Biologist Home Office and Lab

[Lampornis]

I am all about Apple hardware and use if for most everything. My everyday computer is a late 2013 15" Retina display MacBook Pro that travels with me between home and work. The 15" display is necessary because of all the low-level graphics I deal with both in developing course content and manuscript publication (data presentation). I simply find it useful to use the same computer both at home and on the road. My laptop was the first to come with a built in SSD, which limited the capacity at the time to 500 GB (could have waited an extra 2 weeks and gotten 1 TB, but did not have the time), so I purchased a 2 TB Western Digital My Passport that I use for all my media. This has worked well for me. When at home I connect to an Amazon Basics USB hub to which I connect an second My Passport that serves as my Time Machine backup, an Asus Blue-ray/DVD drive, and a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 film/slide scanner (old, but still works well). I am also wirelessly connected to an Epson WF-3540 multi-function printer.

In my office at the university I have a late 2014 27" iMac with a 3.4 GHz Intel Core i5 processor. Connected to the iMac is an Asus Blue-ray/DVD drive identical to what I have at home and yet another My Passport that stores my Time Machine backup.

In my lab I have two older desktops for basic writing and data analysis that continue to work well. The oldest is a mid 2010 quad core Mac Pro (yes, a tower!), and the other is a mid 2011 27" iMac. Various external hard drives are connected and disconnected from these machines regularly depending on what we are working on. Both machines are wirelessly connected to an Epson WF-3540 multi-function printer.

Finally, we use a variety of older laptops when we are in the field. For example, a mid 2009 15" MacBook Pro, and several similar era MacBooks.

The beauty of this historic lineup of Mac hardware is that they are simply well built and last a long time. As much as I hate to admit it I also have in my lab a Lenovo laptop running Windows 10, a necessary evil due to proprietary software required to operate my infrared camera and several data loggers.

[Quahog]

Nice! Biologist here too.

You study hummingbirds? Marine invertebrates here, with the occasional vertebrate thrown in.

[Shuttergirl1]

wow that’s a lot of computers to keep track of!
(fun side note: hubby had a hummer land on his phone while talking to a friend on speaker the other day. Guess it was mad I hadn’t put the feeders out, but I’ve been busy growing plants they like). When I’m using the table in the studio for lessons we often see them right out the large window. LOVE hummers!

[Lampornis]

Yep, been a passion for the last 40 years.

[Lampornis]

Yeah, I take whatever computers I can get my hands on since we use lots of them in the work. For you pleasure here are a couple of photos from this summer’s field work where we where using MacBook Pros to read output from balances being used to track body weight management in hummingbirds in Arizona.

[Quahog]

Looks like Logger Pro.

I used to work for AD Instruments, the makers of PowerLab stuff. Long time ago. I’ve used Vernier equipment in my teaching labs and it is surprisingly good for the low price point.

[Lampornis]

We have a site license for Logger Pro, and it talks to my balances so we used it. The interface is a bit cumbersome, but it met the need.