Battlestation

New gig. Working from home. My old “workstation” wasn’t cutting it. Have a Dell U2311H that was sitting on its OEM stand, a Unicomp SpaceSaver M keyboard. My desk is a little (36.5" wide, 17" deep workspace) unfinished wood desk I sanded and stained (looks awesome, cost next to nothing). I didn’t have a lot of real estate left between the monitor base and that huge keyboard. So. Time to do something about it.

Monitor

I kit-bashed two pieces together (literally with a bit of duck tape - I happened to have some black Duck brand tape, 1 7/8" wide, that I wrapped around the upper (inner) tube of the floor stand; the desk mount tube for the monitor arm was just a touch thicker), because the desk (which has a 1 1/2" drawer hanging down, that makes it way too thick for any of the “clamps on the edge of the desk” mounts I could find, and I didn’t want to drill a hole through the desk - which, with the drawer, probably would’d have worked in any case).

• Mount-It! Portable Floor TV Stand MI-878 (probably could have used this by itself, but I wasn’t sure about having the monitor behind the desk (too far way?); wanted it suspended over the desk on a movable arm, which led me to:
  
• MOUNTUP Single Monitor Desk Mount, Height Adjustable Computer Monitor Stand Mount, Full Motion Monitor Arm Desk Mount (replaced with the MOUNT-POLE01A, see below)
  

Edit: Summer 2022... Knowing then what I know now, instead of kit bashing, I would have used something like the VIVO Steel Universal Full Motion Pole Mount Monitor Arm (and ultimately did; see below). The current configuration (after the U2311H followed my old 2007WFP into the hereafter, with the same symptoms - it would flash the display for a second then go dark):

• The same Mac Pro, now with a GTX 680 an RX Radeon 580 8GB GPU and NVMe PCIe card / 1TB Samsung 870 EVO Plus, running Big Sur
• LOXJIE A30 DAC/Amp powering a set of JBL Control 1 studio monitors. Replaced the Topping (DX3?) shown here.
  
• Keychron K8 keyboard with Boba U4 62 gram RGB switches
• Logitech M535 Bluetooth mouse
• Larger desk mat  

I’m no longer working from home, though I still do a lot of work from home. The Alera 4215 is still in place, but I don’t really like it. The armrests have always felt awkard, and the seat gets really uncomfortable after a couple of hours. I have an Aeron Basic (B size) at the office and it’s so much more comfortable, it’s unreal.

February 2023 Update: I got rid of the taped-together kludge and invested in a VIVO Steel Universal Full Motion Pole Mount Monitor Arm [MOUNT-POLE01A]. It attaches to the pole from the MI-878 floor mount perfectly, and looks so much cleaner:

MI-878 pole with MOUNT-POLE01A universal monitor arm

Keyboard

I love the buckling spring Unicomps, but they’re huge... So I deployed my new Keychron K8 swapped with Kailh Jade switches. (Update: I’ve switched to using the Boba U4 switches, quiet tactile.)

Chair

I was using this wooden thing from Target for years, but this was never my primary workstation before, just a place I could kick it in the corner (originally with a Core i5/8GB/SSD Hackintosh, now with a “Mid 2010” Mac Pro with a 3.33 GHz 6-Core Xeon with 32GB RAM and an ATI Radeon HD 5870 video card and PCI-connected SSD storage) with the pups in the living room, maybe with the TV on. Anyway. Now it is my primary workstation, M-F, 8:30-17:30, and, well, oww. A bit of research suggested these were the best chairs out there:

• Alera ALE Wrigley Series High Performance Mid-Back Multifunction Task Chair (winner, < $325 chairs)
• ALEEL4215 - Best Elusion Series Mesh Mid-Back Multifunction Chair (runner up, sub $325 chairs) (this is the one I got; with no A/C, I wanted a mesh back)
• ErgoChair 2 (have heard good things, wasn’t quite prepared to drop $400 on a chair)
• For my height/weight, Secretlab recommends their Titan; there’s a discount at the moment (bringing the price to $340), and I’m tempted - but they don’t ship until late March; may order one nevertheless (I will need something for the bedroom sooner or later, too; the chair in there dates to 2007 and the “leather” is flaking off).
• I’ve heard great things about SteelCase, and a refurbished Leap v2 can be found for $549.
• At my old office, I had a used Herman Miller Aeron B from Seating Mind, that was IIRC about $500.

Anyway. With the Elusion, the monitor up higher, the sweet keyboard, and the still-incredibly-smooth-and-fast (running High Sierra Big Sur) Mac Pro, this is an awesome setup. Now to rack up those billables!

Zoom

Finally, since the new firm is big on Zoom, I added an inexpensive Logitech C720 webcam a NexiGo N940E webcam‡ with a built in light (wanted the light, and wider FOV than the Logitech has), and have a hardwired set of Bose QC25s I use for most calls/conferences. (I’ve also been known to use Bluetooth QC35 IIs or Beats X headsets, but every once in a while Bluetooth doesn’t want to connect; an actual cord eliminates that headache.)

 

Desk

Found pictures from when I finally got around to finishing it, ~8 years ago.

‡ Specs of the camera: 1920x1080@60fps (or 1280x720, 640x480, same frame rate), 1/2.9" CMOS sensor, 3 brightness levels for the built-in ring light, FOV: D=95°, H=86°, V=54°. There’s a detachable privacy cover (a slide-closed or flip-closed that stays attached to the camera, like the C930e has, would be preferable, but for $70 - and I actually think there was a $10 coupon? - it’s fine).