A small technology poll

[fivemack]

[Poll #868444]

Comments

snowflake!

[naath.livejournal.com]

I have access to a desktop, which is mine and a laptop that I don't use very often. Also I use rjk's computers lots, and my employer's computers too.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

By "study of the comforting book-lined kind" I mean "computer room with a bookshelf". The laptop has currently moved to my bedroom though this is not necessarily its long-term location.

[simont]

By "study of the comforting book-lined kind" I mean "computer room with a bookshelf".

WHS. Also, by "communal area" I mean "lounge": since I live alone, no area in my house really counts as communal, and helpfully there was no dedicated "lounge" option in the poll. But if someone crashed on my floor, it would be a communal area, so I thought it was close enough.

Also I ticked two options in the second question, because my real situation is about half way between them. I have several desktop computers, one of which I definitely use more than the others, but that doesn't mean I rarely turn the others on: they're always on, for (variously) cron jobs and remote access.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

I have a desktop, which I use in my home office, and a laptop which I keep in my bedroom, and use as a portable as well. The desktop has a fair bit of specialized graphics software. We also have a wireless router, which sits in a corner.

[jojomojo.livejournal.com]

Uniqueness:

I do keep a computer in my bedroom. It's a laptop, switched off when not in active use (or acting as a TV input downstairs), and is communal.

I have one main desktop computer, but also a Solaris machine next to it which is on permanently and is a Samba/NFS server.

I have a bunch of (switched off) machines in various states of undress in my basement.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

The laptop is in the living room, I often spod with TV late at night. However, I live by myself, and when other people are there it is often put away on a shelf. I don't know if this counts as communal or not.

[liv]

Yeah, same here, apart from the TV bit. Laptop in living room, living room not really communal since I live by myself.

[gnimmel.livejournal.com]

Currently I have a main computer which is a laptop, an old computer which is a laptop and a work computer which sometimes comes home and is a laptop....

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I have a Linux desktop and a DOS laptop which are mine, and are in my comfortable book-lined study, which is also mine and no longer also a spare room, living room and dining room. I also have access to a Windows PC that used to be Zorinth's and is now in the communal living area... which is also a comfortable book lined study, but shared. I do use it, I use it frequently to, um, listen to the Archers... and sometimes to watch DVDs communally.

I also have a 286 which I rarely turn on, and Rysmiel has a laptop in Rysmiel's comfortable booklined study, and Zorinth has a really new (obsolete before it came out of the box, but new this October) Windows PC in his uncomfortable, messy, but nevertheless booklined bedroom.

That's five computers between three people. Eep.

But we have no cars at all!

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

My comforting book-lined study is also a spare bedroom.

[brrm.livejournal.com]

That's five computers between three people. Eep.

26 computers and 4 cars between 2 people. In my defence, I collect both. :-)

[ckd]

(The following is completely ignoring work machines, because that gets really crazy fast.)

The spare bedroom/office/study has my desktop machine, hr_macgirl's desktop machine, and the printer. There's also a shared laptop, mostly used for trips and school classes.

The server closet/former darkroom has the (multiple) servers, which are communal.

Also, my mobile phone is more powerful than the first Unix machine I was paid to administer.

[aldabra]

Kathy also has one main desktop computer, also in a communal area as per guidelines for parental supervision of children on t'Internet.

[sraun]

I have two desktop machines in my office/library, one of which is functioning as my server.

I have my 'at work' desktop which gets most of my computing time currently.

I have my laptop that I store in, and mostly use in, my living room. For computers I own, I spend the most time using the laptop, then accessing the server (e-mail- ssh to mutt, file storage, and printer), finally the non-server desktop.

[karen2205]

My laptop lives in the living room - this isn't really a 'communal' area as I live alone.

[redbird]

I checked "communal area" because it's the closest description of our living room. Which is book-lined and the closest we have to a study, as are the bedroom and the foyer/front hallway. (One-bedroom apartment.)

At the moment, there are three functioning computers in here, my desktop, cattitude's desktop, and Cattitude's laptop. Well, also two PDAs, one each, but that's probably outside the scope of the discussion. The PDA sits on its cradle attached to my desktop when I'm home, and lives on my belt when I expect to use it (and in my hand when I'm actually using it).

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

I want to buy a laptop of my own, because the "sharing" one with major_clanger thing isn't working at all well! ;-)

When my back was bad I spent more months than I care to think about lying in bed, with a tv on the cupboard and my PC set up next to me. And since it improved, the tv and computer have been banished to the living room and study respectively, where they belong, leaving the bedroom for bed and books, As It Should Be.

[emperor]

We have a spod-room, which was the second bedroom until we put the bed into the smallest of the 3 bedrooms. I have ming, which is a desktop machine, and always on (as it is the house everything-server), and hussein, which is a machine I use for games and other such rubbish - it needs a new sound-card so isn't in regular use ATM.

There's an ADSL modem in the bedroom, but only because it needs to be near the phone socket.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

There are four of us. We have a comfortable study that is lined with all sorts of crap including some books. In it there are:

A desktop computer that is mine and which other people use occasionally.
A desktop computer that is Steven's which I use occasionally; in particular, it is linked to the swisher printer.
A desktop computer that used to be mine which is M's primary computer.
A laptop computer that is J's primary computer and which is crap.

We also have a living room with no computers at all except for: the Mac Mini that plugs into the telly and stereo and serves Veronica Mars and melodeon tunes, and my spare office laptop.

In our bedroom we have our laptops. We do that modern couple thing where we browse the internet in bed while drinking coffee in the morning.

We also have two pre-OS X powerbooks that we probably ought to find a good home for.

I suspect there's still a computer in one of the spare bedrooms also. That's of no damned use to anyone.

Er, that's ten, of which seven are in daily use.

[senji.livejournal.com]

There's also the server in the server, err, loft.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

My main computer is currently hastings the laptop, which lives in my bedroom. There is a desktop in the living room that rarely gets used at the minute because I can't get the networking to work reliably - when it does work that is my main gaming/TV watching/torrenting machine, but at the moment it sits in a corner and sulks.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

When one person lives in an apartment with a bedroom, a kitchen, and one other room, (other than the bathroom and a short hallway connecting to a couple of closets) does it make sense to refer to "communal space?" I think of the large room as the living room. I have two living room couches. This is where they belong. My desk is in a corner of the living room, sort of behind the couch, and the computer is on the desk.

This room might qualify as a study of the comforting book-lined type. Sort of. There are 5 bookcases in this room. The windows get in the way. A lot of my bookcases are in the bedroom.

[ellarien]

I counted my living room as a communal area, which it would be if anyone else lived here.

I suspect it would be very bad for me to have a computer in the bedroom.

[nassus.livejournal.com]

My laptop usually ends up wherever in the house I happen to be spodding at the time.
Wireless rocks!

[lnr]

My desktop lives in the (communal) study. It could technically be called a spare bedroom, but we've always only used it as the study. It is not a traditional book-lined study.

Only one computer is mine, but belonging to rjk there is a house server machine and a firewall, which I technically use indirectly. I also sometimes borrow his desktop machine (eg when mine was broken).

Oh and the servers live under the stairs, which is tecnically in the living room.

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

I have a broken desktop in the spare room of doom and a failing laptop in the lounge. Ordering a new laptop and tidying the spare room are both on my todo list ;)

[jonathan mcdowell (from livejournal.com)]

I can't do polls with OpenID.

I have a desktop and a laptop as primary machines. The desktop lives in the study and the laptop is currently under the sofa.

There are 2 bookcases with books on in the study, but the books mainly live in the living room.

There is the PVR box in the living room, which basically only does TV.

There are many other computers in a functional state that are used less often; Katherine's desktop (somewhat unused now she's living in NI), the WinXP machine, the sacrificial Linux box (which mjg59 has left half running Ubuntu I think) and the LinuxBIOS test box. These all live in the study.

My bedroom is technology free; the alarm clock is the most complex item there.

[carbonel]

I keep my computer in my office. It is not a study, since the bookshelf in there is filled with software on one side and reference books on the other, neither of which are particularly comforting.

I don't think these circumstances are particularly unique, but it didn't seem to fit any of the options on the list.

Also, I have a desktop computer that is mine for all intents and purposes, though it actually belongs to my company, and a laptop ditto that I only use when I'm traveling.