Due to nature of the beast within which I work, my job tends to be pretty varied. On one hand I could be sat in a boardroom presenting some slides/stats to a client, on the other I could be locked away in the office working through some tricky coding bugs or optimising some PPC ads. Mobility is also important as I need to be able to work from anywhere.
The hardware and software setup that I have chosen seems to work pretty well for me, so I thought I would share the details with you. I've deliberately focused this list on the web development side of my job. There are a whole of other tools that I use for managing SEO, social media, PPC ads and the various other facets of my role as a director of Indulge Media. Maybe I'll include these in a second post some day.
Macbook Pro 17" 2.6GHz dual core processor, 4GB memory
This is a sexy beast. I used to be a Windows man, but Apple's move to a unix based platform and the sheer beauty of Mac OS X turned me almost immediately (bear in mind I had recently upgraded my PC to Vista, which wasn't a massively pleasant experience). The increase in productivity that I realised through the use of OS X spaces alone was enormous. Plus it causes pretty much any nerd within a 10 mile radius to drool with vicious envy.
HP 24" Monitor
This makes a 12 hour straight session in the office bearable. A 30" monitor would make it more bearable though :)
Coda
If you use a mac for web development, then Panic Software's Coda should be the first port of call as your code editor. It has a whole raft of useful features, and really comes into its own when you have loads of websites to manage. It even comes with a coding reference manual (e-book) worth $60. Not bad!
Adobe CS4 Design Premium
An expensive, but essential piece of software for any design house. This includes pretty much everything you'll ever from Adobe when it comes to design - Photoshop, Flash, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Bridge, Illustrator, InDesign + more. I normally leave the graphic design work to Russell or Andy, as they are the real Adobe power user amongst us, however I still find myself using Photoshop and Fireworks on a daily basis for editing, resizing and optimising images.
More info on Adobe CS4 Design Premium
Microsoft Office for Mac 2004
Office just doesn't work as well on a mac as it does on Windows. The most recent version (2008) broke completely when you tried to use Mac OS X Spaces (though I think they have fixed that now), which is why we chose Office 2004.
The primary reason for choosing MS Office overall was Excel. If there is one thing that will ensure Microsoft's perpetual existence as a software vendor it will be this piece of software. Whilst Apple and Google are biting at Microsoft's heels on the OS and browser front, there is simply nothing that comes close to Excel in terms of both its data processing power and its market penetration.
We tried Open Office. It's not even close yet...
More info on Microsoft Office for Mac
VMWare Fusion 3.0 + Windows Vista Business
VMWare Fusion allows you to run Windows on your mac, which is a must for all of the ASP.NET development and Internet Explorer testing that we do. It's not quite as fast and stable as running Windows natively, but it does the job.
If we could run Windows 7 we would, but it just doesn't have the support for the development tools that we need just yet. We are waiting in anticipation for it to come of age. Our first impressions are goooood.
EDIT - after much frustration I have managed to get SQL Server 2008 R2 + Visual Web Developer Express 2010 up and running on Windows 7. V.nice!
More info on Windows Vista Business
Visual Studio 2008 Web Developer Express
This is simply essential for ASP.NET development, and what's more, it's completely free! Brill.
More info on Visual Studio 2008 Web Developer Express
IETester
IETester is a useful tool for testing websites in different versions of Internet Explorer. It goes as far back as IE5.5 and, considering how many people are still using IE6 (especially in the Channel Isles with all of our big, slow corporates) it is a must have tool.
There are some downsides though. It is quite buggy and the UI is a bit vulgar, however it does the job better than anything else out there at the moment. If anyone can point me in the direction of a better tool then please point me!
Textpad 5.3.1
A text editor for Windows that is pretty much un-matched in terms of its raw coding power and macro recording ability.
Summary
So there it is, a glance at the tools that I use to develop websites on a day to day basis. Hope you found it interesting and useful. Feel free to comment if you have any specific questions.
