| Caveat: I'm old and fat. A few years ago, I had knee surgery and could not sit with my leg under the desk so I moved my keyboard (Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000) to my lap. No less convenient to switch between keyboard and mouse, it's hands off either way. A couple of years ago, I went to a laptop (Lenovo Thinkpad) as my primary machine. I also use my laptops in my lap. With the pointing stick, the where to put the mouse question simply went away. Since I went to keyboards in my lap, I experience significantly less hand fatigue, neck strain, etc. These days the laptop allows me to sit in any comfortable chair with my feet up (my Office chair is an Ikea Poang and ottoman). A price is multiple monitors...partially a matter of me just not bothering to set something up. I mitigate some of that with Xmonad as my window manager and a relatively 'big' laptop. I did the standing desk for about a year a few years ago. Configuring everything was kinda' a pain in the ass. The best single change I ever made was a $40 Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 keyboard. Microsoft has had a lot of employees spending a lot of time at the keyboard. Under similar circumstances IBM designed some great Thinkpad keyboards that lived on through to the 3rd generation of Intel Core powered Lenovo versions. (I don't know about the new chicklet style keyboards in the current generation). Anyway, good luck. |
This hands at lap level seems crucial, I don't know how I've missed it for so long. However a laptop doesn't strike me as ideal unless coupled with a monitor at eye level as I'd be looking down constantly.