How do you use your Dell?

I'm just curious as to what everyone does with their computer (particularly the Latitude E-series). High-end and unique uses are what I'm particularly interested in. Humor me

I started so I'll go first.

Background: I'm a junior dual-majoring electrical engineering and computer science. I have a year and half before I finish my undergrad. I plan on going for my master's, I'm not yet sure which one I'll pursue. I bought my E6400 with hopes it will last me until I'm completely done with the world of academia. It replaced my 3 yr old first-gen-Macbook. I also work at my university's IT Help.

Most used programs (low-end to high-end):
Web-surfing
MS Office: all the boring stuff that comes with college. taking notes, essays, presentations, email, etc.
iTunes
Skype (1 contact: girlfriend lol)
MS Visual Studio: programming
Matlab & Mathematica: lots of math
OrCAD: schematics, simulations, diagrams, layouts, footprints etc.
Various micro-controller-specific IDEs: the microcontroller we use for our electrical engineering projects changes each semester
BOINC: help with distributed computing when idle
VMware Workstation: Testing OS's for work and for back-compatibility

 

Well I dont have a latitude, but I do have a dell business laptop.

Basically I wake up at ~7am head downstairs to my dell that's doing whatever I was doing the night before (e.g. gaming, streaming music, coding, ect) and I put it to sleep for the 2 minute drive to work. It is there that I proceed to put my dell through some rigorous work running multiple remote sessions, AIM pro, several Firefox tabs open and running, streaming music, coding for school or work(MS VS 2008), updating Active directory, web development(new task Im just now starting at work), several file explorers open and/or searching/indexing, itunes sometimes, movie sometimes, Autodesk MEP sometimes, as well as a few other things I cant think off off the top of my head. So basically it does this til around 5pm when I put it to sleep for the drive or bike ride home (depends on the weather) where I proceed to open it back up and either continue working or game/personal tasks. While Im not at the computer its doing all of its maintenance, as well as monitoring my work network and my home network.

As you can see I get my moneys worth out of my vostro, and not once has it hiccuped at me and refused to do the many tasks I send its way.

edit: ::knocks on wood::

edit2: Either way you go academically youll never truely be done with learning and the academic community. A nice quote I saw somewhere on the interwebz "Learn like you'll live forever, Live like you'll die tomorrow...". Ive bee out of school for 2.5 years and still I take a college class from time to time to either brush up on skills or learn a new skill set.

 

ehm...quite a list here

XP installation is purely for audio work:
Cubase SX4, Ableton Live and looooooaaaaads of VST plugins, got it hooked up to a PCMCIA E-MU 1616m audio interface with nice Genelec monitors.

Vista64
3Dsmax, pretty much all the abobe suite except soundbooth, lots of graphical and design apps/tools

and besides this the regular web-browsing, excel and other uses

and yeah...very happy the m4400 runs all this veeeery nicely

 

my computer isnt business oriented, its more of a home-student use, i use all kinds of applications, and it has never given a problem, aside from some hardware failures and overheating... heh

the apps i use are:

-firefox, never liked IE 7, and ive gotten used to it after 5 years of use hehe, mostly open thousands of tabs open because of my research work, so i consider this is my everyday app.

-MS office 2007, this is essential to any computer i would say, and more for me since i use it everyday for homework.

-Steam, i started using this app a year ago, its very cool because i just hate having game CDs i have a lot of games in my account, and i love gaming on my free time (like i have free time lol) some games are HL2, Team fortress 2, Garry's mod... steam is a bit buggy but overall a good tool.

- Eve online, the most awesome space game EVER!!! the m1530 handles it pretty well even though its very heavy, been playing it for 5 years on different computers and my dell runs it the best!

and well i think thats it, hehe i dont really have a lot of programs on my computer, i like to keep it clean, and pretend it still runs like new
i may have missed a game or two...

oh and i run windows 7, witch is the best thing ive seen as an OS, seriously, vista can bite dust!

 

had a latitude d820 and just got a new m4400 2 hours ago.

i'm a flash developer so i use it for digital media creation. web site, etc. flash, dreamweaver, photoshop, gmail, office, etc.

got the m4400 for the graphics card (over a new e6500) so that i could possibly play games. haven't had a computer that could even run a modern game in years.

 

Just the usual day-to-day for my E6400. Internet, office, music and video... occasional antiquated sprite-based games and image processing when I feel like drawing, but the colors on the WXGA+ LED aren't that great. I'd say the heaviest load I throw at the thing on a regular basis is 720p video.

While I do find the machine portable, it doesn't get around much. I usually travel with my HP instead. I've got an old D620 for backup as well.

 

The colors are not great out of the box. After calibration they are a lot better, though. I use the standard Windows 7/Intel monitor calibration tool.

 

I find the Intel color calibrator in XP to be utter crap. I want a lower gamma, but the slider defaults at the lowest value, and tweaking the brightness and contrast doesn't do it for me. It's not a big deal, though; I usually do art on my desktop or my old CRT. I've found the Nvidia control panel to be superior, but I'm willing to make the sacrifice for lower heat and longer battery life.

 

Software calibration and eyeballing isn't going to get you anywhere with calibration really. For a cheap and still great calibration tool get the Pantone Huey Pro....should be only $70-80

 

mainly used for my assignments with multiple word files, pdf files, and web pages... and sometimes with photoshop opened to do some artworks for the assignments.

partly used for my entertainment, play videos and music.
and partly used for editing my photos.