Tech I Use
Most people love a cool gadget and I’m among them. Over the years I’ve bought plenty, probably way too many and way too soon. Therefore, I’ve changed my buying habits and have been keeping my impulse buying in check, waiting for the item(s) to get some reviews under their belt and then deciding to pull the trigger (or not).
I’m limiting this list to those items I like and use fairly regularly – in other words, items that I feel I’m getting my money out of and would recommend to others…
This list will change, but not every day. Take a look for yourself and see if you agree with my reasoning.
First off, my cell phone: For work I was typically issued various flavors of Blackberry. However, a couple years after the iPhone launched and Google/Android hit the scene I left that tired old phone behind with glee.
I started with the G1 after retiring my Moto RIZR which I found surprisingly capable as a pay-as-you-go phone. The RiZR worked well as a basic cell phone, but was limited primarily by the horrible Motorola menus and the lousy contact management. After the G1 my wife wanted an iPhone, so I got one as well to get the lowest rate plan along with her employer AT&T discount.
About that time my employer was allowing smartphones to replace the Blackberrys, so I jumped at the chance and burned through a Droid Incredible, Droid X and am currently using an HTC Rezound. So far this Rezound is a monster of a phone. It has the speed to match the smooth interface that the iPhone does so well and the HTC user interface skin is far superior to the Motorola UI that they slap on their hardware (ugh!).
The most used piece of tech I still use daily is my desktop computer and the brand I buy is TORBETTECH – in other words, I build my own. I have a simple Windows machine used as a server (mainly to serve as a NAS and security camera server), a couple Windows 7 machines for daily work and gaming, one for the wife as well as a couple laptops, iPad, EeePad Transformer and a couple netbooks. Crazy!
For my Windows rigs I have them in what I consider the best tower case made to date – the SilverStone Wind Tunnel Temjin Tower case. They are large, easy to open, have a clear side panel, plenty of room to accommodate multiple hard drives (RAID 0 for gaming and RAID 1 for work), optical drives and the Thermaltake Big Water liquid cooling systems I used to have installed in each. I found the water cooling, while effective, required far more maintenance than just using big, quiet fans. I regularly upgrade and update components as I see fit, so I won’t bother with the specs – they’ll just change next month.
For the Linux rig I am trying something off the beaten path (as if using Linux wasn’t far off the path enough). I am using a pile of spare parts I have on hand as well as a low-power, modest CPU/MoBo package from VIA, the VIA PC-1 which uses a VIA PC2500 CPU and has on-board everything – video, audio, Ethernet, serial, USB, PATA IDE and SATA IDE. All for $60!!! It even ships with a copy of gOS, but I am running Ubuntu. My plan, when I’m finished, is to have this running as my “home server” and NAS so I can retire my Dlink DNS-323. I will also get more than just a few additional services out of it as well.
Software is tech. It is the magical code that brings our electronic bricks to life. Therefore, I feel it’s only appropriate to share several useful programs and bits of software that I find useful and effective to performing any number of tasks:
First of all, I have to give serious props to the guys that make my new site look and work so well, WordPress. For those that don’t know, WordPress is essentially the core software that manages a mySQL database on a hosted site and is primarily written to accommodate weblog posts and arrange them in a coherent manner. I have “skinned” the WordPress software with the Daleri Dark theme, just one theme out of thousands written for the WordPress platform, to give my site that special look and feel (which I’ve tweaked a bit) that I like. Some people absolutely hate dark themes, but I like this one and believe it to have a high degree of readability. I’m a poor coder, but using WordPress, a little patience, and no small amount of trial and error, it’s possible to build a simple good looking or amazing site.
Next has to be Ubuntu Linux. This is a fork in the Debian Linux distro that has really gone a long way to making what used to be a geek’s-only venture into an alternate operating system to a very viable alternative to the various flavors of M$ Windows or the Mac OS. The beauty of Ubuntu is that they commit to a fixed release schedule of a major release every six months. In between those releases there are regular software package and security updates that the system can download automatically, very similar to the WinXP Update service. Other pluses are that there are almost no viruses written for Linux, the system is extremely stable with up-times measured in months or years and it is free for anyone who wants it! Free as in beer! Get some!
