After I settle down, and once I can afford it, I've been thinking of a great workstation setup I'd like to build... sure, some of the gorgeous and powerful hardware would be a costly one-time investment, but a lot of it is software-based. Here's what I'm thinking:

My main desktop will feature a glass tabletop with a large LCD monitor just above eye level (for good posture). That computer will feature a nice little suite of security software I'm designing for my own personal use and experimentation. It'll have a mirrored backup to a central file server in the safe hidden away in the home. Of course, security is a concern and all the hard disks and flash drives would be encrypted.

I'd probably rip any CDs and DVDs I bought to a disc image so they were easily accessible later.

I'll have another computer, maybe a laptop, that is never connected to the Internet, or perhaps even the network. It'd be my ultra-secure workstation, complete with fingerprint scanner. This would be nice to have when travelling. If I needed to get online, I'd boot up a VM with Linux and, hopefully by that time, use Google Chrome.

And yes, of course I'd use only Chrome to browse, even in Windows -- so far the only "unbroken" browser. (On a side note, it's interesting that IE7 and IE8 have similar "sandboxing" features that make Chrome so secure, yet IE is exploited almost daily because of its tight integration with Windows among other coding flaws.)

If a flash drive was stolen, I could rest easy knowing it's securely encrypted and the password is stored on my locked-down file server at home (which, by the way, would not have a hard line to the Internet at all; I'd probably route remote backups through a different subnet entirely) -- also encrypted.

I could tunnel all my Internet activities including IM, email, browsing, etc, through an SSH tunnel to a server in a remote data center -- whoever/wherever my host happens to be -- which would certainly be locked down against intruders. This would encrypt *all* my outgoing Internet transactions until it reached the server in that secure data center.

I'd probably do all my coding in a VM on my main workstation, though. It would avoid complications and security risks by running potentially volatile and buggy code in a contained environment... I'm thinking of the times when I was writing some low-level C++ and caused some blue screens... hehe... oops.

Anyway, I think that'd be a pretty cool setup. It'd be hardcore secure, for sure. Okay, it won't be perfect (what is?), but it's like... hm, think of the Bat Cave. Or Tony Stark's garage.

For a pet, I'd probably have a cat, and also a nice virus farm. If I could set up a bunch of virtual machines on a totally isolated network (as in, no possible hard line or wireless link with my real network), I'd have them talk to each other and download spam emails and malware from the Internet, run the infected software, and distribute it as much as possible among themselves. It'd be fun to see how long they lasted.


What's your dream setup? Do you already have it?

Wow, that's insane, Matt. You're definitely huge on security.

I've been thinking about my dream setup for a couple of years, but I've been adding and modifying the ideas to it the whole time. I don't have enough money for any kind of nice setup right now, so for some of the stuff, I am looking a bit into the future.

The computer itself will be in a custom case (I have a friend that is huge on custom computer cases and is even active in a couple of case-modding online communities). I'm thinking black with green lights with a really cool design etched into the side. Even though Intel is kind of destroying AMD right now, I like AMD so I'd go with a processor made by them. I'd also have the nicest video card available by NVIDIA because I like those guys as well. By the time I can afford this machine, I'm thinking that solid state drives will be a lot cheaper and I'd use them for my hard drives.

The computer is only one part of my system, though. I would definitely be using a very nice audio system all around the room. Surround sound with the ability to aim certain sounds at specific speakers when I want to. I would also have many monitors. I'm thinking two to three displays right in front of my for my regular activities, and another off to the side near my leg, but looking up at me so I can see it, obviously. This one would be for more passive applications that I don't want on one of my main screens (music player, etc). In addition to those, I'd have one to two displays aiming away from my machine, so that I could easily show something to other people in the room. I may just mirror one of my main displays so that I can see what they're seeing. I've also thought about having a projector connected as well, but I'm not too sure about that. I would also want my chair to be easily accessible to the head of a large table. The reason for much of this is that I'd use this station to run D&D (and similar) games from. With all of my campaign information right in front of me, easy access to the character sheets and the ability to show the characters a map of what's going on would be awesome. The surround sound would be cool for different sounds the players would hear, etc...

As for the software, I'm thinking I'd have at least four drives. One drive would run Windows (likely 7), one drive would run Mac OS X (by then, we'll probably be up to 10.7 or even 10.8), one drive for Linux (haven't decided which one yet), and one drive that can store information that is accessible by any of the OSs.

I'm not sure which OS I'd run primarily, probably just whichever one I get most comfortable with, but it likely wouldn't be Windows. The reason for Windows would be for gaming, period. I would likely use the OS X as my main OS, but I may use Linux. The main reason I want Linux is I want to learn more about it; I want to know as much as I can about Linux as a whole. As for OS X, since I started working for Apple, I've become a fan of their operating system. It really is a nice OS, but on a machine like this, I feel that a lot of the power the it has will be lost. That's the reason I'm not sure I'd prefer it or Linux.

I'm still into Firefox and would likely use it as my main browser, but as a web coder, I'd obviously have every browser I can get my hands on.

...and that's my dream machine... so far.

The multi-monitor thing would be nice, for sure.

See, I learned to be paranoid about security in high school after a particular 'incident' in which the SWAT team was almost sent to my house... Needless to say, I should have been a little bit more paranoid.