I like the questions from last week’s Weekly Wrapup so I’m going to answer those today.

1. What kind of computer do you use? What operating system? If you’ve made a conscious choice to use a particular OS, what prompted the decision? And are you rabidly loyal to a particular OS — if so, why?
At work I have a Dell Dimension, and at home I have a Compaq Presario desktop and a Compaq Armada 7730MT laptop, which is our primary machine: we mostly only use the desktop for its USB ports. Both the work machine and my laptop use Win95, and the desktop has Win98; once I get some more RAM into the laptop I want to install Win98 on there as well. I will probably always stick with Windows machines, though I’m not opposed to using Linux. I don’t think I’d ever make the switch to the Mac world, though I’m comfortable using them.

2. What software do you use the most often? What do you use it/them for? What software do you covet? Why?
At work I use Eudora, Paradox, and WordPerfect for general work tasks. At home I use Paint Shop Pro 6 for all my graphics editing, though I’d like to give Photoshop a try because I’ve heard so much about it. At both work and home I use IE 5.5, but the laptop also has Netscape 4.79 and Opera 5 installed, and the desktop has Netscape 6.

3. What freeware or shareware products do you use? What products have you purchased after using for a short period of time? Have you ever sold someone else on a particular freeware or shareware product? What happened?
At both work and home I use SimpleMU, Trillian, and LeechFTP. At work I also use Shortkeys Lite, DoHide, Proxomitron, Clipomatic, and Time Clock. I use GetRight at home because it takes forever to download things on that dialup connection, and with GetRight I can resume downloads. The only shareware I remember having purchased is for the Palm: Fitaly and IcoEdit. I got my mother to start using Trillian because the later versions of ICQ weren’t compatible with Trillian, which I was already using.

4. Have you ever used pirated software? Describe the circumstance in which you obtained and decided to use the pirated software? Would you do it again? Why or why not?
I have used serial numbers to make a program think it was registered. I would only do it again if it were completely impossible to use the software past the registration period, and then only if it was software produced by a company and not an individual.

5. What icons do you have on your desktop? In your system tray? On your taskbar? Or, if you’re using OSX, on your dock? Why do you have these particular icons and programs where they are?
I like to keep my desktop nice and neat. Here at work I only have My Computer, the Recycle Bin, and the dialup connection for the work ISP. My system tray currently has icons for Norton Utilities, Clipomatic, CorelCENTRAL Alarms, WeatherBug, my dialup connection, SimpleMU, Shortkes, DoHide, the Visions client for LiveJournal, and TimeClock.