Gene SpaffordInterview
Professor (Purdue University), security expert
Adapted from Gene Spafford's interview on Uses This, published 26 February 2013. The kit is drawn from their answers and each reason is an excerpt, lightly edited. Shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the full interview ↗
Is this you? Claim this kit →Hardware
My usual day-to-day computer at the university is a relatively new 15" MacBook Pro with SSD.
When I'm traveling I use a recent MacBook Air for taking notes, email, checking things on the WWW, and presentations.
I have an Epson Workforce 545 for printing and faxes, along with an older HP Photosmart color printer.
I could use the Epson for scanning, but for quick scans of papers I use a Fujitsu ScanSnap, and I also have a flatbed Epson 1660.
If all that wasn't enough, I also have an iPhone, and a Gen 3 iPad that usually travels with me to campus meetings.
Productivity
I will rarely use the OpenOffice programs instead of their MS alternatives.
Browser
Notes
Security
We also have some servers running OpenBSD.
Coding & Development
Storage
Other
When I travel outside the US to a country where I am concerned about the overall security of my laptop (either theft or snooping), I take along one of several "disposable" ASUS EE PCs running Ubuntu.
I have an older HP laptop that will dual-boot in Windows 7 or Ubuntu.
We have a set of servers from HP and IBM that are running OpenSolaris and several versions of Linux and Windows.