What I Use 2015

The updated 2015 list of my gadgets, computers and software I use on a daily basis.

Computer(s)

Computer: MacBook Pro

I’ve been using a couple of different setups this year, but right now I’m using a nice new MacBook Pro 13″ with an attached 23″ monitor. It’s fast, has crazy long battery life, and works perfectly for doing coding or layout on my book.

Smartphone: Samsung Galaxy S5

I was using the LG G3, but the buggy software was causing some random reboot issues. I swapped it out for a Samsung Galaxy S5. While not as quick with the camera, it is a very solid smartphone. The fingerprint reader is a joke, but the unit is waterproof.

Tablet: Onda 919V Dual Boot

The Onda 919V 3G Air is a Chinese knock off of the iPad Air. It was stupid cheap, runs both Windows 8.1 (kill me) and Android. It’s very powerful, has a great screen and if you don’t mind waiting for a month to get it, worth every penny.

Apple Magic Mouse

Still using this mouse. No complaints.

Ubuntu Home Server

I have a Windows Vista machine hooked up to my flatpanel TV. It is perfect for running movies and Netflix. I am also running Ubuntu 14.04 as a guest in VirtualBox as both an Apache server as well as a Samba server for network file sharing with my kids and wife, plus it’s been augmented with an OwnCloud instance to allow for mobile backup and sharing.

Software and such

Browser: Google Chrome – Still going strong. I want to love Safari or Firefox, but Chrome continues to just do a better job.

Messenger: iMessage –  works with Gmail, AOL and Facebook.

Development: I use PHPStorm as my primary IDE as well as Google Chrome for debugging

Email and Productivity: I use  OSX Mail as my main email client as well as LibreOffice as my word processor. I also use Google Docs for collaboration

Security: On the Mac I use ClamXAV