Back And Blue

(stackoverflow reputation: 1984)

OK/Cancel: they understood

While waiting for my eleven o’clock Starbucks this morning (and by the way could someone please tell them it’s not bloody Christmas yet?) I was idly watching two young fellows Macbooking away from the “comfort” of their armchairs. They were hunched over the screen as they did whatever Mac users do and I couldn’t help thinking about how horribly incorrect their postures were from a workstation health-check point of view. I’m a little sensitive to such matters at present, probably due to the prolapsed disc in my lower spine.

At the office I use two 19″ 1280×1024 monitors, each sitting on two packs of paper (on my 4″ elevated desktop) to raise their tops to my eye-level. That gets me to something approximating a “healthy” set-up for my height (6′ 3″, or 190cm). At home, I’m crouching over my laptop like those Mac-boys and despite having almost as much screen real-estate (1600×1050) I can’t concentrate for very long, so I end up leaning back and reading blog posts instead of innovating (you may call it something else).

Mine is like this (only dark blue)

I also finally got around to complaining about my office chair, with the result that, after a suitable bureaucratic wait, a rather spiffy new one was delivered, in which I’ve been enjoying correctly-located lumbar support all week, for the first time in years. The difference is, quite frankly, marked.

This matters, because I’m seeking to spend one or two days a week next year working from home, so I think I’m going to need to invest in some serious new desktop hardware. Something with three screens would be nice. A serious new desk needs to be considered, too.

For sitting, I had been planning on a Herman Miller Aero, but I’m now wondering I should be budgeting rather more for one of these instead.