I ordered mine from B&H Photo. The price is dropped $300, free shipping, no tax, & “had to” spend $1000 on my new c-card to get an extra $200 kickback. So, it became affordable… but, they are not in stock, I had to pre-order one. 
I’ve had my eye on one for about the same time, my only experience w/windows is 7, so it should be a great learning experience all around. I think the photo capture apps for the touch mat will be most useful. I play @ making steampunk jewelry, handling images of the parts as opposed to a desktop littered with parts & trying to keep things from sliding apart will really speed things up. I believe the scanner area is of a similar size with the GF work area as well. I’m definitely willing to report how it works out!
Fusion 360 is Free for non-commercial purposes. I don’t know how you plan to use it / GlowForge; so I can’t speak on how that might apply to you. I’m just pointing it out for anyone in the forum who might qualify for the free license.
HARDWARE:
Mac Pro (2013) 6-Core Xeon E5 3.5 GHz 32GB RAM
OS X 10.11 El Capitan
Dual AMD FirePro D500 3072 MB/Core
21 TB Thunderbolt 2 RAID + 17 TB Thunderbolt 2 Time Machine RAID (
iPad Air2 64Gb
SOFTWARE:
Adobe Creative Cloud Apps
Fusion 360 (Free Non-Commercial License)
If compatible, I may also utilize ideaMaker (comes with a Raise3D N2 Plus printer - Slated to ship to me in January)
I’m thinking Fusion 360 might get it’s own thread on here. Enough people use it, and apparently there is a lot of info about the non-commercial license.
Hardware:
MacBook Pro Retina 15" (i7, 16GB ram, dedicated Nvidia 750M GPU) usually running Windows.
Several Windows based workstations and gaming machines (all intel+Nvidia)
Linux based server
Nexus 6p, as well as several other android based devices.
Software:
Adobe CC
Wings 3d
Blender
Inkscape
SketchUp, but I hate it.
I don’t really create any content on touch devices, but I’d possibly use them for control over the GF interface if that was possible and convenient. I’ve been designing things in Wings 3d and Blender more often than not as I’m more used to them and it’s a lot faster than me (like 5-10x) then using SketchUp and I can export to pretty much anything from them easily enough.
There are already a couple of threads about Fusion 360, including Fusion 360 for Beginners webinar
That thread includes a few really valuable posts from @garin_gardiner, who actually works for Autodesk! Using the forum search button will show a few other gems too!
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And there’s my first bookmark.
Hardware:
- Laptop; Windows 10 on a HP Touch screen Laptop with Intel Core i7 4700mq 2.4GHz 12 GB ram, 256GB SSD and 1TB hybrid drive.
- Desktop: Windows 10, Core i7 950 @3.2GHz, 12 GB ram, 512 GB SD and 1.5 TB data drive, and a Wacom Intuos 4 small pen tablet connected to the desktop, but can use with the laptop too (it’s wireless enabled)
- Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 7" tablet
- Nexus 5 phone.
Software:
Adobe CC Photography plan (Lightroom and Photoshop)
Now learning Autodesk Fusion 360 and 123D Make, and Inkscape, in preparation for the arrival of the Glowforge.
I’m running an older Mac Pro (Early 2008 MacPro3,1), which will be replaced sometime in 2016 with a newer Mac - not sure what yet. 30 inch Cinema display + 24 inch Cintiq (I do photo retouching).
Also an iPad Mini.
Software: Adobe CC (Illustrator and Photoshop mainly for this) and Rhino 5 for Mac,
Hardware:
MacBook Pro 15"
Surface Pro 3 i7 Win 10
iPad Air - Hope to upgrade to the Pro soon
iPhone 6
Software:
Fusion 360 - 3D Design
[Graphic] (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/graphic/id404705039?mt=12) - for vector work (MacBook and iPad)
Pixlemator - Raster work (MacBook Pro and iPad)
Adobe Suite - Surface Pro
Hardware:
15" Dell Precision M4700, Windows 7 Pro
2.7 GHz Intel Core i7, 16gb RAM, NVIDIA Quadro
Microsoft Surface Pro 2
Software:
Adobe CS6 (mainly InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop)
AutoCad
123D Make
Rhino 5
and a lot of sketching
Hardware:
17" MSI Windows 8.1Pro laptop
i7-4980HQ @ 2.8GHz, 32Gb ram,
Nvidia GTX980M (with 8Gb ddr5)
iPad Pro with pencil.
iPhone 6S Plus
Software:
Autodesk 123D Design 123D Make, Sketchup, and through work - Solidworks, along with the Adobe CC Suite and many doodles!
Hi @jbv,
I should state that I’m not the current owner of the Apple pencil as mine is on order, but I have used a friend’s and it really makes the iPad pro more productive for some of the apps I use like sketching!
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Hello @jbv. I have the iPad Pro and the Pencil. I use the Pencil for grading papers using an app called iAnnotate. It is much easier to use than my Jot stylus or Wacom stylus.
My brother-in-law is quite the artist. Over the holidays, he drew pictures on the iPad with the Pencil for hours and hours using an app called Paper. It was his first experience using a stylus on a tablet. He loved it.
Of the people I know who have used many different styli on iPads, they (and I) all seem to think the Pencil is the best stylus used on an iPad thus far. I have not run across anyone who has been disappointed.
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I have a pc, as well as iphone and ipad. I can’t imagine doing much on the iphone, perhaps a bit more on the ipad, but plan to use my touch screen laptop for most of the designing.
I currently have 4 photo editing programs that I use regularly for graphic designing. I’m hoping to be able to utilize them for the GlowForge, but if that’s not possible, I’ll be checking out the forums to learn what programs I should be using.
I’m using a surface pro 3 and an i7 windows laptop with adobe cc, AutoCAD, microstation and sketchup. I’m really interested to see if the Surface will work with the GF. General illustration work I do in adobe (most apps have touch versions) but detailed geometry work or building design is done in microstation on the laptop. I can get SketchUp to work on the Surface fairly well.
We will be using 2 laptops 1 is a Sony viao running Windows 8 and a Mac book pro, as well as and iPad mini and iPhone 6plus.
For hardware:
A MacBook Pro (15-inch, early 2013) running OS X Yosemite (work doesn’t let us upgrade yet :p)
2.4 GHz Intel Core i7 w/ 8gb RAM
graphics card: NVIDIA Geforce GT 650M 1024 MB
Desktop PC (Using 4k 27" monitor), running Windows 10
Intel Core i7, 8gb Ram
graphics card: Nvidia geforce GTX 970
Ipad Pro with apple pencil, 128GB with cellular data
For software:
I’ll be using Adobe Illustrator mostly, I also use Sketch and photoshop for design work.
On my tablet I use Adobe Draw & Adobe Sketch
I would love for the glowforge software to support apple pencil and the ipad pro since I have ended up using this device a lot more than I thought I would :). Thank you for your hard work.
Hardware:
Cusom built PC running windows 10
I7 3840
32 GB RAM
GTX 980Ti
And soon to have oculus rift! 
Will also be trying out on various machines at work with a range of specs.
I’ve no real expectation for using any mobile device with glowforge, but depending on the user experience people at work may be doing this.
Software:
Adobe illustrator, photoshop, 123d Make, sketchup, 3DSM and whatever kind of catalog winds up being in place.