger for time logging (yeah, I track every second I am awake, helps me stay productive)

\- a couple of arduinos for hardware sketches.

Software:

\- Processing (from processing.org) for visual sketches.

\- Notational Velocity (<http://notational.net/>) for fast idea management.

\- Notify (<http://vibealicious.com/apps/notify/>) for easy and fast email.

\- Nuke for video compositing

\- Illustrator + Scriptographer (<http://scriptographer.org/gallery/>) for posters.

\- forklift as a finder replacement.

Yes, I am more of a visual hacking guy.

</comment><comment><USER33> ( more here <http://paulstamatiou.com/stuff-i-use> )

2 pairs of rayban titanium glasses with anti-reflective coating for computer screens (or that's what they told me). worth the investment. i can't wear contacts for more than a few hours without pissing off my eyes. curious about trying "gunnar" glasses though. anyone have them?

year old 17-inch MacBook Pro matte 2.8GHz C2D with 8GB DDR3 and RAID 0 X25-M SSDs [http://paulstamatiou.com/how-to-apple-macbook-pro- raid-0-arr...](http://paulstamatiou.com/how-to-apple-macbook-pro-raid-0-array- with-2-intel-x25-m-ssds)

timbuk2 commute 2.0 (tsa approved) messenger bag but I find it too wide with my big 17" and I often bump into things/people so I just ordered an incase backpack

trash can and boxes for converting into standing desk mode <http://picplz.com/user/stammy/pic/gntn/>

large whiteyboard for calculating runway and scribbling ideas. <http://blog.notifo.com/notifo-installs-their-whiteyboard> after having it a few months, it is hard to clean/erase.

Chrome is default but I have 3 versions of Firefox (4 beta, 3.6 stable, 3.0 stable) each with their own profiles so I can run them simultaneously if I need to catch some stupid bug

NotifoGrowl for desktop notifo needs <http://notifo.com/desktop> and Chrome to Notifo extension [https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/lgffhepmapgeepjn...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/lgffhepmapgeepjnhchaabmaoijfcnhi/) (disclosure: i made the latter and my cofounder made the former)

Panic Transmit for sftp needs, but mainly for S3 stuff.

Panic Unison for usenet needs <http://paulstamatiou.com/how-to-download-with- newsgroups> (disclosure: post has aff links) <USER9>
Little Snapper for taking full-page screenshots for design inspiration

I use OS X Spaces a TON. Three spaces: chrome + textmate, ical + campfire + terminal + itunes, tweetdeck

Vmware with Ubuntu 10.10, Windows 7 Ultimate N, XP SP3

1TB Time Capsule for time machine, attached to 2TB WD disk for laptop image backups via super duper or CCC

magic mouse + apple charger (but i like using lithium batteries more.. much, much lighter) + Magic Prefs

MainMenu.app for basic system maintanence

delibar.app for managing delicious and pinboard accounts <http://www.delibarapp.com/>

brew! <https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew>

Charles.app for misc HTTP lurking and easily repeating HTTP posts (naughty confession: used it to opt-out of AmEx publishing's online form 3,000 times. they had been filling my physical mailbox with sweepstakes offers several times per week. needless to say, got a personal reply by a higher-up saying they would make sure my address was correctly opt-ed out as my previous 2 opt- outs did nothing)

Lightroom + Aperture. Lightroom replaced Aperture for me (seems faster)

mid-range sony earbuds when on the go

Dre Beats circumaurals when at home [http://paulstamatiou.com/review-beats- studio-by-dr-dre-and-m...](http://paulstamatiou.com/review-beats-studio-by-dr- dre-and-monster-noise-canceling-headphones)

dropbox with grabbox for sharing screenshots easily

Propane.app for Notifo company campfire

TextExpander -- MUST HAVE

TextMate with Ack in Project, PeepOpen

iWork (keynote!)

iStat Menus for looking at how much ram redis is eating and how much CPU chrome is using

Samsung wireless B&W laser printer for printing out convertible notes (was $149 at officemax)

Mint.com for reminding myself how I still owe 6 figures for out-of-state georgia tech tuition loans

a custom apple script (saved as a .app by automator) that runs at boot to launch 4 terminal tabs with things like compass for sass, redis-server, redis- cli, git status and the like <https://gist.github.com/627190> then I discovered some other github project that did pretty much this but much better. forgot the name of it

gitx for easily looking at diffs (also use mdr for that <http://readablediff.com/>)

f.lux app <http://www.stereopsis.com/flux/>

taskpaper app for simple todos but i write most things with pen and paper

breville tea maker. kevin rose approved. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoZeeogblr0>

Sony NEX-5 pseudo-DSLR "EVIL/SLD" (sold my big Nikon D90 SLR and canon P&S, & kodak Zi8) this can do all and is much smaller. used it to record this notifo app tour: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW5hp3aoF9M>

Adobe CS5 Suite + Fontcase for managing lots of fonts (but recently it keeps crashing on me.. any ideas? I have ~1500 fonts loaded in it)

xScope - VITAL for anyone that pushes pixels <http://iconfactory.com/software/xscope>

Skype phone number tied to Google Voice. Handy for taking business calls on my laptop next to my cofounder so we don't have to take turns yelling into iPhone 4 speakerphone

Spotify for listening to music my friends favorite because I hate searching for music

Hype Machine in Fluid.app

smcFanControl for cooling down/manually adjusting fan speed when necessary

TunnelBlick for VyprVPN when at coffee shops (#firesheep) [http://paulstamatiou.com/how-toreview-surf-securely-with- vyp...](http://paulstamatiou.com/how-toreview-surf-securely-with-vyprvpn) (outdated review, theyve since added geek-approved openvpn and 256-bit L2TP/IPsec IIRC)

and last but not least, my trusty kindle [http://paulstamatiou.com/review- amazon-kindle-3-wi-fi-readin...](http://paulstamatiou.com/review-amazon- kindle-3-wi-fi-reading-device)

also:

      parse_git_branch() {
        git branch 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e 's/* \(.*\)/(\1)/'
      }
      PS1="\w\$(parse_git_branch) $ "

and

      diffy () {
        for file in $*; do
            git diff $file | mate
        done
      }

dream setup? a lighter 17-inch macbook pro with 2560x1440 res that could morph into 13-inch form factor when on flights. this thing hits both the damn armrests in economy. grr

oh and a secret stash of chocolate-covered espresso beans in my desk drawer..

<comment><USER20> Why did you go for the mass market headphones when you could get high-end audiophile headphones for the same price? (Sennheiser HD650, Beyerdynamic DT880, etc.)

Also, Easynews is a lot easier than Giganews. Visit web page, type name of TV show, download. Very easy. If you are willing to deal with NNTP, then you have unlimited bandwidth. Great service :)

<comment><USER33> To be honest: I bought them to review on my blog. Reviewing the "hot item" of the month gets more traffic (and some bump in affiliate sales [1]) than some audiophile headphones by a company none of my readers have heard of.

If I was solely buying for myself and no one else, I would have gone a different route. something like a FiiO E5 paired with Grados. When I lived in Atlanta I had a nice combo of Rokits + PreSonus: [http://paulstamatiou.com/how-to-upgrade-to-studio-monitor- sp...](http://paulstamatiou.com/how-to-upgrade-to-studio-monitor-speakers)

[1] for a long time my blog paid my rent exclusively (but just barely), allowing me to do full-time startup stuff for the last 2+ years. only just recently started getting a small stipend at work

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've been mobile for the past year, so just a 17" MBP (mid-2010), 8/500. I'm going to upgrade it to 512GB SSD + 1TB rotating HD soon. Right now I carry 5 x 500GB hard drives for photos (and backup), music, and 2 x data backups. The critical component: UltimateEars 10vi headphones (upgrade from Etymotics ER4S).

I usually have a high-spec Linux desktop with 3 x 24" portrait-mode U2410 IPS panels, and a 24-30" second monitor for the laptop, at my desk. I'll probably try some combination of Mac Pro and iMac (at home or office) next, but I think I'll keep the linux desktop too. Critical component: Beyerdynamic DT770pro sealed headphones (office), Sennheiser HD650 open headphones (home). May upgrade to HD800 at some point, or speakers.

I need to be able to do office automation and image editing (and maybe now iPhone dev?) (mac), lots of sysadmin/text editing/dev (mac or linux), and to also have a way to keep "work" and "fun" stuff on separate machines at the same desk. I also often need to have "machine under test" (embedded, server prototype, etc.) separate, and also sometimes need to run one or more machines on an airgapped network.

This leads to wanting 2 x 20A power feeds to my desk, and a good air conditioner. A noise-isolated enclosure would be an awesome upgrade (or a nearby office with some long DVI/keyboard/USB cables and a remote power cycler...)

$250 armless "size C" Aeron at home; probably will get an Embody or something for the office.

Also need to get an office: planning to use a shared office space in Mountain View for Q1-Q2 2011.

</comment><comment><USER35> * Old white macbook

* Company-issued HP "elitebook" that used to be faster than it is now. Runs Win7, which I quite like.

* Anonymous LG 24" LCD

* I'm a loyal user of microsoft... peripherals. Natural Keyboard Elite, plus an Arc mouse when I'm on the go. I can't say enough good things about that mouse... even the little felt bag it comes in is useful.

* About half and half emacs and vim for general editing. Trying to be more competent at vim, for wrist reasons. (Not trying to start anything here) But I'm not very good at it yet and it doesn't have org-mode.

* I've lately been using <https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt> on the mac for keyboard-based window snapping. I like it.

* Visual Studio 2008 / C# 3 for most programming (corporate coder here), plus a mix of Java, Ruby, Python, and whatever else will get the job done.

* (guitar) Ibanez SV5470, Fender Japan Standard Tele, Boss ME-70 for effects. The latter is competent and relatively portable, but I may do a real pedalboard someday. I practice into Guitar Rig 3 on my mac, through an Echo Audiofire4, and heard through a pair of Sennheiser HD280 earphones. The Echo unit has great preamps but has issues with the mac firewire implementation.

* (web) Chrome with AdBlock, Shareaholic, and Rikaikun (japanese helper: [https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/jipdnfibhldikgcj...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/jipdnfibhldikgcjhfnomkfpcebammhp))

</comment><comment><USER36> _Windows Workstation_

        I have a beefy workstation at home with 24" + 22" screens that I now
        primarily use for resource intensive gaming that require a good GPU,
        or ASM reverse engineering. The extra pixels really help keep
        different aspects of the ASM available for a quick reference when
        looking around.

_Linux Server & NAS_

        Next to that workstation, I have a dual quad core Xeon PowerEdge
        server with Debian for serving up my side projects, and experimenting
        with new languages & various web, load balancing, and DB servers. The
        Linux server is connected to a 4TB RAID5 NAS for backups of the
        server, my workstation, and my media files. I also have torrentflux
        setup on Debian to download torrents to the NAS. All of this is
        connected to a 30/30 FiOS connection with a gigabit switch for the
        internal network so its a decent setup for production side projects
        and backups.

_Day-to-day_

        Until last month I was using a 15" i5 MBPro with 6GB of ram, and an
        SSD for my day-to-day needs and development, but the weight was
        starting to get to me. So following the recommendations a few weeks
        ago in a HN thread about development laptops, I purchased a Lenovo
        X201 for my day-to-day needs. I dual-boot between Windows 7 (for ASM
        work, and other work that I need Windows for) and Ubuntu 10.10 (main
        OS, sysadmin work, development work). For anyone else considering a
        X201, do it! It's a great setup, the screen resolution is not a
        problem at all (coming from someone who went to a hi-res 15" MBP from
        a 13" for the screen resolution upgrade) and 10.10 worked flawlessly
        out of the box.

_Software_

        On Windows, I use InType for my texteditor, combined with ExpanDrive
        for remote editing.

        On Ubuntu, I use Scribes as my primary texteditor, vim when working
        in command line. No need for ExpanDrive in Ubuntu as Nautilus
        supports SSH bookmarks. Tilda is a great utility if you need to be
        able to pull up a Terminal window quickly, similar to Visor in OS X.
        "Gnome Do" to replace Spotlight from OS X

Here's a script to enable two-finger scrolling with Synaptics touchpads: <https://gist.github.com/667233>

</comment><comment><USER37> [Home] Mac Pro with 27" Cinema Display, 2x Quad Core 2.26GHz Xeon with 12 GB Ram, 120 GB SSD and a bunch of 1 TBs for backups/storage

[Mobile] MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo with 8 GB Ram, 320 GB disk

[Office] iMac Quad i7 with 8 GB Ram, 1 TB disk

iPhone 4 32 GB

iPad 3G 64 GB

TextMate for code/text

Parallels for Windows testing

Safari as my primary browser

Firefox (for Firebug) when doing web work

iChat for AIM/Jabber

TinyGrab for screenshot sharing

Dropbox for file sync between machines (All App Preferences are symblinked in so settings are the same across machines)

Transmit for File Uploads

1Password for password storage/secure password generation

TextExpander for Text/code snippets

Pages/Keynote/Numbers for productivity

Sequel Pro for MySQL GUI

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm an SVP at a music company, running our Emerging Technology group. It means I'm half CTO and half business development.

What Hardware I use:

Work Primary: \- Mac Pro, 8 core, 3.03 ghz with 16 gigs of RAM. 4 TB of hard drive space, and dual Nvidia something or others.

This drives two Dell U2711 27" displays and 2 23" Samsungs with those ultra high res PPI.

Hooked to this machine I have an external BluRay, Drobo Elite with 8 TB for offline, a 2TB time machine drive, an Apogee Maestro hooked to two Rokit 6 studio monitors from KRK and a Magic Touch Pad. I also have a Kinesis freestyle split keyboard, which I have spaced about 10" apart. My iPad goes between the two halves of the keyboard.

My Laptop is a 17" I5 Mac Book Pro.

I also have a iPad, iPhone, and a few Android phones for testing.

HOME:

We have a Mac Mini server in a closet with a 4TB RAID off it and an iMac quad core i5 for my wife. She has an iPad and iPhone.

We have a Sonos for home audio.

My primary software:

Chrome, Safari, Textmate, Terminal, Evernote, Supersync (to sync itunes libraries), NetNewsWire, various Fluid apps (Instapaper, Pivotal Tracker, Github, etc), Omnigraffle, Photoshop, Fireworks, Illustrator.

My primary development environment is Textmate. I prototype in Python.

Web services used:

\- Basecamp \- Pivotal Tracker \- Helpspot \- Assistly \- Github \- OpenAtrium

and lots of custom stuff we have.

I have my dream setup pretty much, I'd just like a nicer desk and a faster Mac Pro

<comment><USER38> Here's a picture. I should add what they do:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/ethank/5156591437/>

I use the left screen for iTunes, Pivotal Tracker and a VNC console to a screen of "tops" running on all our servers. We call it the War Games Console.

Left screen is email and "communications/information" including NetNewsWire, some other feeds, etc.

Middle right is my primary display for browsers and coding.

Far right is where I keep rememberthemilk.com, Gabble (a Yammer client), Echofon (twitter client) and IM/Skype.

On my Ipad I usually have SkyGrid running, which is a realtime news client. My laptop on the left is just so I have it available.

The other thing about my home setup is the MacMini server controls our lighting and thermostat and other systems in the house. I designed the house infrastructure to be computer-like, including states and conditional actions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Who I am: owner of small open-source focused VoIP engineering consultancy trying to morph into a product company.

Hardware:

\- Main office desktop machine: Quad-core Core 2 Duo @ 2.33 GHz (64-bit) with 8 GB of RAM, nVidia GT240, 30" HP display (DVI), dual 500 GB SATA HDs.

\- Laptop: Sony/Vaio VGN-NS328J, Dual Core (2.0 GHz/64-bit) with 3 GB of RAM, some sort of mediocre ATI video.

\- Netbook, on which I do a fair bit of my remote hacking: 10.1" Asus EeePC 1015PE (dual-core 1.66 GHz Intel Atom) w/2 GB RAM upgrade, 802.11x, Bluetooth. Great battery life on these things!

Software:

\- OS: Debian Linux - mostly unstable/sid for workstations, testing/squeeze for servers.

\- Window manager: For about a decade I used FVWM2, but recently gave up and switched to GNOME + Compiz, given the amount of GTK apps out there. Plus, taking advantage of the now-ubiquitous 3D accelerator actually gives much better windowing performance than a 2D window manager.

\- Browser: Chrome.

\- Mail client: Thunderbird 3.1.

\- Chat & IRC client: Pidgin.

\- Languages: C, Perl, PL/PgSQL (Postgres stored procedures), Kamailio configuration route script, Bash, Awk.

\- Most work: PostgreSQL v9.0, Kamailio/sip-router (formerly OpenSER), Asterisk, Wireshark, tcpdump, PgAdmin3

\- Ticketing system: RT

\- Bug tracker: Mantis (www.mantisbt.org)

\- Revision control: Git for actual software, Subversion for managing versions of customer network element configs.

</comment><comment><USER40> What I do: all form of web devel.. 40% 'building' 60% 'maintaining'.

Desktop: generic dell dual 2.66ghz 4gig ram, dual 22in wide screen displays. I do most of my 'work work' here.

I use a kensington 'expert mouse' in lieu of a real mouse.

Laptop: Lenovo T410.. never use a mouse for this. i turn off the touch pad and use the little nib.

Software: (not much compared to most people)

Ubuntu for my linux distro , xmonad for window placement , vim for coding , git for source control , ff/chromium for browsing. , grooveshark for listening,

I use a couple vim plugins, mainly nerdtree. My vim is heavily customized.

My ff is heavily customized with vimperator, i also use firebug, measureit, and adblock

I have a nice pair of pass-through headphones, I don't remember the make or model.

I have a crappy razr-era cell phone and a couple old digital cameras.

I am pretty happy with my setup, I don't do too much cranking and neither of my systems really lag unless there is some serious javascript going on in FF.

I do virtually all of my work through a shell and spend more time in vim than anywhere.

I occasionally run windows inside a virtual machine to hack on flash.

I'd like to move my OS to a SSD. I also wouldn't mind a headless badass private server.

Vimperator and learning to customize vim have been the best things I have ever done for my computing environment.

</comment><comment><USER41> Anything that can run Vim.

</comment><comment><USER42> A pretty ordinary HP 15" laptop (6730b) is my main machine currently. It runs Windows 7 64 bit and the occasional Ubuntu VM where required. Currently open are:

* Visual Studio 2010 (twice)

* SQL Management Studio

* Firefox (twice)

* .Net Reflector

* Git Bash prompt

* Skype

I have a stock mac mini sitting in the back for tinkering with iPhones etc and a couple of 19" monitors to plug in as needed. Misc other things I can see from here:

* iPod Touch

* HTC Desire (Android phone)

* Annoying Japanese printer with hard to find ink.

* Digital drum kit.

* Several notepads covered in scribble by either myself or my son.

</comment><comment><USER43> Desktop - Unknown ABS model. AMD Phenom 9500 quad-core, 2.0GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD 3850, crummy old IDE HD. I found this computer half destroyed at a junk sale and spent a few hours and about $50 refurbishing it to usable condition. Wouldn't have been able to afford it otherwise. The HD was missing, so I threw in an old one.

Laptop - Asus 8JS. Geforce 7700 graphics, 2Ghz Intel Core Duo, 2GB RAM, 120GB HD. 14" screen with 1440x900 resolution (looks photorealistic on some games).

OS - Ubuntu 10.10 as primary. Standard low-maintenance Linux, though occasionally I have to custom install something that has gone stale in the repositories. I also have mostly unused Windows XP and Vista boots.

Code editing - Eclipse or Gedit. I have rudimentary knowledge of VIM and painful memories of Emacs. I code in a whole slew of languages and generally find that I'm either okay with the really simple text editor (Gedit) or want code completion and automated testing (Eclipse). I also like to put SVN repos into a Dropbox. It's a free way to keep my code private but still have it backed up and synchronized between computers. I've used Git and Bazaar, never in a way that convinced me they were truly more advanced than SVN.

Web Browsing - Firefox. Tried Chrome and Opera, and I think I'm just more used to Firefox now and can understand its quirks. I was using Phoenix 0.4 back in high school, and people thought I was crazy.

Phone - was pretty uninterested in phones until Android came out. Now I have an HD2 (that's a WinMo phone) that I'm hacking to run Android.

Sound - anything I can salvage. People throw away tons of audio equipment. I have a huge pair of Tannoy speakers that look like they could power a rock concert. I think I have a usable amp for these, but I'm still figuring out how to wire everything.

</comment><comment><USER44> My rig is here: <http://jseliger.com/2010/05/02/writing-space-2010/> . 24" iMac with an external monitor; will probably be replaced by a 27" iMac with an SSD in the coming months. Expanding screen real estate / secondary monitors are probably the two greatest productivity enhancements I've seen in the last ten years.

Software:

1) Mostly Word, Textmate, and Mellel. The first for documents I have to send to others; the second for blog posts and the like; and the third for longer documents like novels.

2) Devonthink Pro, as described by Steven Berlin Johnson here: [http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movabletype/archives/0002...](http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movabletype/archives/000230.html) . This is insanely useful.

3) Firefox.

4) Occasionally Terminal.

5) Occasionally iMovie, iPhoto, and Handbrake.

6) Typinator: <http://www.ergonis.com/products/typinator/> , another insanely useful utility that I learned about online somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER45> At work I'm currently part of a support team, and I use the following hardware:

Laptop: Dell Latitude D830 (over 2 years old), Core 2 Duo T9300 2.5GHz, 4GB RAM, Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit

Workstation 1: HP Core 2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz, 16GB RAM, Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise

Workstation 2: Dell Core 2 Quad Q6700 2.66GHz, 16GB RAM, Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise

2 Dell 20 inch monitors plus the laptop screen Single mouse and keyboard - both plain Logitech models.

Software I'm regularly using:

Outlook, our internal ticketing system, Visual Studio 2008, Eclipse, Notepad++, Cygwin, Baretail, Baregrep, IE, Firefox, the products we support, various other internal tools.

At home:

I primarily use a Core i7 - quad core + hyperthreading, 6GB RAM, 120GB SSD, runs Windows 7 Ultimate.

I use a 1st gen Macbook Air for music and light web browsing, and I have an older desktop that I use as a media PC. Also a Dell laptop - 1 year old that was mostly replaced by the Core i7 desktop. I also have an Acer netbook that I use when traveling.

Finally, I also have a hosted server running CENT OS - quad core Xeon w/ 8GB RAM for hosting various sites and personal projects.

</comment><comment><USER46> Who am I?

        American salaryman by day, wantrepreneur by night.

What Hardware am I Using?

        Just a lenovo T500 w/ windows 7 (and ubuntu virtualbox),
        and an iphone 3G (soon to be a nexus one).
        The iphone is jailbroken on tmobile, and I'm not a fan of how
        there's no springboard widget support, nor the pains of trying to
        maintain a jailbroken iphone.
        I use a pair of Meelectronics M6(?) earbuds which are a steal.

        At work i use a Desktop running windows xp and 2 24" monitors.

And what software?

        real apps: Virtuawin, enso, chrome dev builds, Visual studio, vim, picasa,
        and itunes (more of a winamp guy though), and sumatra pdf for reading books.

        f.lux is awesome, and seems to work better than redshift
        cloud apps: picasa web, irccloud, and countless other google apps

What is my dream setup?

       I want a laptop the size of a macbook air, but with a desktop-fast processor
       that is largely disabled on battery, but fires up when docked at home.
       It must also be dead silent, and seamlessly dock to a desktop graphics card.

       I used to only use a desktop machine 5-6 years ago. and I'm coming to
       realize doing everything on one big honking laptop sucks. Laptops are
       terrible ergonomically. Part of me still wants to travel
       and work though. So I also want a big display that I can roll up in my backpack,
       and an ergonomic chair i can pack easily too.

       Lastly, I want a cheap offsite backup setup that let's me upload/backup tons
       of stuff without much thought. I also want ZFS/Freenas to be more drobo-like.
       I'd buy a drobo in a heartbeat if they said it just used ZFS and I never heard
       horror stories about them.

       Realistically, I'm likely going to get either a desktop or x201s+dock or
       hp envy 14, notion ink tablet, and a quiet low power freenas system.

</comment><comment><USER47>
        Notebook:
        - 15" Macbook Pro, 8GB ram, hybrid HDD, antiglare (matte) display.
        - <USER3>
        - MacVim
        - SMCFanControl to control MBP Fan speed and cool it down.
        - gfxCardStatus to force use of Intel GPU (increases battery life to 10hr max)
        - Lastpass & Xmarks for cross browser sharing of passwords & bookmarks.
        - iTerm, gnu screen, irssi, zsh with a 500 LOC .zshrc, macports, VMWare
        - Time machine for backups

        Server:
        - Colocated Sun x4100, 16GB ram, runs 8 VMs using Xen
        - Costs $40/month: 500GB/month bandwith, remote shutdown/reboot via LOM
        - Duplicity + S3 for backing up each individual VM

        Others:
        - Stand Up Desk (at work)
        - Airport Extreme + attached usb printer for network printing.
        - No external keyboards or displays to streamline work process.

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm a college student who's also a blogger, software reviewer, aspiring writer:

-2007-era home-built desktop running Windows 7 Professional x64 - AMD 64 x2, 3Gb Ram, 1Tb HD, 20" Acer monitor that I wish had higher resolution - dual-boots Ubuntu 10.10 and runs VMware Workstation for more OSes/testing

-Samsung N150 Netbook - Intel Atom N450, 1Gb Ram, 250Gb HD, Windows 7 Home Premium

-3rd Gen iPod Touch 32Gb, T-Mobile Dash from 2007 for phone calls :)

Software:

WordPress - most important tool :)

Office 2010

Windows Live Writer

Google Chrome

Photoshop Elements

Snagit + Camtasia <USER7>
Kindle for PC

Dropbox for almost everything

windroplr

dozens of other apps that I use less than the above

Dream Setup:

A faster version of my netbook with an external monitor/keyboard/mouse at my desk. The size is great, but 3Gb of Ram and a core i7 in the same package would be awesome...

Also, Things on Windows ( or another app that worked as good ) would complete my setup. I still don't have a great to-do list / GTD app for PC, so any suggestions would be great. Right now, I'm using Things on my iTouch and 37signals Backpack + Satchel for to-dos :)

</comment><comment><USER49> For everyday computing and development, I use my HP Pavilion 14" laptop with Sony MDR-7506 headphones. I dual-boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.04, but I tend to spend 90% of my time on the Windows side using PuTTY sessions as necessary to SSH to Linux machines. For coding, I split about 50/50 between Notepad++ and Vim. I browse primarily in Chrome.

For relaxing, I have my aging gaming desktop: Intel Core 2 Duo, GeForce 8800 GTS, dual 22.5" Samsung LCDs, Velociraptor primary HD, and a cheap (but good) Logitech USB headset with mic. I have both Windows 7 and Fedora 13 here. The Linux side is generally used as a test area, and I often try new distros there. I was pleasantly surprised by Fedora, and sometime soon I will try Fedora 14.

For a home web and file server, I use Debian / Apache / Samba.

</comment><comment><USER50> Hardware: I alternate between a Dell 14" XPS Laptop and a home-built desktop. The laptop is run-of-the-mill, and the desktop is a dual Q6600 with 8GB Corsair and a couple 2Tb WD drives, housed in a gorgeous Lian-Li brushed aluminum 12-bay case and 3 24" Acer monitors (cheap). Keyboard is a Logitech G19, Mouse is a Logitech MX-9000. Speakers are the little volume icon speakers from art.lebedev (they were a gift, but they're cool, and don't sound bad at all). I've also got an 8GB Dell Optiplex that I use as a sandbox. It's running ESXi with a single Ubuntu guest.

Looking around my office, I've also got some Linksys Powerline adapters (faster than WiFi), another Dell Studio 14" with 4GB ram running Windows 7.

Software: All three boxes are running Ubuntu 10.something, the desktop and laptop are running 10.10, while the Optiplex is on 10.04(LTS).

Servers: I've got a colo'd VM with 8GB RAM, dual Xeon 1.8Ghz and 200Gb disk running Ubuntu 10.04 with GoNexTek (<http://gonextek.com>) for some older sites of mine, as well as 2 512Mb slicehost instances for staging (haven't migrated them to Linode yet), and a Linode 512 Slice.

Hosted platforms: I mentioned Slicehost and Linode, but I have a couple of tentative apps on AppEngine.

Servers: I've got some (what I consider legacy) sites running PHP-based code -- mostly forums and the like. Newer stuff is mostly either Django behind either Apache or Nginx or, more recently, most of my stuff is with Tornado/Twister/Nginx (Twister is my management framework).

Databases: MySQL, MongoDB

The newest project I'm working on (Plum) is using the following: Nginx, Tornado, Python, Celery, RabbitMQ and MySQL & MongoDB and Memcache. Steve built a beautiful MySQL / Memcache abstraction layer he calls BPEngine that acts as our ORM, but in addition that, it also populates / expires / manages keeping memcache seeded & updated, as well as kicking off requisite tasks into celery for some of the backend work.

That covers almost everything I can think of.

</comment><comment><USER51> _Who am I?_

I'm just a simple jack-of-all-trades web designer trying to make sense of this crazy, often unnecessarily confusing world.

 _What hardware am I using?_

My nomadic work rig is a 15" MacBook Pro – late-2007 model with the stock hard drive replaced with a SSD – pox on black bezels and glass screens! When at home it is hooked up to a 24" Samsung monitor that I don't really take advantage of (I usually keep my windows sized to 1400x900 max), a wired Apple keyboard, an Alienware TactX mouse, Logitech Z-5 Speakers and Sony MDR-XD200 headphones. I also have a PC rig that I built in 2008, but I use that strictly for PC gaming now.

I draw my thumbnails and sketches in a large, grided Moleskine notebook with a Lamy Noto ballpoint pen. As for miscellaneous items, Post-It notes act as my todolist, the Kindle is my reading device of choice and I carry a Canon XSi with me every now and then.

 _And what software?_

I guess Photoshop is a given. I use both TextMate and Emacs for churning markup and code. Firefox is what I develop with first because of Firebug and the fact that I don't use it for browsing otherwise (keeps the history of my real browser clean). I use Slammer for measuring and laying stuff on my screen in a nice and tight grid.

I use Git for version control. I used to use Emacs + Magit for this but have gone back to a forked version of GitX after simplifying my branching model. Forklift is used for quick SFTP work or when I want to browse my local files with a program that doesn't suck. I use SizeUp to quickly center windows or to place windows in panes when I'm coding.

I work while listening to music, so iTunes + Last.fm is usually always up playing songs I've rated four stars or higher.

 _What would be my dream setup?_

I'd love to get rid of this stupidly-large PC tower I have, but I still need my PC gaming fix. Would be if nice laptop tech. eventually caught up to desktop and kept in line so I could have a MacBook that could run Shattered Horizon as well as it can run Photoshop.

</comment><comment><USER47> Notebook: 15" Macbook Pro, 8Gb mem, Hybrid HDD, Antiglare (matte) display. \- Quicksilver, with lots of other custom scripts \- SMCFanControl to control MBP Fan speed & \- gfxCardStatus to force use of Intel GPU (increases battery life to a 10hr maximum) \- iTerm, zsh with a 500 loc .zshrc, gnu screen (religiously) & VMWare running a Windows VM \- MacVim \- Lastpass & Xmarks for cross browser sharing of Password & Bookmarks.

Server: \- Colocated Sun x4100, 16Gb mem, runs 8 VMs using OracleVM (Xen + pretty web based UI) \- Colo costs $40/month, I get 500GB of monthly bandwith, includes a second

Others: \- STAND UP DESK (at work) \- Airport Extreme + attached usb printer for network printing.

</comment><comment><USER52> Hardware:

       - 15" MBPro (4GB ram, SSD)

       - Magic Mouse, Apple Keyboard

       - 30" Dell 3007WFP

Apps:

       - Echofon,

       - Propane (Campfire)

       - <USER4>

       - <USER5>

       - <USER6>

       - <USER7>

       - Colloquy (IRC)

       - <USER8>

       - <USER9>

       - <USER10>

       - <USER11>

       - Spaces (to group everything)

Dev:

       - DevStructure with Vagrant & Virtualbox (http://docs.devstructure.com/vagrant)

       - <USER12>

       - Rackspace CloudServers

Office:

       - Big flat desks

       - Aeron or a huge exercise ball for seating

       - Bose Quietcomfort headphones

       - Skype + Googlevoice for VoIP

       - <USER13>

</comment><comment><USER53> Who am I?

I'm a developer and a Computer Engineering student at the public university in Uruguay.

What hardware am I using?

* 15.6 HP G62 laptop (Core i3 / 4 GB ram / 320 GB 7200 disk / around 3.30 hs battery life)

* OS: Ubuntu 10.10 64 bit + Xmonad with Gnome integration

* Emacs / Chrome / Dropbox / Gmail / Google Docs / google reader / Flickr / Python / Ipython / Amazon S3

For music:

* Sennheiser MX470 / Sennheiser HD 212

* I've used to use Amarok, but I switched to Rythmbox just for simplicity

For photograhpy:

* Sony DSC-H3 (my old legacy camera, I didn't have budget to buy a new one right now)

* Shotwell + Digikam editor

Phone: iPhone 3G

What Is My Dream Setup?

* A Lightweight laptop with the quality of Mac's but cheaper and with hardware 100% supported by Linux.

* A DSLR camera, just mid-sized to learn more about photgraphy.

* A nice Bang & Olufsen headphones + speakers.

* Two 24" monitors

</comment><comment><USER54> Who I am: Computational physics grad student, former scientific startup employee

Hardware:

\- Home: 6 core AMD desktop, 23" + 15" screens, really old Happy Hacking Keyboard Lite

\- Office: 4 core Intel desktop, 8 core Ubuntu server, 48 core server being built

\- In between: Asus EeePC 900 netbook with 12GB of flash storage

\- An n node cluster on EC2 (n <= 250)

Software:

\- All machines running some form of Ubuntu except Fedora servers on EC2

\- Firefox and Chromium

\- Thunderbird + Gmail IMAP + university IMAP

\- Editor: gedit with lots of plugins, nano for small edits

\- Pidgin and Empathy for XMPP with Google Talk

\- Gwibber for Twitter

\- Texmaker for LaTeX (or gedit)

\- mercurial

\- Dropbox

\- Mendeley to manage citations/Bibtex locally and online

\- Ipython + Numpy/Scipy + Matplotlib

\- Inkscape for figures and making plots look nice

\- Bitbucket for private projects, Google Code for open source

\- Lightning (Google calendar inside Thunderbird)

\- Google docs

\- Lots of physics software.

</comment><comment><USER55> * 17.5" HP pavilion 3GB RAM. Fairly slick but air vents are in an awkward position, and I should have picked a smaller screen size

* OS: Gentoo 2010 hardened. Browser: FF/Chrome. Editor: Vim/Redcar. DVCS: Git. TM: Tmux. File sync: Dropbox. IMP: GIMP, sometimes PS but I'm a beginner. Media: VLC. Shell: Zsh

* Pretty much every interpreter/compiler under the sun.

* Secondary Mac mini utilizing 4GB Ram but unfortunately it's external peripherals suck.. yes, all of them. It's there for nothing more than iOS development.

* Networking: Anything Netgear, it's never let me down

* Headphones: Sennheiser HD 800

* Ext HDD: Western Digital 500GB book

* iPhone 4 for iOS development, HTC Magic for Android development

</comment><comment><USER56> At work I have an HP xw-series workstation sporting two quad core Xeons and 12gb of RAM. I have a 24" main display and a 19" secondary, both Dells, hooked up to a fantastically terrible Quadro NVS290 video card. It runs Windows 7 and my primary code editor is Vim. I have development kits for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Wii attached. I use Perforce for SCM at work and a mishmash of NAnt, Visual Studio, and XGE for builds.

I also have a secondary Core 2 Quad machine I use for PC games development as the video card is actually usable, also running Windows 7.

</comment><comment><USER57> * Dell Studio XPS 16, 15.4"

* Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit

* Gnome-Do, Chrome (browsing), Firefox (web development), Git (version control), Aptana Studio (IDE), VirtualBox (virtualization), GrooveShark.com (music), DropBox (file-sharing), Skype

</comment><comment><USER58> Laptop

\- MBP 17"

Netbook:

\- Lenovo S10-3 with Win7 (for compatibility testing). Damn, windows sucks.

Dev systems:

\- Circa 2004 Shuttle XPC, single core AMD64. Ubuntu

\- Via M'Serv S2100 (Via Nano x86_64, 1.6 Ghz). Ubuntu

\- EMC/Iomega IX2-200. Linux 188.8.131.52 with customized userspace

\- Sheevaplug (Dev box for Kirkwood development (see ix2-200)), Ubuntu

\- IMac 27" (quad core, 8 GB RAM), OSX

\- VirtualBox, x86_64 VMs running Ubuntu

Editor: \- MacVim (syntax highlighting disabled)

\- Sam (<http://swtch.com/plan9port/man/man1/sam.html>)

Browser: \- 99% Chrome

\- 1% Firefox

\- Cannot stand the internet without adblock

Dev for current project:

\- Tools: gcc, make, awk, debugging: printf() and occasionally gdb ...

\- Language: C (yeah baby, rockin' it old-school)

</comment><comment><USER59> A Dell Inspiron 560S desktop (700$-ish, few months old, 6 Gigs ram) with Windows 7 (which I love I really do, it just screams and works great), with 2 Viewsonic monitors (<http://amzn.to/dqRAN1> very good, and I much prefer the more traditional aspect ratio, especially for dual monitors.).

Software-wise, it's Chrome + assorted browsers for testing, Notepad++ for editing code, Visio 2003 for wires. Paint.net for simple image stuff. Dropbox. Skype. That's about it.

</comment><comment><USER60> 15" year-old Unibody Macbook Pro. 6 months ago I replaced the SuperDrive with an SSD - love it. 2 months ago, I picked up a refurb 24" Cinema display (~$649CAD, awesome price). I never realized what an impact that display would have on my desk, but I have far less crap on my desk now because of it.

TextMate, Versions, Terminal, Photoshop for Dev & Design work.

Nikon D90 - Usually my 12-24 f4 or 50 1.8 are on it. It's a great creative outlet that gets me away from my desk.

iPhone 3GS - Trying hard to wait till the next iPhone to upgrade.

</comment><comment><USER61> Hardware: used Dell Optiplex 745, old 17" LCD, Unicomp clicky keyboard. Kensington trackball, HP GPIB card, Grado SR-125 headphones. Sun Ultra 60 and a Soekris in the closet. Several classic Tektronix oscilloscopes and plugins, assorted HP frequency counters, generators, and meters. Trimble Thunderbolt GPS disciplined oscillator as my 10MHz house reference. (My Rb atomic clock is currently powered down.)

Software: WinXP, VirtualBox, OpenBSD, Cygwin, Codewright, Opera, and lots of weird embedded tools.

</comment><comment><USER62> Who am I?

College Student (Computer Science/Music), Amateur recording engineer/producer, Independent consultant (iPhone/web/backend development)

What Hardware am I Using?

3.33GHz 6-core Mac Pro w/ PCI SSD, 2x 21.5" 1920x1080 displays

Just bought a 2.13GHz 13.3" Macbook Air... we'll see how that goes

And what software?

Mail/Adium/Skype/Safari

Xcode/Textmate/Terminal/Ruby/Python/Java/Processing/etc

Logic Pro/Rogue Amoeba Fission/iZotope RX/Waveburner

What is my dream setup?

Pretty happy with what I have, sometimes wish for more pixel density (won't someone make a 2560x1440 24" display??), ergonomics are also a concern (love my chair, hate my desk)

<comment><USER63> I'm really interested in how he Macbook Air goes for you, as a programmer. I've been eying that exact same one, but I'm not sure I can validate the price since most of my life and work resides on a Linux server somewhere in the "cloud". If you want my email is in my profile. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Desktop:

      Core i7 930
      6GB DDR3 DRAM
      2x24" ASUS monitors
      Microsoft Natural Keyboard
      (On the way) 120 GB OCZ Vertex 2 SSD
      Fedora 14

Laptop:

       ~2007 Core2Duo 15" MBP

Phone:

      HTC Incredible w/ Android 2.2

VPS:

      512 MB prgmr.com instance running Ubuntu server

My favorite software:

      zsh
      tmux
      xmonad
      irssi
      (mac)vim
      git
      google chrome
      gmail, google docs, google reader

[edit] formatting

</comment><comment><USER63> Acer Aspire 5670 (4+ years old), Windows 7 Ultimate from Bizsparks.

I used to use Visual Studio 2008 for Outlook plugin development but now I pretty much always SSH into a remote Linux server to work. I use vim and git. Sometimes I run my stuff on Virtual Box with Ubuntu but that only works well enough on my i7 6GB desktop.

I program primarily in Python and Java and use Django for web app development.

</comment><comment><USER65> I'm a freelancer/entrepreneur writing Objective-C (so I'm generally on Macs), JavaScript, ruby, clojure:

* 24" iMac

* Macbook Air for conferences/visiting clients (MacBookAir2,1 with SSD)

* iOS Testing: iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 2G, iPad

* MacVim, VMware, homebrew, Xcode

* cdargs, git, ack, jslint, screen

* A whole load of dot files in a git repo

* Android: Nexus One

* I use some of my own apps to manage myself (like Wingman, it's in my github account with the same username if you'd like to try it)

</comment><comment><USER66> I like to keep it simple.

Hardware:

        ASUS Eee PC 1201N 12.1"
        AKG K518DJ Headphones

Software:

        Arch Linux
        DWM Window Manager
        Firefox with Vimperator
        Puppet
        git
        hg
        Vim
        urxvt
        Zsh
        openssh
        rtorrent
        mplayer-nogui
        Spotify

Webapps:

        Google Apps Gmail and Google Reader

Hosting:

        6 x 512MB Linodes

</comment><comment><USER67> MBP 13" SSD & Lenovo X300 SSD - best in each class

2x 24"

Logitech MX5000 (must, have 3 of them)

Textmate, vi, netbeans, eclipse, photoshop, firefox, chromium, chrome, hexfiend, apache, postgres, mysql, redis, nginx, mongodb, php, python, xcode, itunes, virtualbox, truecrypt, skitch, visual studio, freebsd

4-5 diff smartphones but use none of them. bunch of servers in the cloud. most used app is terminal.

</comment><comment><USER68> Who am I?

        Code monkey that runs a modest software sweatshop in Orange County, CA
        and is constantly scheming startups.

What Hardware Am I Using?

        27" iMac i7 w/ 16GB ram
            - Best Mac I've ever owned, hands down.

        2.66GHz Quad-core Mac Pro w/ 8GB ram w/ 20" Cinema Display
            - Surprisingly don't use this much
              ever since I got my iMac. Mostly for testing third party hardware
              like videos cards, etc with what I'm working on.

        Dell Precision T3500 Xeon 2.4 GHz w/ 4GB ram
            - My guinea pig machine for random shit
            - Various Linux distros (FreeBSD, Ubuntu, and testing of new
              builds of various)

        Asus Rampage Gene III 3.06GHz i7 w/ 6GB ram & AMD Radeon HD5830
            - Prototype hardware for a project I'm working on, picked for it's
              north/south bridges and socket.

And what software?

        Tons...On Mac-native I use a ton of terminal/vi, Smultron, Xcode suite,
        CS5 suite, and various others. VMWare and Parallels both...Some projects
        only work in either/or, plus I just genuinely can't make up my mind.
        Cyberduck for ftp. I use MAMP Pro to control a self-updated version of
        my web services (apache, php, etc)

        Don't know if you care, but of course I use all the normal command line
        programs any nerd does...and for repos I prefer SVN only cause I used
        CVS (don't hate on me yo) but I use git, hg, etc daily and love them
        as well. Ultimately I'd be happy if everyone would just pick ONE.
        I wouldn't care which cause they all have their strengths..

        Browser I use Safari for casual, Firefox for primary development
        (Firebug > Webkit Inspector) and I've got a verion of Chromium that
        a buddy of mine and I made some cool changes to, but I haven't used it
        recently cause it was forked from such an old trunk.

        Web apps I use gmail (for all my mail), google docs, and mobileme.
        Probably some various others from time to time.

What Is My Dream Setup?

        I used to have a Macbook Pro that got ruined in an apartment flood
        6 months ago, so I've been thinking about replacing it with one of
        those new 11" Macbook Airs. So sexy.

        I'm actually working on my true dream setup as a startup.  We've
        only recently begun so it's a little self-absorbed to report much
        more then that: http://mythologylabs.com

        Like jesusabdullah said, almost limitless internet would be great
        for a bajillion reasons.

</comment><comment><USER69> This was my dev environment while building FairTutor on the road over the course of the last year (Parrot shown for scale):

<http://img.expatsoftware.com/blog/parrot_vs_keyboard.jpg>

      - Standard Microsoft dev stack
      + ReSharper
      + CodeSmith
      + TortoiseSVN

</comment><comment><USER70> I have two computers:

1\. A Lenovo IdeaPad S10 running Ubuntu 10.10. 2\. A Dell Dimension e520n which boots Arch Linux and OpenBSD (and sometimes Windows 7).

I am considering moving to a regular laptop (14" or 15" screen) and getting rid of both of my current computers. I find that I don't enjoy having multiple computers as much as I used to.

</comment><comment><USER71> Hardeware: HP Pavilion ze5300 laptop, 2GHz P4, 512MB RAM, 40GB disk.

Software: Ubuntu 10.10, emacs (with haskell-mode, python-mode, yasnippet.), Ubuntu One, the haskell platform (<http://www.haskell.org/platform>), Gens/GS (Sega Genesis emulator.).

</comment><comment><USER72> Kubuntu 10.10 64 running on a custom PC with 8G of RAM, Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU 670 @ 3.47GHz, 24" LG LED with DVI connected to my modest Radeon HD 4350.

Software: Emacs, chrome, konsole, gitk, git, choqok, firefox, ksnapshot, gwenview, quassel, RSIbreak, dolphin, amarok, kopete, knotes.

</comment><comment><USER73> Who I am: CS student at UNC.

Hardware:

\- 15" MBP

\- 5 year old no-name Desktop

\- 24" monitor

\- iPhone 4

\- iPad

Software:

\- Everyday Apps: 1Password, Things, NetNewsWire, Skype, Echofon, Adium, Unison, Transmit, Concentrate (getconcentrating.com), Arc (for backups), Colloquy, Dropbox, iWork, Skitch, The Unarchiver, ScrobblePod, BusySync

\- Browser: Chrome (99%)

\- Dev: Vim, Textmate, iTerm, Sequel Pro, Eclipse, Brew, GitX

\- VMs: Fusion with Ubuntu 10.10 and Windows 7

</comment><comment><USER74> 13" Macbook Pro connected to a new 27" cinema display.

Xcode, emacs, python, gcc, clisp, TeX. SSH to some GNU/Linux machines. Mackie Tracktion and Sibelius for music production stuff. Cultured Code "Things". Dropbox. iWork for when TeX doesn't feel like the right solution.

</comment><comment><USER75> It's an idea for startup! WhatYouUse? or WhatOneUses? User registers on a site, then a special agent collects info from his computer. Thus, you can see most used hardware and software, compare, rate, find potential friends (VIM lovers), etc...

What do you think?

<comment><USER76> Not sure about a _startup_. Maybe a side project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> I use:

Hardware: a 13-inch Macbook Pro MX Revolution Wireless Mouse Post-it Notes Regular iPod earbuds. I don't let myself enjoy music too much.

Software: Mind Node OoVoo Adium X Microsoft Office 2007 Google Chrome OS: Mac OS X (SOLID) On Bootcamp: Windows XP Pro SP3

I'm just a freshman at UCSD

</comment><comment><USER78> Desktop: Mac Pro with a pair of 23" displays. Apple compact BT keyboard + Magic Trackpad. SSD for boot/apps, 2x1TB RAID mirrors for bulk storage.

Mobile: MacBook Air.

Phone: iPhone 4 + HTC Eris (stock Froyo ROM -- HTC Sense is awful)

</comment><comment><USER79> I tend to write very freeform, please forgive me.

My main computer is a desktop that hit a year old last month. It contains an AMD Phenom X4 @ 3.6GHz, 4GB RAM, and an SSD (60GB, one of the OCZ ones - <USER14> wasn't picky) for the OS and programs. I've started to use VMs more often, so I'm starting to hit the memory limit, but the overclocking needs a bigger fan, which I had to install over half the RAM slots. No, really. Compile times are through the floor, though, and I might go hexa-core in the near future, depending how much the quad-cores go for on eBay.

Recently I was doing some research work with graphics cards, so I had high-end Nvidia and ATi cards in both the PCI slots, and no way to link them. It would make gamers cry. Although I downgraded one of the cards, I still get to have three monitors: an Acer 24-inch monitor in the middle, and two 19-inch Dell ones in portrait mode on the side, along with an Ergotron for the middle one that keeps my desk clutter-free. I find it easier to tell things apart by confining them to a separate screen rather than a workspace - the left one _always_ has a shell, the right one _always_ has compilation info and help, the middle one usually has my open files or a web browser. I don't run IM while working, because having it permanently visible would probably be a productivity nightmare!

I type dvorak on a Kinesis Advantage (the black one). It's like headphones - if you switch from the pair you got with your iPod to a high-grade audiophile set for several months, you won't notice the difference until you switch back. Typing on the Kinesis feels great now I'm used to it, and the dvorak doesn't make it any faster, only more comfortable. The mapping is done in hardware, so I don't have to go back to hunt-and-pecking qwerty when typing on a computer I've just built. I also use a Logitech Performance MX mouse that I'm ambivalent about.

Software: The machine runs Windows 7 for general use, alongside an Arch Linux VirtualBox VM that houses my development tools. I've tried setting up Windows the way I like it, but when Linux is available it doesn't seem worth it. Even if you can, I honestly recommend virtualising your development environment, especially if you use Unix-friendly tools such as Emacs or Vim - I had a bug report of my program working in 32-bit Linux but not 64-bit, and setting up the 32-bit environment took five minutes (four to install the tools and one to let Dropbox sync the files over)

I use emacs for editing. My config (there's always config) is spread over seven different files, although only a few lines are actually important: a few adjustments for dvorak, keybindings, and working with various modes. Every source file I touch on the VM gets put in a shared folder which is linked to my Dropbox account, so my files are always accessible, even when the machine isn't turned on. Dropbox is also my primary backup method - not every file I have is irreplacable, but those that are fit on my share. My secondary backup method is some DVDs I burn once a month, then store away from my house. When I'm away from home, I fire up a Medium-sized Amazon EC2 server which has most of the same programs on it.

After listing Emacs and Dropbox, I can't think of anything else that I'd call significant. I use Firefox with the Tree Style Tabs extension, which works wonders with a widescreen monitor. DisplayFusion is a wonderful little tool that gives you a taskbar on each monitor. I ran TrueCrypt over all my drives, and it's been completely transparent. Gmail holds my mail - it's the one utility I'm willing to keep on the cloud, rather than just have it there as a backup. Other than that, it's mainly programming languages and too many Unix shell utilities to list.

Before I tell you my dream setup, usesthis.com-style, let me ask you a question: Do you know of an editor or IDE that allows you to seamlessly work with files in the cloud? I'm not talking about working on a webapp, which practially requires a remote machine to work on, but one that allows you to offload any hard work (compilation or computation) somewhere else while you're working on a netbook.

It's all well and good to ask for infinite amounts of CPU and RAM, and another thing to try to get that. I dream about having twelve cores available, but as that requires both money and replacing half the parts, I stick with four, and only boot up an EC2 server when I know I'm going to have to compute something for an hour, or want to be in full-on programming mode.

Once you have enough processing power available, not every processor cycle needs to be necessary. I have an emacs hook that compiles and tests my code in the background every now and then, on the off-chance that I wanted to do it. A while back I started relying on emacs to save my files for me, too, since I realised I was saving after every line, and if I wanted to make destructive changes then I'd be in a new branch in version control. Sure, my disk activity and CPU usage are through the roof, but I've stopped waiting for things, and it's pretty damn good. Anyway, that's my dream setup: seamlessly scalable.

<comment><USER80> Regarding your question: IIRC, when you use tramp on emacs, commands executed on remote files are executed remotely as well (for example, a vc-checkin is not executed locally but on the origin-host of the file/buffer you're editing). Though I am sure that this worked on version control commands, I am not sure whether it works on compile commands per default, but a little emacs lisp surely solves this problem...

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> I've got a little 13" Toshiba laptop and a once-beefy but still admirable core 2 quad desktop with 22" and 21" screens.

Most of my day's spent in Visual Studio, Edit Plus, Flash IDE, a browser and remote desktop.

</comment><comment><USER82> Hardware

Desktop: Hackintosh, Core 2 Quad @ 2.83GHz with 8GB RAM and a GeForce 8800 GTS.

Laptop: Core 2 Duo MBP @ 2.26GHz with 4GB RAM

Server(s): Arch Linux

Software

MacVim, Python, Go, Chrome, Adium, Tweetie, Homebrew, Fabric, Git, git-flow, Rietveld, GMail, Redmine.

</comment><comment><USER83> Ubuntu 10.10, awesome, gnome do, emacs, eclipse, bash, (i)python, ghc(i), git, trac, chromium (& vimium), openoffice, gmail, gcalendar, evernote, pidgin, xchat, grooveshark.

</comment><comment><USER84> * MacBook of some kind (currently 11" MBA) + 30" Apple Cinema Display + wireless keyboard + Magic Mouse

* Terminal.app

* TextMate

* Git

* Safari

* Chrome

* Homebrew

* Xcode

* Transmit

* Tweetie

* Adium

* Skype

* Mail.app

* Colloquy

* Cinch

* Dropbox

* Evernote

* And a whole bunch of command line tools. Run "history | awk '{ print $2 }' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n" to find your most common. Mine are:

rm, mv, make, cd, ls, open, mkdir, mate, man, find, git, cat , touch, echo

<comment><USER33> slick setup. I used to have a 30-inch Dell monitor way back when ( <http://www.flickr.com/photos/pauls/642309070/> ). ended up selling it to ryan block because I thought it was too big and always had to move my head around to look at the screen. in hindsight I think it was just because my desk wasn't deep enough. ryan ended up selling it to someone else not more than a month later as he thought it was too big too haha.

I have yet to play with the ACD 27" but I think that might be the sweet spot for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> 13" MacBook (mid-2007) 2.16ghz w/ 4GB Ram and 500GB Hard Drive

Magic Mouse, Apple Bluetooth Keyboard, Rain mStand

NEC EA231WMi (23" 1080p IPS LCD)

500GB USB Drive For backup (1TB Time Capsule on order)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'll start. Sorry if I don't make much sense--I'm coming down with a fever. :(

Who am I?: I'm a mechanical engineering grad student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. My most interesting projects to-date are probably my thesis and an IRC bot that runs on node.js.

What Hardware Am I Using?: At home, I use a used Dell Mini 9. I really like it, though it chokes on some Java apps (minecraft) and some visually intensive stuff. It also only has about 6 GB of SSD, so space often becomes an issue. Awesome battery life, though!

I used to have a desktop, but it recently died and I'm not really willing to spend the money to fix it yet. At work, I have an older Dell Dimension with dual 19" (or so) screens.

I also just recently bought a Linode instance. I've found having a server accessible over ssh is really really handy.

And what software?: I'm running Fedora 12 on both my work computer and my laptop. I previously ran Ubuntu, but my boss gave me a Fedora disk and I decided to give it a shot. It's alright, though I've decided that I like apt- get better. Long ago, I used to dual boot windows on my old desktop, but I found that I hate having to reboot, and most of the time there isn't really anything on the windows computer that I want, excepting for the odd game or two. But Linux is getting better for games anyway, especially the casual types that I tend to play these days.

For browsing, I use Google Chrome (v8 <3), and for text editing, I tend to use either vim or gedit depending on my mood and the context. I prefer writing papers using LaTeX, and I actually adore Gnumeric for spreadsheets. I tend to use python/numpy for data crunching (and ipython for testing out ideas and as a calculator), and node.js for my side-projects. I haven't really used node.js for any serious projects yet, but as a toy I really like it. On the netbook I use xmonad for window management (netbooks and xmonad make a great combination), but on my "workstation" I've stuck with metacity. For image editing, I tend to use Gimp, though I've been trying to get into Inkscape lately. I've also considered PGF/Tikz but haven't gotten around to it.

What Is My Dream Setup?

If my netbook had like three times the storage, I'd be pretty happy with it. In an ideal world, I'd have a workstation and a massive desk (similar to what I have at work but with more ponies) as well. I also wish I had my own scanner again.

When it comes to software, I'd wish apps came with defaults that suited my workflow. For example, vim's defaults (on Fedora) don't really do it for me, but I've been too lazy to change them myself. I know, I know. I also wish there wasn't such a delineation between operating system-based software ecosystems. While I love the Linux ecosystem, there's some stuff on the Mac side of things (and on Windows too--for example, Irfanview), and it's a shame that you have to pick your programs based on your OS (or whatever virtualization you decide to run).

When it comes to UI, I wish there wasn't such a fine line between the Real World and the Computer World. The reason I wish I had a huge desk is because I tend to work in piles and scraps of paper. I'm really messy in the Real World, but it works for me. While I'm not terribly disappointed in computing these days, it'd be really awesome if computer use and desk use somehow mashed together a bit better.

Finally, I want really fast internet. While "cloud" is definitely a buzzword, I'm really liking the idea of having my computers being this sort of abstract thing, where I don't have to consider there being an actual box in my house somewhere, and the lower latency is between you and your servers, the better integration can be between The Cloud and your "thin clients" (such as my netbook).

<comment><AUTHOR> Forgot to mention: Git and irssi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Hardware:

\- Dell Studio 14" laptop

\- Sennheiser HD202 headphones

\- Nokia 5310 XpressMusic cellphone

Everyday software:

\- Arch Linux

\- Awesome window manager

\- GNOME environment

\- GNOME Do

\- Rhythmbox

\- Google Chrome

\- Pidgin

\- Dropbox

\- Nexuiz (open source FPS game)

Programming tools:

\- Eclipse Helios

\- Java (Sun's JDK)

\- Various Java frameworks and libraries (Wicket, GWT, Hibernate, Guice)

\- Mercurial

\- TortoiseHg

\- gEdit \- VirtualBox

\- Windows XP (virtual machine)

\- Adobe Flash Builder 4 (running on the virtual machine)

\- Gimp

</comment><comment><USER87> 27" imac with 23" cinema display. macbook.

<comment><USER88> Do you really need the smaller display?

<comment><USER87> Yes I really need two displays! It generally has aim, skype, irc, torrents, activity monitor, and my terminal windows.

<comment><USER88> When I try to do something like that the second display just demands attention and I end up less productive than using something like Spaces. Also, a second monitor makes my eyes tired faster, even when I'm not looking at it (just the brightness bugging me).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Computer: a 3 year old HP OS: Ubuntu 10.04 Editor: Vim/Komodo Edit - <USER15> trying to learn emacs Cell: Nexus One

</comment><comment><USER46> What do you use for backups?

searching for "backup" and "time machine" and "rsync" only reveals 3 results total.

<comment><USER90> Time Machine, Dropbox, and Backblaze

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> An older MBP which gets way too hot and has way too sharp edges to make me satisfied.

<comment><USER91> So get rid of it? They hold their value extraordinarily well.

<comment><USER88> Yeah, I should...

BTW, do you guys feel like its OK to an eBay seller to omit details like this (that would probably prevent the sale/lower the value) ?

The seller probably knew about this but never mentioned it, made it seem like a perfect machine. I traded the MBP for an 20" iMac.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> Lenovo X200. Fedora, emacs, chrome, and whatever gnome crap happens.

3.5' 2x4 LART.

You're damn right I'm a sysadmin.

</comment><comment><USER93> 13" Macbook and a 15.6" Toshiba (with Ubuntu) that needs an external monitor.

</comment><comment><USER94> Asus eee pc, with Fedora 13 LXDE, Chrome, Vim, GNU toolchain and Flex SDK

</comment><comment><USER95> 15" i7 MacBook Pro.

</comment><comment><USER96> Who I am: I co-run Mandalorian.com, we break stuff and keep hackers out.

I use pretty much everything. In terms of hardware, I mostly use:

Dell XPS M1530 for day to day work. Possibly the best laptop I've ever had.

Sony SRX 51-P/B (with a Mighty 128mb of Ram and a P3-850 CPU) for home stuff. I'm hoping to move to an MBA after Lion is released and the bugs are worked out.

Mac Mini in the living room for Music, video and photo editing, playing media and browsing HN. This is plugged into a 32" Dell LCD and a Samsung HT C5500 home theatre system.

An iPhone 4 for music/everything on the go. I prefer the stability of my 3G, but it's just too slow these days so iPhone 4 it is. To make matters worse I'm mostly ambidextrous but switch between left and right hand on a phone, so I had to get a mophun pack so I could hold it in my left hand.

I use a Samsonite backback for lugging things around. I don't go to the US so I don't need to worry about TSA searches.

I also have a set of sony iphone headphones that do the job well. They're not quite sennheisers but they have an inline volume control.

I've been using a moleskin notebook for writing things down (instead of a cheap pad). It's not worth the extra to be honest but I got them on a deal. I do seem to take more care of it so I don't lose my notes.

For work, software-wise I use:

Ollydbg, IDA Pro, Immunity Debugger and HBGary Responder Pro for reverse engineering, incident response and the odd bit of vuln dev.

Nessus, Nmap, Hping, Unicornscan, Nikto, Metasploit, CANVAS, Burp Suite Pro and countless smaller tools for penetration testing.

Countless VMs with various OSes on them ranging from Linux to Windows to AROS for various purposes. As the laptop is my main system I also use f.lux. I also have Evernote and dropbox.

On my Sony laptop, I run Arch Linux with Awesome, various zenburn-type hacks and SSH. It's mainly used as an X/SSH terminal, but I also have mutt, irssi, raggle and some other console tools. I use Chromium as my main browser.

On the Mac Mini I use Aperture (although I'm probably going to switch back to Lightroom), VLC, Boxee, Safari, Chrome, GLTerminal, Handbrake, Little Snitch, iTunes (reluctantly), Dropbox and Last.fm.

On the iPhone I mainly use Mail and the built in apps, Salesforce for when I want to check up on sales, IM+ for IM, Backgammon NJ or Game Dev Story when I have a minute, 1Password, AnalyticsPro, Softphone, Facebook, Twittelator pro (for personal) and Tweetdeck (for work), Facebook, FourSquare, Sickipedia, Notifo, Prowl (with some scripts to notify me when certain things finish), Colloquy and TouchTerm, Evernote, MyFitnessPal, Train Times and Tube Deluxe.

</comment><comment><USER97> Intel i7

Dell u2711 27" monitor

Visual Studio with Vim plugin

Windows 7 64 bit

</comment><comment><USER98> My brain, mostly.

</comment><comment><USER99> TextMate and Gedit for my more sundry programming needs

Emacs when I'm hacking on Clojure/(some-other-lisp)

Grooveshark for tunes

Unison for remote folder syncing (sucks on OS X, I'd love to have a replacement for this)

I have a knack for using sshfs/scp for perverse ends from time to time.

Fabric for deployment. Of anything.

<comment><USER100> Replace Unison with Dropbox.

<comment><USER99> The host machine for the directory I am distributing and syncing does not belong to me and cannot be dropbox'd.

It's contract work, we don't always get to decide on our toys of choice.

I need the explicit merge awareness anyway, not blind single-source propagation.

When I say that I need a replacement for Unison, I mean that I've already searched exhaustively and found nothing beyond slapping one together with a script. I'm probably going to have to make something myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> MBP 13" and Baby Lotion...</comment>