28" is a great size, but I refuse to have a screen that big with a TN panel or 30hz refresh. As soon as there's a 60hz VA or IPS 4k screen for sub $600 I'm in.

Doesn't have to be great, I don't care about uniformity or bleed. Just don't want that shit TN vertical colour funny business.

jo wrote:I think my sit/stand for home was around 3-400. At work they simply replaced the legs for around $300...

Cheaper than what I found. Might have another poke about. How much weight can you have on it and still adjust it? quickly?

I would say that in some areas of life it is noticeable, but the wave has crested in my workplace.
10 years ago everyone was like Ooooh lets have no offices and be open plan. Then they said lets not have your own desk or chair and just Hotdesk. Why not get rid of the desks all together and just have sofa's, in fact lets just have tablets and all sit on cushions like a cafe in Marrakech?
But then we realised that this doesn't work and there has actually been a regression towards the past. All of our desks now are the Ikea Bekant electric adjustable ones. But we have less Laptops now and more desktop PC's with larger screen(s) and dedicated offices to allow you to have a quiet space away from distractions.
As sitting is the new smoking we have co-workers pet dogs at work and I take a dog for a walk instead.
I can't check my e-mails outside of the office and we have reduced the Wifi coverage to certain zones within the building and we have No e-mail days instead of casual Fridays so you have to go and talk to the person or people face to face, this means that when I am at work I spend more productive time there.
This also means that from an IT security perspective it is more secure

I don't mind emails outside of work, I spend 90min on the train each daysi I can work during this time. Just let me ride guilt free at lunch. We tried no email Friday. People just didn't work with others those days.

I think hot desking works if you actually are mobile like a lot of the people where I work are. We are a national offices and support people in about 25 locations. I worked at one place that was 35 desks for 50 people and that was ok. You has to work from home at least once a week.

I wish I could take my dog to work, he's 60lb of PITA but I prefer his company to most of my co-workers. Problem is he's racist, don't know why or how, but he ain't PC about people who look different.

In our office of 30 or so there is one laptop and two tablets, Everyone else is on desktops.

We have maybe 10 desktops and 120+ thin clients, but for me as a sys admin I need a grunty pc with multiple screens and my 1080p laptop doesn't cut it. Switch to home, and I also run multi screen, its just better, but I've found 3 screens is about my limit - 4 screens gets a bit hard on the neck!

AgrAde wrote:28" is a great size, but I refuse to have a screen that big with a TN panel or 30hz refresh. As soon as there's a 60hz VA or IPS 4k screen for sub $600 I'm in.

Doesn't have to be great, I don't care about uniformity or bleed. Just don't want that shit TN vertical colour funny business.

jo wrote:I think my sit/stand for home was around 3-400. At work they simply replaced the legs for around $300...

Cheaper than what I found. Might have another poke about. How much weight can you have on it and still adjust it? quickly?

I bought one of these http://wavefurniture.nz/. I got it from mighty ape for ~$348
The weight on it is laptop, keyboard, monitor arm, 28" monitor.
How quickly do you want to be able to adjust it? I dont go up and down that often. Its easy enough, and fast enough, for me.

The interesting thing is once you're standing you end up wandering more - at home its more cups of tea; at work its visiting rather than emailing coworkers.

jo wrote:I bought one of these http://wavefurniture.nz/. I got it from mighty ape for ~$348
The weight on it is laptop, keyboard, monitor arm, 28" monitor.
How quickly do you want to be able to adjust it? I dont go up and down that often. Its easy enough, and fast enough, for me.

The interesting thing is once you're standing you end up wandering more - at home its more cups of tea; at work its visiting rather than emailing coworkers.

The problem is that mine needs to be an 1800 long bench that is happy with 20-25kg on it at all times, and can quickly swap between standing and normal height (like, twice a day). Those ones aren't cheap

Dunno what kg its rated to but :

http://www.smartofficefurniture.co.nz/A ... t_1800_800

Not quite as pretty as the lever actuated with spring (I think thats what my work one is) or the lever actuated with hydraulic (I think thats what my home one is).

Wobbler wrote:How big do you need? There are a few sub 800 dollar 28 inch 4k ones now

I want a 1440p 144hz jobbie but a rog swift is the only option and they are 1400 odd

28" for 4k is hopeless unless all you want is no visible pixels (for games etc) - for actual work they're hopless (try inventor on one). Even 31" is too small - best I've used is the philips 40" 4K (which is a nice size coming from a pair of 23"s), but it's a low-rent va panel, I'll wait for an IPS that size.

the 34" LG 3440x1440 ips panels are lovely (in the $1100 aoc as well as the $1500 lg and dell), not that bad price wise when not that long ago a 27" 2560x1440 ips monitor was the same.

foremannz wrote:I've found 3 screens is about my limit - 4 screens gets a bit hard on the neck!

try a 2x2 mount/arm - I found 3 in a row was too much neck swivelling, so go up and well as out

danose wrote:

foremannz wrote:I've found 3 screens is about my limit - 4 screens gets a bit hard on the neck!

try a 2x2 mount/arm - I found 3 in a row was too much neck swivelling, so go up and well as out

Its an FPS/driving sim setup I'm looking at doing as well - gives you some peripheral view

foremannz wrote:

danose wrote:

foremannz wrote:I've found 3 screens is about my limit - 4 screens gets a bit hard on the neck!

try a 2x2 mount/arm - I found 3 in a row was too much neck swivelling, so go up and well as out

Its an FPS/driving sim setup I'm looking at doing as well - gives you some peripheral view

5 in portrait orientation then

Or a VR headset.

What sort of graphics card are you runnign to get those four monitors cranking?

Having been The Laptop Guy for a large organisation and now often fixing them for a living, laptops have always given me the shits.

I've just started using one myself as a main machine for the first time in my life. The screen is a big downgrade from a 22", and I should be running 24" + 22" by now anyway.
Fan noise is a minor pain. I made the desktop very quiet but what can you do to shut a laptop up?

I want to make a tray with a big slow 120mm fan to force feed air, with foam sealing I guess.
The tray will be wide enough to protect the connector areas on both sides, and it will have somewhere for a couple of external HDDs to sit. I wanna be able to move it around while in the middle of un-virusing a customer's hard disk.

To hell with touchpads, I only use external mice.

Upgrading? Yes to memory, except laptops are much more limited in what you can do, and the memory costs more.

Upgradeable video cards featured on a very few models, but of course the proprietary interface meant that when you came to upgrade the only option was a three-year-old card costing more than the machine is worth. Not that they existed in stock any more anyway.

Cloning the system onto a bigger hard drive will speed it up a bit even if the disk is no faster.
SSD hybrid drives give a much bigger boost for an extra $50ish. Pure SSD is awesome but expensive.
But cloning the factory rebuild partition and proving it still works is not so easy on some makes e.g. HP. , which means the old hard drive needs to be kept on the shelf instead of being repurposed.

The labour cost of upgrading a laptop CPU makes it seldom worthwhile given the time it takes to:
- Check whether there is a upgrade possible (often it takes some time to establish that there isn't anything much faster that will fit anyway. And the answer might be "maybe").
- Find and buy the CPU, probably secondhand.
- Upgrade the BIOS so the new CPU will be recognised.
- Install the CPU, with the risk that it was dud before it arrived. No go? Customer's risk, and of course all the time it takes to explain all that also has to be charged.
So usually the answer to the Q "can the CPU be upgraded?" is a blank "no, put the money towards replacing the machine earlier".