PKCHRISJOHNSON.COM

What I Use

I often get asked what I use and what I recommend in the areas of Software and Hardware. When it comes to specific hardware, I really like Dell and HP but I don’t think that there is really a bad mainstream computer manufacturer out there today. The thing to look at is warranty, in my opinion (especially in a laptop…2 years minimum). I tell people to ask themselves how long it will be before they can afford or will want to replace the piece of hardware that they are purchasing. That is the length of warranty that you should buy.

The following is the complete Chris Johnson collection of Software and Hardware. Keep in mind, I am no expert in all things, and I am sometimes very cheap, so there certainly may be better solutions out there than what I use. I also change my software quite often and this page may not always reflect that.
~Chris

Computers

Laptop:

• Asus A8JP
• 120Gb Hard Drive
• Intel Core 2 Duo 2Ghz
• 2048 Mb Kingston PC DDR2 667
• ATI Radeon x1700 Mobil w/ 256Mb Dedicated RAM
• Windows Vista Ultimate Edition

Desktop (Server/Backup):

• Asus MotherBoard w/ AMD Athlon64 3000+ (Socket 754)
• 1024 MB PC400 Memory (Kingston, I think)
• 120Gb Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive (Beethoven)
• 250Gb Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive (Bach)
• ATI Radeon 9600 All-in-Wonder w/ 128Mb RAM
• Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS Gamer 7.1 Soundcard
• 450 Watt Thermaltake Power Supply (My first was a cheap PSU…never doing that again!)
• Windows XP Professional

Software

• Microsoft Office 2007 Professional (I love this version of Office and will never go back)
• Browsers:
  • Mozilla Firefox 3
  • Opera
  • Safari
  • Internet Explorer 7 (I finally went to IE 7 full time.  I test IE 6 in a virtual machine)
• Pidgin (an Open Source IM Client)
• Google Talk (for use with my Google Apps Accounts)
• Media Players:
  • Windows Media Player 11 (I have a Creative Zen)
  • Zune (I really like the new player) I had to get rid of this because of a conflict with Adobe Illustrator.
  • iTunes for my podcasts (Everyone has this, don’t they?)
  • VLC Media Player (For Video and just about everything else)
  • QuickTime
• Adobe CS 3 Master Collection
• FileZilla (FTP)
• Photo Management:
  • Picasa (I still like this thing, although it is really due for a new version)
  • Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (it handles RAW Files much better from my D40x)
  • Windows LiveGallery (A pretty nice basic piece of software that I like for tagging much better than Picasa)
• Nero 7 Premium (for burning CD’s and DVD’s)

That’s about all of the mainstream software that I use. Of course I have lots of other things installed from time to time but at any one time, you will definitely find all of the above on my laptop. I can’t live without them.