Carlton's Ultimate Technology List
I created this list because:
- I'm frequently asked for technology recommendations and decided to keep a consolidated and updated list.
- I wanted to speed-up my software download/install process when setting up a new computer.
- I've personally tested everything on this list and feel all of it offers the best performance for the price.
- Many of the software products are free and open source; the developers deserve more recognition than I can give them this is a start.
Hardware
Computer Hardware:
- Home Network Router: Linksys WRT54GL or Linksys WRT600N or Linksys WRG610N + DD-WRT firmware (free + open source) or Tomato firmware (free + open source)
- General User Laptop: Apple MacBook or MacBook Pro (get the Pro if your budget is willing)
- Power User Laptop: Lenovo ThinkPad (X-series for portability, or T-series for home/office use)
- Netbook (tiny cheap laptop): ASUS Eee PC 1000HE
- Computer Monitor: The largest Dell LCD widescreen you're willing to afford: 20", 24" or 30" widescreen (or if great industrial design is more important than low prices, go for an Apple cinema display)
- Computer Webcam: Get one built in to the computer monitor; otherwise, anything from Logitech
- Ergonomic Mouse: 3M Wireless Ergonomic Optical Mouse (medium/large hand size, small hand size)
- Surge Protection: Panamax surge protectors are the best for both computer and home theater. One nanosecond response time to incoming surges; protection for every type of cable entering your house – enough said.
- Home Theater Personal Computer (HTPC) case: Atceh Fabrication (very nice, made-to-order, but much too expensive)
Music Player Hardware / Home Theater Hardware:
- Home Network Music Player: Sonos Music Player
- Portable Music Player: Apple iPod Touch
- Digital Video Recorder: TiVo HD (Series3) with off-the-air antenna
- Universal Remote Control: The most expensive Logitech Harmony remote you're willing to afford. I like the 890 with the RF base station. However, I do not recommend the Harmony 1000/1100; go for a Philips Pronto instead.
- Ultra-complicated Highly Customizable Universal Remote Control: Philips Pronto Professional TSU9400 (do as I say, not as I do — this remote is too complicated for most users and sometimes even me but it is fully customizable. If you're a perfectionist and are willing to devote the time, this is a great remote.)
- Home Theater A/V receiver: Which ever Onkyo or Denon receiver fits your budget
- High-end Home Theater A/V receiver: Anthem D2V or AVM-50v. Built-in high-definition video processing and amazing audio quality; great factory support.
- Surge Protection: Panamax surge protectors are the best for both computer and home theater. One nanosecond response time to incoming surges; protection for every type of cable entering your house – enough said.
Digital Camera / Photography Hardware:
- Compact Point-and-Shoot Digital Camera: Canon Powershot SD880 IS Digital Elph is great camera because it is very small, very fast, and has great low-light (ISO 1600) sensitivity. Also, it has image stabilization and a 4x zoom. If you are interested in adding some hacker-ish features, check-out the CHDK firmware enhancement project.
- High-end Digital Camera: Any Digital SLR is almost certain to be an improvement over a point-and-shoot. I recommend the Nikon D90 because of features including: HD movie recording, great ergonomics, easy to use. The Nikon D40 is a great starter Digital SLR. For lenses, the Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF-S VR DX Zoom-Nikkor Lens has a very useful zoom range and the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM Lens
is great for low light and blurred background (aka bokeh) photos.
- Digital Photo Frame: Smartparts SPX8WF 8-Inch Wi-Fi Digital Picture Frame due to the built-in WiFi and adequate sync capabilities, although I'm still waiting for something even better.
Mobile Phone:
- Applie iPhone 3G: hands-down the best phone available in the US (since 3-party apps are now being supported by Apple, you can get this phone to do pretty much whatever you want it to do.)
Windows Computer Software
Web Browsing/Email:
- Web Browser: Mozilla Firefox + these extensions (free + open source)
- E-mail Client: Mozilla Thunderbird + these extensions (free + open source)
- Browser & E-mail backup: MozBackup (free) – great tool for backing-up and restoring all of your browser/e-mail settings when you reformat or purchase a new computer
General:
- Office: OpenOffice (free + open source) or Microsoft Office (commercial)
- Finance: Quicken Premier 2006 (commercial)
- PDF Viewing: FoxIT PDF Reader (free)
- PDF Creation: PDFCreator (free + open source)
- Genealogy: Genealogy Finder? Still not sure about this one.
- Mapping: Google Earth
- Clock / Alarm Clock: Qlock (free)
- Text Editor: TextPad (free commercial demo) or Notepad++ (free + open source)
- Note Taking: EverNote (free or enhanced commercial version) – fast, easy, and free, EverNote allows notes to be stored in many formats, has categories, and built-in security.
Music:
- Music Editor: Audacity (free)
- Music Ripper: Exact Audio Copy (free) or dbMusicConverter (free or enhanced commercial version)
- Music Format Converter: dbMusicConverter (free or enhanced commercial version)
- Muisc Storage format: FLAC (free + open source)
- Music Player: MediaMonkey (free or enhanced commercial version)
- Music Tagger: MP3Tag (free) and/or TagScanner (free) and/or MediaMonkey (free or enhanced commercial version)
- Podcast Downloader: iTunes seems too be the best but I'm still looking for something better.
- Muisc Lyrics: EvilLyrics (free) – Automatic lyrc downloading – supports about any music player software you can imagine: Winamp, WMP 9, iTunes, MusicMatch, Foobar, MediaMonkey, Real Player, QCD, Y!Music, XMPlay, AlbumPlayer, etc.
- Apple iPod Audio Book Converter: MP3 to iPod Audio Book Converter (free + open source) takes *.mp3 files and converts/merges them into one single *.m4b file that is recognized as an audio book by iPods, so it can be bookmarked. I also use MediaJoin to combine WAV files from multiple CDs into one large WAV file and the use dBpoweram Muisc Converter to convert to a *.m4b; this results in better audio quality due to only 1 compression stage (wav -> m4b instead of wav -> mp3 -> m4b).
Video:
- Media Player: VLC Media Player (free)
- DVD Player: TheaterTek (commercial)
- DVD Catalog/Collection Manager: DVD Profiler (free or enhanced commercial version)
- DVD Decrypting: Slysoft AnyDVD (commercial)
- DVD Ripping: Slysoft CloneDVD (commercial)
- DVD Format Conversion for Mobile Devices: Slysoft CloneDVD Mobile (commercial), HandBrake (free, open source)
Dedicated Media Player / Home Theater Personal Computer (HTPC) Software:
- Microsoft Windows Vista Media Center 32-bit
- MyMovies for MediaCenter movie database plugin
- Shark007 (preferred), Combined Community Codec Pack (second choice), K-Lite Codec Pack Standard (third choice) or for playing Xvid, Divx, and many other video formats in Windows Media Center
- Position Changer Add-in to jump forward to a specific position in Xvid / Divx files (since fast-forward does not work)
- WMP Tag Support Extender to playback FLAC, OGG, AAC, M4A, and other music formats with Media Center (and Media Player)
Pictures:
- Image Editing and Organization: xnView (free)
- Image Thumbnailer: Photo Gadget (free)
- Image viewing: IrfanView (free)
- Advanced image editing: GIMP for Windows (free), Macromedia Fireworks (commercial)
- Photo Gallery Creator: JAlbum (free)
- Lossless PNG file size reduction: PNGGauntlet (free)
Utilities:
- Zip Compression Application: Zip Genius (free) or 7-Zip (free + open source) or PeaZip (free + open source)
- Anti-Spyware: Microsoft Windows Anti-Spyware (free) or SpywareDoctor (commercial)
- Disk Partition Management: EASEUS Partition Master (free), GParted (free + open source)
- Tree Size: TreeSize (free)
- Unit Converter: Convert by Josh Madison (free)
- Personal File Sharing: Amazon S3 or Microsoft Live SkyDrive or Dropbox
- BitTorrent Client: Azureus (free + open source) or uTorrent (free)
- Instant Messaging: Pidgin (free + open source) works with every IM network you can imagine and has plug-ins to add any feature you'd ever need.
- Start-up Manager: Startup Control Panel by Mike Lin (free) and Startup Monitor by Mike Lin (free)
- Anti-virus: Symantec Norton Anti-virus (commercial), AVG Anit-Virus (free)
- Firewall: ZoneAlarm Personal Edition (free) or Windows firewall (free)
- FTP Client: FileZilla (free + open source) or FTP Voyager (commercial)
- Print Screen: ScreenPrint32 (free)
- Icon Maker: IcoFX (free) or PixelToolbox (free)
- MD5 Checker: hkSFV (free)
- CD and DVD Burning: Nero Burning ROM (commercial)
- Computer backup software: Cobain Backup (free)
- Computer online backup service: Mozy Remote Backup
- Program Launcher: Launchy (free + open source – quickly launch any program from you keyboard. No more searching through the Start menu. Starting typing the name of the program and Lanuchy will figure out the program you want.
- Remote Access (away from home): LogMeIn.com (free + enhanced commercial version) or ShowMyPC.com (free) or Microsoft LiveMesh (free)
- Web Site Backup / Offline viewing: HTTrack (free + open source)
- Screensaver Control: SaverNow (free)
- Screensaver: Power Dimmer (free)
- File Copy: TeraCopy replaces and vastly improves the file copy function built-in to Windows (free)
- Make a USB Flash Drive Bootable: HP USB Flash Drive Key Boot Utility (free, works with any USB)
Web Applications
- RSS Feed Reader: Google Reader
- Accounting: Intuit Quickbooks Online
- Office Applications: Google Docs
- Image Editor: Pixlr, Photoshop Express
Web/Server/Developer Tools
- Server-side CMS: WordPress, Joomla
- Software Installer: Install Creator
- CSS Editor: TopStyle Lite (free) or TopStyle Pro (commercial)
- Server-side Webpage Editing: UltraEdit (commercial)
- Webserver: XAMPP is a very easy-to-install Apache Distribution for all operating systems and includes MySQL, PHP, Perl, an FTP server, and phpMyAdmin.
Nice site- ran into touble with a new remote and your site googled in. Can't get the Dish reciever code – suggestions?(have 3 recievers,each reprogramed w/seperate 2 digit code)
Also unable to decrypt Descent- do you use VobBlocker?
Where is DVD Profiler – is it still freeware?
You must use some sort of backup/network server- interested in what you use.(running my 2nd Buffalo NAS).
Sorry for so many qustions – very similiar interests, not many resources. Also a diver. Frank
Frank: I recommend using AnyDVD to decrypt/backup movies. It is update very frequently (at least once a week it seems.) If you have a problem with a DVD, the developer will work with you get the problem figured out and release a new version.
DVD Profiler is still available as freeware, although I recommend upgrading to the commercial version. http://www.intervocative.com/Downloads.aspx
My file server is also my desktop PC. I'm running Ubuntu Linux 6.10 and have a 12-port Areca hardware RAID card, currently with five 500GB Seagate SATA hard drives. I was using Windows Server 2003 but recently converted over to Linux and have been very please with the improvement in file serving and stability.
Great to hear from another diver! Unfortunately, it's been almost a year since I was under water. . .
Carlton,
Great site. I congratulate you for the time you take to reply all comments. I read most of you articles and enjoyed them a lot.
Regarding your technology list, I'm surprissed I've not seen a media center extender or any other device capable of feeding your HDTV from programs stores in your computer, I was hoping to get some advice as I need to buy one. I've tried the Buffalo LinkTheater DVD but I've sold it because it didn't pleased me the software nor the video quality.
Regards, MS
Marcelo: I feed my home theater projector with a computer running Windows Media Center. I have a Linux-based server that stores all of my media (currently 2.5 TB worth.) I also have an Xbox that has been modified to run third-party software and I use Xbox Media Center to play movies / music on my other TV. This takes a lot of work but the results are fantastic see this thread on AVS Forum for more details.
If you are looking for a device you don't have to spend too much time to configure or modify, I'd suggest looking at a TviX from Dvico. The M-5000 model is the best media extender out there from everything I've read – and I've read quite a bit. If you can wait a couple months, the M-4100 and M-5100 models will be out and they offer about everything you could possibly need: H264 codec support, HDMI audio/video output, and SATA drive support.
The Apple TV is another alternative, but I don't recommend it unless you plan to modify it. Out-of-the-box, it only supports some very specific Apple file formats. Support for other formats can be added but you have to do quite a bit of modification (remove hard drive, install special software, etc.)
You might want to spend some time on the AVS Digital Media Servers & Content Streamers forum to get more opinions. Hope this helps – enjoy!
Following on the previous comment . . .
Yes, the TVIX Box is a simple digital media solution. I work for TVIX Box and we have been selling a lot of these units for the past couple years. They keep getting better and the feedback has been great. Here is the real simple breakdown:
1) TVIX Box M-3100: This player is NOT HD and is NOT networkable, but if you want to get your digital media to your TV with out a lot of investment or hassle, this is the way to go.
2) TVIX Box M-4000: This has all the same specs as the 5000 mentioned above which has been the gold standard for about a year now, but it is about 100US less, due to recent manufacturing innovations. It is HD and has a built in Ethernet as well as optional Wi-fi access.
3) TVIX Box M-5000: Same as 4000, but in an innovative cylindrical shape and about 100US more.
4) TVIX Box 4100 and 5100 series: Not yet available, but all the features of the 4000/5000 plus 1080 support and H.264.
Good Luck!
Paul
TVIX Box Multimedia Players
HI
Great site and I love the technology list, especially the photography and software sections (there are a few there I will be taking a closer look at.
As for the photography, I have a Nikon D70s and its a superb piece of kit and travels everywhere with me. I also bought a Digital Frame recentlyfrom these guys http://www.udiggit.com I ended up buying a 15" Acrylic one from their Pictorea Ramge and so far have found it very easy to use and displays my photos a treat.
Andy
Is this list up-to-date. I just want to be sure because I noticed your last post was in 2007. Thanks!
Yes, it's up to date. The footer at the bottom of the page indicates the date of last modification, which was 18-Sept-2008 as of today.
Hi Carlton,
I just somehow ended up on your blog and really impressed with it. Coincidentally, I am going through the same phases you went through. I did comp sci, and have been working in a telecommunication industry for the past 5 years, and now feeling the itch to pursue my MBA, and also will be setting up my first Home theater in a new house. Love the technology list, and after reading numerous forums, my head is starting to spin, so your website is a sigh of relief. Great site
Hi,
I am looking for a Philips 9FF2M4 digital photo frame but am currently struggling to find one anywhere, or to find anywhere that has a good review. Do you know anywhere you can point me to that will provide one of these please?
Many thanks
eBay is great for discontinued products.
Hi Carlton,
I love your home-theater setup, it looks great! Actually, my friend and I decided to invite ourselves over for a movie weekend. We figure, start out friday with a Star Wars maraton. Saturday we do Terminator and Transformers and Sunday with a Harry Potter maraton.
Oh, what's that, you're not in Europe? Too bad, rain check then, I suppose