What is Your Hardware Software Setup?
waferbaby has a series of interviews that asks various people about their hardware and software setup. I love this stuff!
I’m always curious what tools other designers, bloggers and artists are using to do their work. It’s a great way to discover some really useful apps.
My Hardware
All of my work is done on a Macintosh Dual 1.8 GHz PowerPC G5 with 2 GB of RAM. For storage I have two internal hard disks (150 GB, 500 GB) and 3 external hard disks (1 TB, 500 GB, 120 MB). I’m using a 23” Apple Cinema Display and some Edirol speakers (MA-20D).
An Apple AirPort Extreme manages my wireless network and shares my HP Colour LaserJet 2550L laser printer.
For photography I’m using a Canon 5D with 3 Canon lenses — EF 50mm f/1.8 II, EF 17-40mm f/4.0 L, EF 70-200mm f/4.0 L. An Induro tripod and ball head keep things stead and a Lowerpro backpack keeps my kit organized.
When I’m not in the office I stay connected with a 16 GB iPhone 3G.
My Software
For email I’m using Microsoft Entourage with SpamSieve to keep my inbox clean. Web browsing and development is done in Safari. I also use the Safari Tidy plugin to validate pages. NetNewsWire is my feed reader of choice.
I code everything with BBEdit, check my CSS with CSSEdit and FTP with Transmit.
TextExpander saves me a lot of time with text/code snippets. Yojimbo is another utility that gets used constantly to store bookmarks, notes, images, serial numbers and more. Everything is tagged and very easy to find when I need it.
1Password manages all of my passwords and fills out my online forms. Default Folder X improves the Finder and also saves me a lot of time. Cocktail and Disk Warrior handle file/system maintenance while Time Machine and SuperDuper! manage my file backups.
Adobe Photoshop CS3, Illustrator CS2 and InDesign CS3 handle design. Microsoft Office handle my documents and spreadsgheets. Final Cut Studio takes care of my video production and On2 Flix Pro encodes all of my video files so they are ready for the web.
Miscellaneous apps include xScope, DVDpedia, Xtorrent, FontDoctor, and TVShows.
If you’re looking for more great utilities then have a look at Merlin Mann’s Desktop Tour.
Posted in Design and OS X Software and Web Development at 12:00 PM
