In my job, I am not purely a developer and dba, although I spend a lot of time in those roles. I also am a quality manager for a daily operation, and have to be available to drop anything I'm working on and investigate a customer complaint, or provide analysis of a performance topic. So with that in mind, the first big thing for my desktop environment is multiple monitors. I currently have managed to get three in a really cool configuration. I have one 30" widescreen monitor in landscape orientation at the center (2560x1600), and two 20" 4x3 monitors in portrait orientation on either side (1200x1600). This gives me an awesome workspace of 4960x1600, and allows me to have Outlook running on one side monitor to keep an eye on incoming emails, and web pages, etc up on the other side monitor for research, etc. When doing development work, I keep my code on the center screen, and use one of the sides for viewing the UI, or for testing the app as I work... Over the years I have come to have a pretty specific setup for my desktop, and have gotten pretty good at migrating from one PC to another fairly quickly (I've had to do this a handful of times at least...)

1) Multiple monitors (3 preferred)

2) UltraMon (for easily managing a multi-monitor environment.

3) MS Office

4) SSMS

5) DBVisualizer - For working in a few Oracle databases I have access too (not as DBA)

6) VS

7) Notepad ++

8) FastStone Capture (Screen Capture tool, including video screen capture. Awesome for training videos.)

9) Dameware (For managing a handful of remote, unmanned PC's that do automated work collecting data and sending reports.

10) Dedicated NAS (1 TB) - Keep all of my work saved there... makes PC transitions much easier, and allows me to work from my laptop equally as easily as from my desktop.

As far as desk and chair, as long as I have room for my monitors, and a chair that is comfortable, I'm good.

I like this topic! I've become pretty peculiar with my set-up, so this hit home. 🙂

John