I use a mid-2009 unibody MacBook Pro 13-inch, which has a 2.5Ghz Core 2 Duo, 250GB hard drive, 4GB of RAM, an LED-backlit keyboard and display, with around 5 hours of battery life doing actual work. I use this machine to write for MakeUseOf and Tux Geek, for school assignments, for listening to music and watching movies.

I need to be able to review applications that run on various Linux distributions (mainly Ubuntu) as well as Windows, so having enough horsepower to run another instance of an OS turns out to be very useful. There’s another advantage to using a virtual machine instead of a dual or triple boot setup – I can easily review operating systems, no need to mess with partitions, boot-loaders and corrupted data. I also very much enjoy taking photos and editing them in Adobe’s Lightroom.

I also need Photoshop on a daily basis for cropping, adjusting and compressing screenshots for articles. And while I do all this, I like to have the possibility of listening to music and having a web browser run at a decent speed. So you see, I do actually benefit from having that extra horsepower. Even if I don’t use it to the max today, it’s future-proof. Or at least that’s what I tell myself.

• For writing short pieces, mostly under 1000 words, I seldom use anything other than TextMate. TextMate is also the prima-ballerina when it comes to writing any kind of code – CSS, C++ or Python – mainly because of its excellent markup capabilities.
• However, I write longer essays and ebooks in Microsoft Word 2008 because of the extended formatting functionality.
• Apple’s Keynote is a must have for anyone who wants to create beautiful presentations in a snap.
• For web browsing I strongly recommend Google Chrome which works incredibly well on the Mac despite its current beta status. It’s fast, minimal and can be themed.
• Adium is by far your best option if you’re looking for a multi-protocol, versatile instant messaging client. It supports all the major protocols and services you could possibly want. Of course, if you’re looking for VOiP, you’ll want to download Skype.
• Backup?! Who needs backup? Apparently I do. I’ve lost data so many times due to partition errors and various misguided experiments that I lost count. I use Wuala to back up my photos and documents to the cloud for free. I also have Mozy running and doing the same thing. In the unlikely case something happens to the data-center of one of the services, I’m in the clear.
• Parallels 4 works like a charm with the latest versions of Ubuntu and Vista, and that’s just what I need. It’s a bit expensive but you do get the best performance available.

• Staying true to the faith, I manage my own web-server and thus need a capable FTP client. Cyberduck is free, open source and absolutely great.
• Caffeine keeps the computer from going to sleep when you don’t want it to. I wind up using this little app more than I thought at first. It’s free and comes in handy.
• ShoveBox, another permanent resident in the Finder bar, is a fantastic little app that can store snippets of information you need to remember but don’t need right now. I use it to store little bits of text and bookmarks when researching articles. It can also store photos and files.

• Transmission is the best bit torrent client on the Mac and a trusty companion when you visit the pirate bays, with its integrated IP blacklist feature, great UI and performance.
• The Unarchiver handles all your RAR and ZIP needs without the overhead of Stuffit Expander. Double-click to de-archive, that’s all it does.
• TuneUp Companion fixes your music tags and automatically adds cover art.
• I also use Perian (handles 99% of audio/video codecs), Twitterrific, Last.fm and Appfresh (updates your software). iStat Pro monitors various system indicators within the Dashboard. For my limited scheduling needs, iCal suffices. And lastly, NTFS 3G ensures I can mount, swap and write to NTFS volumes.

I also have a 1st generation iPod touch which I absolutely love, and a Microsoft Arc notebook mouse. While its design is so beautiful it’s uncharacteristic of Microsoft, it sometimes disconnects for no apparent reason. Battery life is somewhere around 2 months and it is very accurate even on glossy surfaces. It works on the Mac without drivers – unlike Apple’s own Magic Mouse. The only major downside is the wireless dongle – which blocks one USB port.

For articles larger than 1500+ words I usually pull out the low-end Microsoft ergonomic keyboard from the closet. Nothing fancy, but it is a lot more comfortable than the integrated keyboard.

I’d like to give a warm plug to MinimalMac, SimpleDesktops, and Prettify, sites which will guide you on the path of minimal geek nirvana.

1. ubuntu-restricted-extras – Installing this package will pull in support for MP3 playback and decoding, support for various other audio formats (gstreamer plugins), Microsoft fonts,
Java runtime environment, Flash plugin, LAME (to create compressed audio files),
and DVD playback.

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

2. NTFS-Config – manage your NTFS formatted drives easily without manually editing fstab. Add/remove drives, create mount points and enable external NTFS write support. Great when dealing with NTFS partitions on a dual boot system. Much better than manually editing /etc/fstab .

sudo apt-get install ntfs-config

3. Better sticky notes – an easy addon for the main toolbar gives you one click access the yellow goodness. It’s time to leave behind the paper ones and save some trees.

4.Upgrade without burning the Ubuntu CD – why waste that CD and the time it takes to burn it when you can upgrade from the command line? Downloading all the packages and installing them may take a while, a decent broadband connection is recommended.

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

5. Better photo management – Picasa, Google’s photo management software.

Download Picasa Linux source code from here, then compile using this tutorial.

The interface  is great, it has basic photo fixes for white balance, contrast, crop etc. and even effects. Prints, emails and uploads directly to Blogger and Picasa Web Albums.

6. Better music jukebox and video player – Amarok and VLC.

Amarok is by far the most advanced player out there, although it’s a bit unstable under Gnome.

sudo apt-get install amarok

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. VLC supports a lot of themes and decodes everything from avi to matroska.

sudo  apt-get install vlc

7. Hardware testing – Let the developers know about your hardware – what works and what doesn’t, so they can fix it.

Main Menu>System>Hardware Testing

It’s a 2 minute wizard that guides that tests audio, display, networking and mouse/keyboard and then send the results, a list of your computer’s hardware and your comments to the developers.

Bonus Tip – The Matrix on your desktop:

Main Menu>System>Preferences>Screensaver

Are we living in a simulation? We are certainly capable of creating such a system, just look at Spore. Now imagine the computing power 50 years from now. Scary, huh?