Adventures in home working

I use my desktop PC for about 4 hours a day, it’s very important to me.  You can see a picture of it in this post, here are the details of how I have it setup.

Hardware

• Dual Core processor
• 4 GB memory
• 2 * 2500MB hard disks, one backs up to the other every night using a robocopy script, the scripts also does a backup of the SQL server databases.
• 4 head Nvidia Quadro
• 3 AG Neovo 19” TFT displays, DVI
• Sennheiser USB headphones
• 100Mb wired network connection to the hub

Core software:

• Vista 64
• Connected PC backup
• Carbonite PC backup
• Maxthon Browser (free), the best browser,  see my other posts
• Skype (free)
• PamelaPro for Skype – provides recording of Skype calls and voice mail
• MSDE (free), ie free SQL server database
• Synergy (free), allows me to use desktop keyboard and mouse to control my Tablet and my Laptop, useful when I don’t want to use RDP connections
• X1 amazing desktop search products (free, in version from Yahoo), I have tried them all,  this is the best for serious searching,  I have 10,000 documents that I regularly search through
• DAEMON tools virtual CD drive (free),  for mounting all of those MSDN ISO images!
• Ultramon, to make best use of those 3 monitors
• PowerShell (free), the new shell from Microsoft
• WinDirStat (free) to keep an eye on my hard disk useage
• VMWare Workstation v5.5
• VMware Player (free)
• VMware Console (free) , for accesing Virtual Machines running on my Server
• Microsoft Virtual PC console (free) for accessing Virtual Machines running on my Server
• MSDN (free) download manager
• FoxIT PDF reader (free) , my pain PDF reader, very quick
• Adobe Acrobat Reader 7 (free), for when FoxIT PDF reader has a problem
• RSIGuard, to make sure I don’t work too hard
• Foldershare (free), for synching up copies of the kids files onto my PC’s F: drive before they are backed up
• Nero Express (free), for DVD writing
• Microsoft Intellimouse and keyboard software
• MindManager viewer (free), for viewing maps embedded in web pages
• MindManager Pro 7
• Microsoft ActiveSync (free), synch to Windows Mobile/SmartPhone (not currently used)
• Blackberry Desktop 
• WinZip, compression and archive manager
• SmartFTP (free), upload client to Streamload, my large file sharing service (lets me send DVD images etc by email)
• Filezilla FTP client
• Robocopy (free), command line utility that I use for all disk synchronisation and backup
• Inctrl3 (free), utility that watches and records what happens when you install software
• Regmon and Filemon (free), utilities to monitor registry and file activity
• Process Explorer (free), task manager on steroids
• Sun’s JVM (free), Java Virtual machine
• Microsoft Reader (free), eBook reader
• Citrix ICA client
• Windows Live Meeting Client
• Sametime web conferencing client
• Interwise web conferencing client
• WebEx web conferencing client
• iShadow multi-window RDP and ICA client
• K-Lite Video Codec pack
• Dot Net Framework 2, 3, 3.5
• Silverlight 1 and 2 runtimes
• Flash runtime

Security

• Acronis – full system disk image backup
• Allwaysync - bidirectional replication of data between laptop and desktop 
• AVG AntiVirus
• Microsoft Defender (free) – anti-spyware
• Maxthon (free). Ad, popup and everything else blocking
• Firefox (free), for comparison with IE and Maxthon

Telephone, Audio, Music and Video, TV

• Audacity for general audio post processing, conversions etc 
• Levalator – levels audio levels in WAV file recordings 
• Windows media player
• Winamp for music (free), because it is integrated with Skype
• Media Player Classic
• Cool MP3 Splitter for 2 click splitting of MP3 files into segments by size of time
• Xilisoft WMA MP3 convertor
• Skype (free), for calls to international land-lines and for recording conference calls. I use the phone for everything else
• Pamela for Skype, records to WAV and MP3, records Skype calls and Skype Voice Mail
• DTMF Dial (free), for when Skype DTMF fails me
• DigiGuide UK TV guide
• Quicktime (free) because my camera produces quicktime movies and I download some
• Logitech video camera drivers
• Canon printer drivers

Pictures, images, scanning etc:

• Microsoft Flash (free) for screen captures and simple image editing, scale, crop, format conversion etc,  it shipped with HTML Help a long time ago
• SnagIT screen capture
• Paint.NET (free) for more complex image editing
• PaperPort Pro for scanning of all of my paper, it really is a great product

Notes and research

• eWallet for everything I need to remember, cards, licence keys, cars etc etc.  Syncs with my Tablet and my Treo 650
• OneNote 2007 for all other types of Notes and records
• Notepad 2 (free), instead of Notepad
• NetSnippets, integrated with Maxthon my main browser for capturing and storing web pages

Authoring:

• Work 2007
• Powerpoint 2007
• Excel 2007
• Windows Live Writer for blog writing
• Camtasia Studio for multi-media authoring, screencasts, videos etc
• MindManager 7 for most of my idea generation and meeting notes
• CmapTools (free) concept map drawing software
• OpenOffice.org v2,  for comparison to Microsoft Office, and to get around issues with readonly fonts in PowerPoint

Collaboration, Email, RSS, IM and Organisation

• Twhirl twitter client 
• Lotus Notes 7.02,  my companies email system and my master contact database
• Microsoft Outlook for personal email
• FeedDemon for RSS reading
• Doublelook, extracts my Notes contacts and copies them over to Outlook
• Pidgin, for Sametime, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AOL 
• MSN Messenger (free) just in case there is an issue with Pidgin
• Groove 2007
• Polycom PVX, video conferencing client

Disks:

• C: system disk
• D: secondary data disk
• E: primary backup disk, also stores master copies of DVD’s copied to disk and MSDN downloads
• F: Primary data disk

• Backup, each night:
• C:\documents and settings backed up to D:
• All databases backed up by script
• F: backed up to E:
• F: backed up to Tablet PC and to Server
• F: backed up off site using Connected PC backup from Iron Mountain and carbonite
• D: (MSDN and DVDs) backed up to Server disk E:

MindManager is a great tool that I have been using for about 3 years,  I routinely create Mind Maps of books that I read by jotting down key ideas and concepts on a folded A4 sheet of paper that I use as a bookmark.  A recent book summary that I generated captured a bit of interest and this review by Marc is particularly interesting, as he describes how he uses MindManager to achieve similar objectives:

I tend to map almost everything from meetings and presentations to project plans. Mapping a book requires a different approach than scribbling notes in the margin. It’s one of the great applications I’ve discovered for the Tablet PC and is possible because MindManager, the mapping program I use, is so well designed for the Tablet. I keep the Tablet next to me in slate mode (screen only) and jot down key points, interesting quotes (with page citations), and summary lists as I work my way through the text. I create a new branch for each chapter and always add a narrative summary in a note attached to the main node for that chapter after I’ve completed reading it.

Marc’s insights prompted me to share a few of the ways in which I use MindManager.  I often use it when I am hosting a web conference,  I share MindManager and use it to make notes,  this note taking model is much better than conventional serial note taking for the following reasons:

• The resulting notes reflect the outcome of the meeting much more accurately than serial notes,  which represent the progress of the meeting.  For example I often find that a particular topic of discussion is returned to – and refined – many times in the meeting,  in serial notes these contributions are scattered throughout the record,  in a Mind Map they are all logically grouped under the correct topic.
• Its really easy to restructure the map as our understanding of a topic evolves
• The whole scope of the discussion is always visible,  so it helps people to remember the context for any particular discussion.
• The hierarchical structure of the map helps people who would otherwise loose track of what is being discussed and how it relates to other areas of the discussion.
• Supporting material can easily be pasted in the the Mind Map as notes or links,  without creating clutter that obscures the key points.
• The resulting map is often a great start point for a really useful post meeting deliverable.  I often take the Mind Map and tidy it up after the meeting, add a few graphics and then send it out for review, or re-purpose it by exporting it as a Word document,  or Project Plan.
• The volume of screen updates sent to web conference participants is very low,  so its much easier for participants to watch than when someone is paging up and down in a word document for example.

Here is an example Map that I produced following a meeting where we were discussing Web 2.0