Recommended Gear: Software

[rmarler]

I would like to address the Must not haves.

All of your "must haves" will run better if your system is not bogged down with junk.
"Keep the farmville off of your recording system".
anything that polls the network ...
weather bug, coupon shopper, facebook, email notifiers you get the idea.

In fact I would even go as far as to say your work machine should not have internet access.
Share a folder on your non recording system to download projects and pluggins etc. then install from there.

Another thing your machine should not have are profile sounds. I was collaborating once with a guy in Germany. imported his smokin guitar track to my project and in the middle of the track was the unmistakable sound of an IM bubble.

on a windows machine...
Start> Run> msconfig make that "startup" tab as short a list as you can
CTRL+SHIFT+ESCAPE make that "processes" tab as short a list as you can.
my $.02