Home Office Ergonoimc

Due to COVID-19 restriction, I have been forced to work from home since mid March. It seems I will be a full time telecommuter for foreseeable future at least well into 2021. I used to use a company issued desktop work station in my office at work and refused to switch to a laptop for my job. That way, I will never bring work home. My work involves full time in front of a work station, but with VPN and internet connection and a computer, I can perform my job almost anywhere.

Now, I am forced to work from home, I have switched to a work issued laptop and VPN and have been slowly converting my basement into my home office. I set up an office desk and a chair, three 24 inch monitors at the same distance and heights as my eyes (two in landscape and one in portrait orientation for full page document viewing). The laptop with a docking station now have plenty of expansion ports. I changed overhead lighting and purchased new Plantronics BlueTooth headset for on-line meeting, new Kensington Expert Mouse Wireless Trackball, and new Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard.

With so many of us forced to work from home, will you please share your home office ergonomic set-up? Review of ergonomic products or hints or tips are welcome. I am currently in search of better office chair. The one I am using is very old and squeaky not much of lumbar support to my liking.

 

Thanks for the info. I glanced at Herman Miller Aeron chair. Hummm, it is a minimum $1K office chair. My work is not reimbursing me for any office equipment I purchase. It sure looks nice, but bit too pricey for my budget.

For trackball, I have been always a big fan of Kensington ExpertMouse. I think I have used from very first v.1 with only two buttons all the way to this newest wireless model. It is the first and I think only wireless ExpartMouse line. I have also used Logitech TrackMan of various models but I find a larger track ball and ambidextrous nature of the ExpartMouse suitable for my needs. For ergonomic reason, I just don't like using thumb to control the track ball.


As for the split keyboard, I was using GoldTouch split keyboard in my office. I needed wireless keyboard for my current laptop set-up at home. Boy, am I glad I picked up Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard. It is not adjustable like the GoldTouch but the split angle is almost perfect for my hands and it is by far the most comfortable keyboard I have ever used. Only one complaint I have about this keyboard is the diminutive size of F keys. In my work, I use Unix terminal emulation often enough, and I have to use F keys for very common short cuts that can not be reassigned to any other keys.


Use of under-desk tray is good suggestion. For my situation, desk is not easy to mod to add a tray. So, what I do is to use a footrest. I had a footrest like this at office, but left it in my office. Currently at home, I'm using a piece of 2x4. It is surprisingly supportive. Since I placed a long piece under very heavy wooden desk to also act as a desk riser for this old wooden desk was bit low to ground than normal office desk, it is basically immobile. I had a bad habit of kicking the footrest with my feet while working at my office and when I really wanted to rest my foot, the footrest is too far away to reach so I had to crawl under the desk to retrieve it. lol

 

Have to get more duct tapes... for our 9 cats.... lol

 

OK, I fixed that!

 

Yes, those 5.25" floppy case works perfect for CD and DVD in a slim case. I think I had them repurposed for that use after getting rid of all the floppy disks. I don't think I have regular 1.44MB 3.5" floppy disks anymore, but I did find a bunch of Zip drive disks, Clik! Poket Zip drive disks, and Super disks when I was cleaning the basement for home office use. Zip disks and Super disks are 3.5" form factor floppy disk with ~100MB storage. Click disks are much smaller for use with PCMCIA card for a laptop, but only 40MB storage.