My server at home is converted from one of my old desktop towers. It's a bog-standard Pentium III 500MHz box with 630MB memory, more than enough for day-to-day operations at home. I built it from scratch with spare parts and some new components a while back as a desktop. For some really boring reasons it's currently running Debian Linux 'Sid' which is the 'unstable' branch of Debian but I've had no problems with instability so far; it's solid as a rock. No need for a keyboard or monitor on this one, obviously.

This machine is the family file-server as well as being my mail server (my wife and daughter prefer webmail).

Most of the functions of my home server are fairly run-of-the mill, file sharing with Samba and so on (although a Squid web proxy/cache installation that does on-the-fly virus-scanning and ad-blocking is nice) but the mail server functions have been heavily customised due to my hatred of spam and the amount I get sent.

My home desktop is a relatively new, relatively cheap off-the shelf (almost) Acer Power FG that I bought through work so my girlfriend (now my wife) could get my old desktop. Sure, I've thrown in a couple of hard-drives as a RAID, a powerful graphics card and some more memory but it's about the most 'off-the-shelf' PC I've owned.

A Pentium 4 with 2GB of memory and an Nvidia GeForce 7900 GT graphics card with a dual-boot installation of Windows XP and Debian 'Lenny' Linux, it is more than enough for my work (Linux) and gaming (Windows) needs. The Viewsonic VP191s 19-inch monitor is nice but I'm used to having two monitors at work so it feels a bit cramped sometimes.

Setting up dual-booting Windows and Linux on a software RAID with shared boot and swap partitions on a third small, high-speed disk was a pain but it's nice and fast. I use Windows for games and Linux with KDE 3.5 desktop for pretty much everything else. My wife and daughter use Windows but my wife is getting used to doing her stuff in Linux/KDE too.

Pretty standard, the aforementioned fileserver and desktop are hard-wired to a Draytek 2600 ADSL router/switch and I have a Linksys Wireless-G Wireless Access Point for my netbook and any guests with laptops.

I treated myself to an Acer Aspire One as a wedding present. It's a great bit of kit and the Linpus Linux installation was good for it's target audience (non linux geeks) but I installed an extra gigabyte of memory and Debian 'Lenny' Linux and KDE desktop as soon as I got it. It's the 8GB Solid State Drive version but I'm rarely out of WIFI range of my fileserver and when I am I can get to my server using my mobile as a 3G or GPRS modem (connected to the Netbook via bluetooth) so the lack of storage space is not really a problem. This version of the Acer Aspire One does not have bluetooth on-board but I found a tiny 'Nano' bluetooth usb adaptor about the size of a fingernail that is barely noticable and does the job.

I recently replaced my excellent Nokia 6300 with a Samsung U900 Soul in Black. I suppose I was spoiled by the Nokia's excellent interface because although the Samsung is a nice bit of kit it's shortfalls in call quality, applications, user-interface and ability to customise it (even after removing Orange's horrid branding 'features' by flashing the firmware) are infuriating and are not compensated for by a mediocre 5 megapixel camera that I rarely use or a gimicky touchpad. However I can use it as a bluetooth 3G/GPRS modem with my netbook and unlike the Nokia it does have half-decent IMAP support and supports 8GB MicroSD memory cards so I guess I'll stick with it until the next upgrade and spend more time researching the next one.