Tell me all about your [Work From Home setup]

Delduwath

There's a virus outside, and we all gotta stay home. Some of us are fortunate enough to be able to work from home, and - as this looks like it'll be a long-term thing - that means trying to create a comfortable working environment in your very non-work space. Part of it is figuring out scheduling, setting boundaries between work vs. personal time, all that, but another part of it is just physical, setting up your desk and chair and tech to make your life easier.

Tell me, fellow forumers, what have you done to your computer desk to make your WFHing more comfortable?

For selfish reasons, I'm especially curious to hear about any kind of KVM switches (or similar) that folks are using. Programming on just my laptop screen (when I'm used to at least two screens) feels like having one-and-a-half hands tied behind my back, and it's very tedious to have to push my home keyboard aside to plop the work laptop in place (and do the reverse in the evening, hahaha who am I kidding WFH means working at all hours of the day). I'd really love a way to share my two monitors, mouse, keyboard, and speakers between my home desktop and my work laptop, but it seems like KVM switches fall into two categories: (1) cheap but ancient, using VGA connectors for video, or (2) modern, but costing hundreds of dollars. Do any of you folks have some KVM solution you'd recommend?

a5ehren

If they're both Windows computers, Mouse Without Borders will help somewhat. If not, Synergy (or one of its forks) are an option to at least share KB/M between the two. The monitor thing is more of a problem.

I "borrowed" my two work monitors and dock before we went on full lockdown, and my employer is doing a fairly generous WFH allowance for me to get a new keyboard and headset. I've got it all setup on a folding table I got at Costco for parties...

Delduwath

Yeah, Mouse Without Borders was one of the options that came up when I was looking around online, and maybe I'll give it a try at some point, but I think that extra/larger monitors would be more immediately-useful than KB/M. I considered trying to set up the work laptop as a Remote Desktop server, and just like... remoting into it from my home computer, but we also have meetings that use audio always and video sometimes, and I'm not sure how well that would work over Remote Desktop.

I had a refurbished Aeron chair at home for a while, but after over a decade of use, it started getting a little worn. We moved recently, so I decided to use the opportunity to leave that one behind (put it out on the curb, it was gone next morning, so hopefully someone else will get some use out of it) and get a brand new one. I kept putting it off after the move, but with extended WFH I figured "My butt's gonna be in that seat a lot, now; can't put it off any longer". I ordered a brand-new Aeron from Herman Miller a few days ago. Estimated ship date? April 17th.

Apparently, some office chair retailers are seeing a five-fold increase in orders.

fool.IO

Well, not sure how to suggest making it more comfortable. My setup is basically fairly simple. I have a large desk, my Personal PC on the right side, my two monitors are side by side and one monitor mounted to the wall. While working I got an adapter(dock station) from work so I plug one cable to my work laptop is basically plugged into every monitor, mouse, keyboard, microphone, and earphones. Once I'm done, plug out, put it outside my room (makes it psychologically easier to forget about work) and then the adapter (dock station) straight back to my Personal PC. Yet the problem I had was while working with sensitive information, and there was practically no ability to have a private network, had to find a VPN, so went with NordVPN, does not slow down any processes so worth the money if you have similar work-related problems. I would suggest getting a dock station as well, a hundred bucks will do you good, makes cable management and work flexibility a LOT easier.