I separate my needs to specific computers. This machine that I'm typing from now is my gaming machine... it has no productivity software on it at all and is only for playing games and viewing media. I have a central fileserver that hands out media and documents for all of my other machines as well as provide scratch space for any running projects. I have a torrent machine that also doubles as a transcoding machine. There's an HTPC that does only media playback to my home theater. There are machines for testing and at least one machine for every other member of my family.