Minimal (one of my new favourite sites) links to a list of rules by Alex Payne for computing happiness. Alex splits them into software, hardware and file formats. It's pretty comprehensive and IMHO hard to disagree with. Some that I violently agree with include (my comments in italics):
- Do not use software that does many things poorly.
- Use a plain text editor that you know well. Not a word processor, a plain text editor — I have been trying to move to something other than Word for ages now, the problem is having to share stuff with other people and deal with Tracked Changes. I like Pages as a word processor although it's save as function is just plain petulant and I like Bean as a text editor but until everyone saves everything in RTF, it's going to be a tricky one
- Use a password manager. You shouldn’t know any of your passwords save the one to your primary email account and the one to your password manager — Personally, I prefer Pastor but each to their own
- Pay for software that’s worth paying for, but only after evaluating it for no less than two weeks — I so agree with this, the software that looks good on first inspection but which later becomes simply hard drive ballast is legion.
- Use a Mac for personal computing.
- The only peripheral you absolutely need is a hard disk or network drive to put backups on.
- Buy as large an external display as you can afford if you’ll be working on the computer for more than three hours at a time.
The ones I'm less sure on:
- Do not use software that must sync over the internet to function — I generally agree with the exception of Dropbox which simply makes my life so much easier.
- Do not use software that isn’t made specifically for your operating system. (You’ll know it when you see it because it won’t look right or work correctly) — with the explosion of stable, useful Air-based apps I'm not sure this is a deal breaker any more.
- Do not run beta software unless you know how to submit a bug report and are eager to do so — this is where I come unstuck. I love beta software. A big part of computing happiness for me is trying new stuff. Of course, I'm not so good at uninstalling it when I get bored later.
Take a look at the full list (plus Minimal's additions), it's interesting stuff.