Believe it or not, I'm actually not a mennonite when it comes to technology. I'm pretty astute when it comes to current day laptops and desktops. I have been a certified Dell technician off/on since 2005. I am also CompTIA A+ Certified and I make the money to do all this stuff on this website doing I.T. support. I also spent 7 years doing hardware and software support for the various teams at Microsoft in Redmond, WA. I am famliar with Windows, Apple Macintosh OS X, and Linux. Currently I've moved 100% OpenSource at my house because I'm sick and tired of dealing with the same frustrations at home when I'm not getting paid to deal with them. Seriously - OpenSource rules!
So on this page is me just telling about what machines I use day to day. Currently I've moved to an OpenSource household because I've grown tired of dealing with M$ Windoze and Mac OS Xual Predator Edition in my house - when they won't let me get my machine to do what I want. My philosophy is, a computer is a TOOL that should provide some level of productivity, not an advertising vector, not a spying device, not a "Consumer Appliance" - but a tool, like a guitar is for writing music, or a drill is for drilling holes and installing screws quickly. And like most tools, I prefer quality stuff, and the brand name does not mean jack-shit. The majority of the computers I use are cast-off "oldies" like old enterprise class Dell stuff and old Apples, because the hardware is solid, but it's not because of the brand name, it's just the hardware outlives the (commercial) software on most of these devices. When you have a 2010-present era computer in danger of being eaten alive in boot time by a 486 with a SATA SSD running Windows 95 OSR 2.5 (34 seconds) - that's friggin SAD! But that's also my experience with OSX and Windows. I'm not getting paid to fix my own devices, so I'm not wanting to deal with the headaches that corporate OSes impose on me.
| PICTURES | SPECS & DESCRIPTION |
2014 Dell Latitude E6440 |
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This is my portable workhorse that follows me around everywhere, and also docks in the garage when I need a *modern* PC to work on my car or whatever. Basically, it's an enterprise class Dell laptop from the E-series, which IMHO was the best series of laptop computers Dell ever put out. When you build a laptop that can roll down a hallway, and lasts 10+ years without hiccups, then that's the way to go. |
2015 Apple iMac 21.5" |
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This is now my "garage computer" (for now), and was reloaded with Mac OS X in early 2024 so that I could just sort of use it as/is. It was getting too slow running LInux. It's also used to serve internet via ethernet to my vintage computers in the Garage (Tandy 1000A and Compaq Deskpro 386s/20). It's also my garage recording studio and guitar amp (using GarageBand and BandLab). |
2014 Dell PowerEdge T610
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In late 2019 an old co-worker named Dalius had this old Dell Poweredge hanging around in his garage, so he brought it to work and gave it to me. After obtaining some more server parts, I souped it up and made it quite a beast. Honestly, this is really my training for server hardware on the job, and for *nix administration tasks for both my own and professional gain - because I've been getting more and more into the Linux/Unix world for the past few years, and honestly, you'd be surprised how many embedded systems - such as those found in medical equipment - use some form of *nix! This beast, is the literal mothership of my home LAN. Basically, it's a lightweight FTP Server and SMB 1.0 compatible Samba server for my vintage Clients, to replace the Netgear FTP server WAP I lost when I changed from Spectrum to AT&T Fiber. It's also the family server and Plex media server as well. I may have plans to add a WAP for vintage laptops as well. I pulled it out of storage recently and it's back up and running. Unfortuantley, it has to live in the house since it just can't get the needed signal over WiFi for file xfer. BTW, this is a true Enterprise class server, with an IDrac and the whole nine yards. So yean, I'm basically home network admin now...whodathunkit, lol. Tonight alone, I added drivers for NTFS (1TB external drive I needed to copy from), built an FTP Server compatible with mTCP, put that together with the file share for vintage computers (so I can snag files from Windows without firing up FTPSRV to do it), and building a more modern, heavily secured personal share. I'm also tempted to take a real deep dive in CUPS - they use it at work - might be fun to use it at home with the Cannon ImageClass Laser (!!!). |
