Inspired by Paul Thurrott’s What I use page  and UseThis.com I decided I should do one for my site as well.

Who are you, and what do you do?

Hi! I’m Andy.  I’m just a geek from a small farm town of California Missouri.  I enjoy both computers and rural things.  My current job is at the Missouri State Library.  I buy the new books for the library.  I’m currently looking to get into the IT field.  I’m married to a wonderful woman and we have a cat.  It’s a pretty sweet life!

I’m trying to learn to code and also do some videography.

What hardware are you using?

I’ve said before I’m a Mac Fanboy on a Windows budget.  That’s a true statement, but thanks to a friend selling me his old Mini pretty cheap I’ve been able to delve into the OSX world and I love it.  But, I still need mobility so I also have a Windows computer.

• Mac: Mac Mini circa 2008 running Snow Leopard. I bought this from a buddy of mine who had no use for it anymore.  He gave me a good price and I couldn’t pass it up. It’s connected to a 23in Acer Monitor
• Windows: Dell 17 inch laptop also circa 2008 running Windows 7.  I actually won this machine during the Windows 7 House Party thing.  I signed up for a Windows 7 House Party so I could get a free copy of Windows 7 and I actually won the free laptop.

On the mobile side I use iPhone 4S and love it.  The camera is awesome, the processor is awesome, and the retina display is awesome.  Everyone should have this phone.

I also have a Kindle 4 with Special Offers.  The Special Offers don’t bother me one bit and I love my Kindle.  It does one thing VERY well. Most of the time I want one device to rule them all but in this case I wanted something that was a one trick pony and this did for me.

I have a pretty standard Targus bag to hold all my stuff.  It’s my base station for operations and it’s about 3 years old but still in great shape.

A couple of external hard drives hold mine and my families back ups.

And what software?

I’m pretty boring when it comes to apps. I guess it’s the one place in my life I try to keep things simple.

I use Chrome as my browser for both Windows and Mac.  I have Firefox as a secondary browser but hardly ever fire it up.

For Wordprocessing and such I use Office 07 on my Windows machine and Google Docs on my Mac.  Can’t seem to make the full jump to Google Docs but maybe some day.

On my Mac I use Twitters client for tweeting.  On Windows however, I just use the web interface.

On this domain is Google Apps for email.  It’s pretty sweet that I can have my own domain email with the power of gmail.

On iOS I have to have Twitter, Facebook, G+, Myfitnesspal, Pandora,  Netflix, and Reminders.  I use Reminders coupled with Siri to remind me of stuff at specific times, it’s a pretty sweet setup for me.

For video editing I use iMovie on my Mac.  Since it’s oldish I have to let it render for a while.

What would be your dream setup?

Well for one thing it would be  devoid of Windows and Mac only.

I’d have a 15 inch Macbook Pro with a SSD  and maxed out on RAM.  For at home use I’d have 2-24inch Apple Displays.

My computers are the only things I’d upgrade.  I love my phone and my Kindle.