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A Mac rig that’ll make your eyes bleed

1:19 am, September 19th, 2008, Giles Turnbull

mitch-haile-desks-20080919.jpg

Admit it: you’ve always wanted an office like this, haven’t you? Your dual-monitor setup looks a bit pathetic now, doesn’t it?

This is the massive eight-monitor workspace of Mitch Haile, and when we saw it on Flickr we knew we had to share it. You can see the original pics of his iMac and his Mac Pro, as well as many more photos of his office space. But why on earth does he need so many monitors? We asked him. Over to you, Mitch:

“I am working at a stealth mode start-up in San Jose, where I used to live. I commute from Boston. Part-time I do some consulting and oversee back-end software architecture for a new DVD cataloging service, www.take11.com.

“The iMac is for email and mundane tasks like bug triage,
documentation, etc–stuff that doesn’t require 6 monitors.
The MacBook Pro is obviously for travel. Both of these machines have 4GB of RAM each.

“The six monitors are connected to the Mac Pro. Main apps are X11, Eclipse, Terminal, BBedit, gvim, VMware. The Linux box next to the Mac Pro also is a VMware-oriented system and I run xterms and another Eclipse application on that box, using X11 forwarding to display it on the Mac. NFS all over the place. The Mac Pro has about 4TB of storage, the Linux box 1TB.

“The main reason for the 6 monitors is to see multiple debuggers concurrently. The 95″ or so of width is about
the physical maximum I can take in at once; it’s not really
enough room but I don’t want to kill my neck.

“The boxes in the closet are more testing infrastructure. More RAM, more VMware on the towers. The small shuttles were cheap (about $200 each) and perform small little tasks that are important but need isolation from the rest of the environment.

“I have been running multi-monitors for about 9 years now. I think I upgraded to 4 monitors in 2004; as LCDs have gotten cheaper, it’s been more practical. Three 21″ CRTs would
kill a desk, but 6 LCDs weighs a lot less.”

Thanks to Mitch for the guided tour and permission to re-use the pics. Image smushing was done with DoubleTake.

Posted by Giles Turnbull in Cult of Mac, Hardware, News | Comment on this article

About the author

gilest

Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He is a columnist for PA, and has written for the BBC, Guardian, Daily Telegraph, MacUser, Macworld, and The Morning News. He has a blog you can ignore and a Twitter account you needn't follow.

Email the author | Read more posts by Giles Turnbull.

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9 comments

    if thats a set up then so is this…. :] http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3026/2869382777_cc9a112696_b.jpg

    Danny Policarpo, on September 19th, 2008 at 3:14 am

    That man uses a lot of lotion. I’m not even sure if I have any lotion in my house, he’s got a least two bottles on the desk.

    Will, on September 19th, 2008 at 6:01 am

    I’ll throw my rig in the running:

    Mac Pro Dual Quad 2.8Ghz with 6GB Ram and two 22″ LCDs
    iMac 24″ 2.13Ghz with 3GB Ram (all it will hold)
    HP 2.66Ghz C2D with 8GB Ram and 24″ LCD (Vista64)
    Brown Box 2.4Ghz C2D with 3GB Ram and two 20″LCDs (Vista32)
    15″ Macbook Pro 2.2Ghz with 4GB Ram
    and loads of pro-audio gear

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/philoking/2855970767/

    And for the irony, a lot of Macs for someone who works at Microsoft :)

    Jason Burns, on September 19th, 2008 at 7:04 am

    I noticed the same thing about the lotion. Nevermind what that says about him; what does it say about us?! hahaha

    Charlie, on September 19th, 2008 at 8:37 am

    This is a great setup but I am very interested in the keyboard. What keyboard is he using in these screen shots?

    anmar, on September 19th, 2008 at 1:23 pm

    “This is a great setup but I am very interested in the keyboard. What keyboard is he using in these screen shots?”

    +1

    DS, on September 19th, 2008 at 2:19 pm

    Hi guys, Giles mentioned that there was some curiosity about the keyboard–I’ve added two pictures of it.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/bwa32/2871112585/in/set-72157607284828899/

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/bwa32/2871112473/in/set-72157607284828899/

    Mitch Haile, on September 19th, 2008 at 7:48 pm

    Thanks for the keyboard pics and information, Mitch

    Giles Turnbull, on September 19th, 2008 at 11:58 pm

    This is the I would have if I could afford it! Two Mac Pros in the bays so I can work on two 3D scenes at once, a MacBook Pro for mail and 12 Mac Minis to be used as a rendering farm for my lenticular images.

    http://www.peterjsucy.com/Downloads/PerfectDesk/PerDesk.html

    Peter, on September 21st, 2008 at 1:28 pm