Technology Review – 2017 – Dean Yergens, PhD

Looking back at the year, I was thinking what software and hardware have I been the most happy with.

Hardware:

Apple MacBook Pro 13″ (2009 and 2010) – I have two of these devices. One for personal use and one for business. They are seriously great laptops.
Asus Transformer Mini T102HA – this is a 10.1″ tablet with an attachable keyboard and stylus. I had wanted a device that I could a) read PDFs papers with and underline text; and b) write notes. I also didn’t want to pay $1200 for something like a Microsoft Surface or an Apple iPad Pro. Instead I purchased this device for $299 and was surprised that it also ran Windows 10. I loaded Synthesis (www.synthesis.info) onto the device and was really surprised it had the power to run it.
Nvidia Cool Master 590 case (home -built computer) – Still an awesome case.
Raspberry Pi Model 3 B – powerful enough to run a NAS (www.openmediavault.org).
Seiki 4K 39″ monitor (SE39UY04) – great large monitor for development and display.

Software:

VirtualBox – My default virtualization software (I also have VMWare and Parallels)
Skype – Its surprising how often I use Skype and how well it works.
Balsamiq Mockup 3 (www.balsamiq.com) – A very good application for mocking up GUIs.
NotePad++ (www.notepad-plus-plus.org) – An excellent text editor.
Synthesis (www.synthesis.info) – Even though I co-developed the software, I use it alot for academic literature searches.
Open Media Vault (www.openmediavault.org) – Network Attached Storage software.
Etcher (www.etcher.io) – software to write ISO files.
PDF XChange Viewer (https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer)

Development Software:

Software that I would have liked to have tried:

InfoGraphics (http://www.jumsoft.com/toolbox-for-ms-office/) – Interesting Templates. (Pictogram/Pictograph)
Timeline 3D (https://www.beedocs.com/timeline3D/mac/)
Office Timeline (www.officetimeline.com)