== The article itself<p>I wish that it went into more detail on the hardware choices that he used. I'm constantly toying with the idea of building a Linux box for dev work, but then get lost in the morass of hardware options. The high level description of his system sounds perfect (tons of RAM, fast drives, and triple monitors), but I'm not sure how to get there.<p>== My own dilemma<p>Every line of production code that I write is done in Linux - in a VM running on OS X. The killer app that keeps me on OS X is 1Password. It's too useful, and I haven't found a suitable Linux replacement. Any suggestions?<p>The other "killer" is that it's extremely simple to get a great computer by pulling up the Apple Store site and clicking "buy this thing." Building my own is something I would have done a decade ago, but I've since lost track of what all of the hardware lingo means, or which companies are making decent components.
"I’m using a pretty basic home-assembled machine — Intel Core i7 processor, 32 GB RAM, SSD for applications and 3x 1TB HDs in a RAID for data..."<p>Clearly his definition of a "basic" machine is different from mine. Or maybe I'm just getting old...
On the keyboard front - wasn't realy aware of the differences between mechanical and non-mechanical, although I've been using a Kinesis Advantage Pro for several years now and love it. It appears to use the Cherry MX brown switches (<a href="http://www.elitekeyboards.com/support.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.elitekeyboards.com/support.php</a>) also used by the Filco keyboard mentioned in the article. Does anybody else have experience w/ Filco keyboards? I switched to the Kinesis primarily for the form factor.
The fact he rarely uses a notebook fits my own experience. How many developers actually develop out in cafes, or do so many presentations that you'd need a mobile computer? Probably better to customize a workstation like this then sweat about mobility. (For that, we have phones.)
I was looking for a netbook or laptop, and i ought to dig more, but I gave up that afternoon because the M$ tax started to piss me off. Anyone have much luck not having to pay for windows outside of a pieced-together system?
I am in the same boat as I do not want to use Mac equipment.<p>Laptops: I have good experience with Toshiba both AMd and Intel cpus..my next laptop will be an i7 Toshiba.<p>As far as build desktop I might not have to as there are some basic HP desktop PCs on sale that with 1 gig dedicated graphics that you could install SSD into and than supply two LCDs and a network NAS for under $2500.<p>That is of course you have choice between 2nd generation i7 and the AMD FX series cpus<p>And of course if you need to add a graphics tablet it will bring it up to $3000..but still not bad..