Some time ago, a few (former) editors of Lifehacker exposed the gear they use daily. You may read about the hardware, software and desk setups of Kevin Purdy, Jason Fitzpatrick, Adam Pash, Adam Dachis and Whitson Gordon. As a bonus, they also added some productivity tips. Altough some of their tools may be somewhat outdated nowadays, their choices, ideas and tips are still refreshing. Here's what I use.
Desktop
At home I use an ordinary, nameless PC of a few years old.
- Debian Stable with the XFCE desktop environment. Together this makes a stable and lighweight system.
- LyX, my favorite document processor (see my article).
- LibreOffice, mainly Calc en Writer (for reading incoming documents).
- IceDove: a rebranded version of Thunderbird for backing up e-mails.
- VLC Media Player
- Rhythmbox for organising music and downloading podcasts.
- Calibre for organising e-books.
- f.Lux for ergonomic purposes (see my review).
- Cooler Master Quickfire XT mechanical keyboard.
Laptop
At work, I use a laptop of my employer, Ordina. By the way, Ordina is an abbreviation of ordinateur, which is the French word for computer. In addition to the installed software, I use some portable applications. I carry 'my' laptop, along my other work-stuff, in a backpack of HP.
- Windows 7 + Security Essentials
- Office 2010, including Visio and Lync.
- PDF Creator for printing to PDF.
- LyX, my favorite document processor (see my article).
- FoxIt Reader: lightweight PDF Reader (in stead of Adobe Reader).
- FreeMind: mind mapping software.
- Executor: an excellent and lightweight application launcher (see my article).
- WorkRave: anti-RSI software (see my review).
- f.Lux for ergonomic purposes (see my review).
- MW Snap to create screenshots.
- VLC Portable Media Player.
Netbook
Furthermore, I own a Acer Aspire A110 netbook. My software of choice for this machine is Puppy Linux. This is a very light weight operating system completely running in RAM. I use the netbook mostly for surfing the internet.
Browser and web apps
Both at home and at work, my browsers of choice are Iron and Firefox. The fox is heavily tweaked. Adblock Plus and HTTPS Everywhere are added to both browsers. At work I use Readability about which I wrote earlier. As mentioned elsewhere, I use bookmarklets, for instance to share articles or to translate them.
On the web I use GMail along with Rapportive, Feedly (since Google Reader stopped), Blogger and Diigo. And ofcourse, the social media mentioned on my profile.
On the web I use GMail along with Rapportive, Feedly (since Google Reader stopped), Blogger and Diigo. And ofcourse, the social media mentioned on my profile.
Phone
Although my employer gave me a smartphone, I still like... the Nokia 6310i. It's reliable, easy to use, has a good battery life (even after years of intensive usage) and... enables me to call and to be called. Apart from work, it's the best choice for outdoor and sporting activities, like randonneuring.
What about you? Which gear do you use?