The office has changed, again. Looks like I am never satisfied with it. 🙂
Visible changes are the new 21.5” iMac and the HP Photosmart C4680. Under the hood, though, I changed quite a bit the infrastructure. So here’s what’s new:
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The iMac is the main workstation now. Apart from all the work stuff, it’s also my main image editing machine now. So I am finally dumping Windows 7 for that task. It also houses all my media files (audio/video) because I migrated everything to the iTunes ecosystem to take advantage of iOS’ new streaming feature (iOS 4.3) and AirPlay. You may also have noticed that I don’t use a mouse to work. That’s because the Touchpad is much more productive and easy to use.
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The Windows 7 PC continues to be the gaming machine, VM server and audio editing box – sometimes a media center, when I need its Blu-ray drive. It’s also now my main backup server, with 4TB of storage dedicated to that, plus another 2TB external disk for extra redundancy for important files. This machine is now only turned on when necessary. It sleeps for the rest of the time (suspend to RAM, for faster wake up), since it’s too noisy, wastes a lot of energy and it’s very hot.
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Still keeping paper use next to zero. I replaced the old Epson CX3700 because it was so ancient that it died from old age. The new HP unit is connected directly to the iMac and is shared on the network.
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11” MacBook Air is the new mobile office. Using iDisk, Back To My Mac and regular home directory rsync, I have everything I need wherever I am.
So, the basics are still there: cloud is used for everything that’s possible, local and mobile workstations should be functionally the same and the transition must be effortless, use of different standards/ecosystems is avoided (everything is centered in MobileMe/iTunes) and comfort is a must.
Overall I’m quite happy with the setup. To be honest, the only thing that’s annoying me is the fact that my two Samsung P2370 monitors are not IPS panels. But I will not dump more money on that for now.
Summarizing, this is what I am currently using:
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Workstation: 21.5” iMac, Intel Core i3 3.06GHz, 8GB of RAM, 500GB HDD, external 23” Samsung P2370 monitor.
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Mobile Workstation: 11.6” MacBook Air, Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6GHz, 4GB of RAM, 128 GB SSD.
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Alternative workstation: Lenovo ThinkPad T400 (accessed via RDC).
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Server: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4 GHz, 8GB of RAM, 4TB HDD combined, Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum, nVidia GeForce GTS 250 512MB, 23” Samsung P2370 monitor.
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Tablet: 64GB WiFi iPad.
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Smartphone: 16GB iPhone 4.
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Printer/scanner: HP Photosmart C4680.
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Sound system: Bose Companion V.
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Network infrastructure: Linksys WRT54G border router, 1TB Apple Time Capsule office router and NAS.
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Power management: 3x 1200VA Eaton UPS units.