What's your home office setup like? No matter how many desks with computers we've all seen in our lives, it always a little exciting and voyeuristic to take a look into someone else's life to see how they set up their workspace. Here at Ars, there's a pretty diverse range when it comes to our own home office setups, some of which you might have already seen from our most recent Ars Technicast post.

Since the commenters on that post have spent some time analyzing what they see on our desks thus far, we thought it would be nice to let some other Ars staffers in on the fun. Below, you can see the home office setups for a number of staffers and contributors, along with short descriptions of what they've got running. We don't always work at our desks—and some of us don't even have desks—but when we do, this is what they look like.

Lee Aylward: Lead Programmer

This giant desk has stuck with me for 10 years and through five moves. It has lots of space for laptops, beverages, and the occasional cat. After I began working from home, I quickly realized that I needed a more comfortable chair, so on Ken's recommendation I picked up an Aeron. The 30" LCD is a new addition, and I love how well it works with the tiny 11" Macbook Air. There is a Windows PC tucked under the desk for gaming and sporadic IE testing. A few other important items: bobble head Spock, miniature Tom Servo, and badass dragon.

Aurich Lawson: Creative Director

(Aurich didn't send over a description because his animated gif is Just. That. Great.)

Cyrus Farivar: Senior Business Editor

While my MacBook Air is propped up by a simple cardboard box (although I sometimes troll Craigslist to look for something nicer), I usually do most of my serious work in the more solid ViewSonic monitor. I have 2TB of external storage attached to my WiFi router and laptop, along with a set of speakers. My printer/scanner is hidden behind my monitor. My desk is usually semi-disorganized, and I've got an assortment of gadgets nearby—a car laptop charger, a portable digital recorder, an old iPod nano that I've been meaning to sell. The diplomas above the desks are my wife's (left) and mine (right). They are undergrad degrees (but our Master's degrees are above, not pictured). And while I may not be half the badass that Capt. Benjamin Sisko was, I keep two baseballs on my desk to toss around when I get bored.

Iljitsch van Beijnum: Ars Contributor

Having moved recently, I haven't had the chance to bury my work space under a pile of rubble just yet, and my IBM Model M is still in storage. So it's just the essentials: a MacBook Pro, a MacBook Air, a pot of tea, a healthy snack. Usually the 23" Dell monitor is all I need, but I can open up the laptops if I need more screen real estate. I recently gave up on my six-year-old Mighty Mouse's scrollball, so now I have the magic trackpad for scrolling, swiping, and pinching, but I still find myself reaching for the mouse regularly. The little speaker under the monitor has bluetooth—everything is better with bluetooth after all—but so far I've mostly been using it wired, unlike the mouse, trackpad, and keyboard. Oh, and once you try a circular mousepad, there's no going back.

Jon Brodkin: Senior IT Reporter

There's no room for an "office" in my one-bedroom townhouse, but I get by with a desk I bought in college for $45 and have tucked in the corner of my living room. It has just enough room for a Core i7 Mac mini (256GB SSD, 750GB spinning disk, and 16GB of RAM), a 3TB external drive, SIP phone, call recording device, and apparently a slinky. 16GB of RAM is luxurious for running virtual machines, and I've got a Windows 7 partition that can be accessed either from Boot Camp or in Parallels.

The two monitors are delightful, but they make the space feel cramped, so I'm looking into expanding the workspace or just buying a bigger desk. (UPDATE: This article inspired me to go buy a little table/tray that can fit under my desk and hold my keyboard.) Not pictured is my copier/faxer/scanner/printer, and a MacBook Air that backs up wirelessly to the Mountain Lion Server installed on the mini. And yes, that is tape over the webcam. What happens at Jon's desk stays at Jon's desk.

Chris Foresman: Ars Contributor

My workstation is designed to maximize working space in my tiny corner of the home office I share with my girlfriend and her son. The desk is an add-on to IKEA's Expedit storage shelf; the combination runs about $120. The chair is also an IKEA design that cost $89.

Since I'm the sort of person that typically has approximately 647 projects in various stages of progress, it doesn't always look as tidy as I'd like. But ample storage provided by the eight large sections of the Expedit shelf makes it easy to keep the mess hidden from general view. The large desk surface is more than I need for my 11" MacBook Air, but it has plenty of room for microphones for podcasting, books I'm reading or using for research, stacks of photos, and materials for graphic design projects. There's also tons of room underneath the desk, so I use some basic document storage boxes to keep projects I've put on hold within easy reach.

The most important feature of my workstation, however, is that I'm located close enough to the office door to shut and lock it when I have to hunker down and Get Things Done.

Megan Geuss: Staff Editor

I like to think that the disorganized mess you see here is because everything else that I do on the computer is just so damn organized, and I don't have time to keep my IRL space tidy. Unfortunately, the case may be that I'm just messy all the time. I need two rulers (who doesn't?) and you'll notice my MacBook charging peacefully beside my PC desktop for emergency-eject situations that may occur in my home office. You'll also notice the corner of a Kindle Fire behind that towel. The octopus guarding my tower is pretty good at what he does (but I still use anti-virus software).

Eric Bangeman: Managing Editor

Jacqui here: Eric is on vacation right now, but since he posted this photo recently in a post about his favorite gear, I gave myself permission to write his description for him. Enjoy.

Here you see Eric Bangeman's 2008 "Harpertown" Mac Pro that comes with two 3.0GHz quad-core Xeon processors, 10GB of DDR2 RAM, a ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT and a ATI Radeon HD 5770. The machine runs with a 480GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD on the inside, as well as two 2TB Western Digital Black drives running at 7200rpm. Eric accessorizes this look with three monitors: a 30" Apple Cinema Display running off one of the graphics cards, and a pair of 23" Apple LCDs off the other. And when he's letting his hair down for a trip to the local Panera, he takes along his trusty 11" MacBook Air. Très chic!

Cesar Torres: Social Editor

I like minimalism in my workflow and in my home décor, so my work setup is intended to be clean and streamlined. I use a Crate & Barrel desk in glossy white, on which I use a 2011 iMac and a Blue Snowball microphone for podcasting. Even the mic is white. Underneath my desk I run an external drive for all my multimedia. I use a shelf underneath the desk for it, so I can keep the surface of the desk clutter-free. I do my backups wirelessly using Time Capsule. Whenever I use notebooks, pens or books on the desk, I make sure to put them away when I am done, in order to keep the desk clean and minimalist.

Ryan Paul: Open Source Editor

I work at a height-adjustable desk that allows me to alternate between sitting and standing positions throughout the day. I typically use two computers at once, a MacBook Air connected to a 27-inch Thunderbolt display and a PC tower that runs Ubuntu. I use Synergy to share input devices between the two systems. The left-hand monitor is mounted on an articulating arm so that I can swing it out over my desk.

Peter Bright: Microsoft Editor

I have a custom-built, L-shaped desk integrated into the custom-built bookshelf that covers one wall of my office. On the desk I have an old Aiwa NSX 999 all-in-one hi-fi that is substantially broken, but still has a functional amplifier and volume dial, three Dell UltraSharp U2410 24" monitors, a Dell AT102W keyboard, a Logitech Performance Mouse MX, a 13-port USB hub, a wired Xbox 360 controller, a Sennheiser PC 150 headset, a pair of Webcams (one Logitech QuickCam Orbit AF, one Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920), a 64GB third generation iPod touch, a no-name 20-in-1 memory card reader, a USB infrared receiver for a remote control, and an older model 1TB Western Digital MyBook. These things are all connected to a self-built full tower PC. This is notable for being housed in a SilverStone Fortress FT02 case, which places the motherboard's back panel connectors on the top of the PC, allowing me to plug things in without having to move the system away from the wall.

In addition to all this, my desk normally also contains a Lenovo X300 laptop, an early 2008-generation MacBook Pro, and for the past few months, a Samsung Series 7 Slate on which I've been testing Windows 8. The Slate is paired to a Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 5000 and a Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse. There's also a Polycom SoundPoint IP 320 Desktop IP Telephone.

The chair is an old, rather cheap office chair that needs to be replaced with something more comfortable.

But the most important thing of all is what I call the stroking platform. The little platform on the left with the blue-green blanket is a Kitt-In Box from The Refined Feline. Sadly discontinued, these are cat beds that bolt to a desk, giving my cat Millie somewhere to sleep other than on my keyboard.

When I am working, Millie will sleep on the stroking platform for many hours a day, ensuring that I always have a cat within petting distance. This is an essential part of any working environment.

Casey Johnston: Ars Contributor

This is my one-screen set-up, where my MacBook Pro powers my 23-inch ASUS monitor while resting comfortably in a laptop hammock that hangs off the side of my desk. My keyboard is crazy-loud and I love it dearly.

Jacqui Cheng: Senior Apple Editor

When I'm actually working in my home office, I use a 27" 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo iMac that was released in 2009. On the inside, it has 4GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive—this thing was a review machine when it was first purchased, so it's a pretty standard model. When I'm not at my desk—or even when I am—I also use an 11" Core i7 MacBook Air from mid-2011. And of course I always have my third-gen iPad and iPhone 4 handy for OS, app, and various other testing purposes. And yes, the cat is usually there too.

My desk is a $50 butcher block style platform from IKEA that I stained myself, and I sit in a secondhand Eames desk chair. Almost everything stuffed into the bookshelves is Ars-related in some way; I have a 1TB backup drive hidden behind the iMac as well as a handful of wireless access points, chargers, cables, cameras, and other gadgety items scattered around—and don't even get me started on what's packed into what I call "The Ars Technica Closet" that is directly behind my chair when I'm working. It's like the accessory closet from The Devil Wears Prada, but replace the clothes and shoes with electronics that have no home. If you're brave and dig deep enough, you can even find the Maylong M-150 tablet—and no one wants that.

What do your home offices look like?