Be Excellent To Each Other

Shhhh, nobody tell Mrs Chinny that I just spaffed over 100 quid on a office chair.

http://www.viking-direct.co.uk/a/sku%2Fbusiness%2FRome-Superior-Executive-Chair-Black/pr=Q27&id=979260/

To be fair it's nowhere near as expensive as the chair I'm currently sitting in and a decent chair is important when working.

Now need to find a desk. This desk came off Ebay and was second hand and excellent. Sadly all the new desks look wanky and I can't say I'm keen. Need a good old fashioned 80's style office desk that is unfussy and doesn't have drawers.

"ample proportion"? I'm sold.

This is my desk: http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/10111489. It's nothing but a cheap big flat space.

Cool chair, I have been looking for on for the home office..

You know which chairs are surprisingly comfortable?

These:



I scoffed at getting one until I sat down.

I have this one, which is much the same.

Except it's so cheap that instead of little plastic caps to go over screw holes, you get a set of stickers. It's hilarious, but they actually blend in perfectly.

Too small! My Ikea cheapdesk is 140cm across and 77cm deep. In my old office I used to have two of them, side by side. Now that was a work surface.

I couldn't fit any bigger in here, unfortunately. I've had to juggle things around on my workspace quite a lot, and put up extra shelves to hold the rest of the crap.

Mine is in the living room, so it's quite good-looking:

Like that, but black.

I've got one of these: http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/S39837013 - bit bigger, but lots more expensive for some reason (I bought it when it felt like I had endless reserves of cash for such things...). Nice and big and plain though. Cabled tidies/drawers etc. are optional extras.

I nearly bought one of those; the adjustable height struck me as a very useful feature. In the end I bought two of the other one though.

I've got some kitchen worksurface in beech effect that I got free as an offcut in a school ICT classroom refurb. It's great.

Yeah! I used to have the ultimate old school homemade desk: a door laid across two filing cabinets. Nowt wrong with that. In fact, that's basically what I was looking for when I found that Ikea one: a flat surface on legs and nothing else at all. No drawers, no cable management, nothing.

propose desk thread split.

I started a desk thread months ago, when I was doing my home office up...

In the end I did a work top, with a cable tidy underneath from ikea..

My MFI desk has done me proud, been dismantled a couple of times too and not crumbled to sawdust. It was an L shaped desk but I slung the _ bit leaving the |.

I got one of these laptop trays from Ikea a while back:
http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/60115791

It's good but not perfect, the plastic top is a little flimsy and is just a little on the small side for my 15"MacbookPro. I should make a bigger top for it really, but I can't be arsed.

I won a desk and chair in a raffle at work. It cost me £2 and the chair is worth about £120 and the desk is a proper computer desk with a curve and proper holes for leads to go through.

I'd only moved into my new house about 4 months previous, I'd just decorated my computer room and was shopping for a desk and chair.

I was very lucky that day!

Does anybody else hate keyboard shelves as much as I do? They're invariably only just big enough for a keyboard, so they force your body into awkward RSI-inducing positions to use your computer properly. Everything on one level, please.

I like them when they are big enough to hold a mouse too, which they are on the slightly crummy split-level desk I am using just now (replacing it with the old Ikea desk I've talking about in this thread soon).

The home desk at the moment is a split level affair. I'd quite like a corner unit but other priorities. The chair drives me more batty than the desk to be honest.

yup I do...

Me too. I prefer a big, flat rectangle with everything on. (Also I like freaky ergonomic keyboards, which would never fit on those nasty shelves.)

the office chair i'm sitting on costed something like 500€ and has all kinds of gubbins. I still prefer the 70€ IKEA chair i have at home.

That wouldn't be too bad to be fair.

My old desk had a keyboard tray that was only big enough for a keyboard so I was forced into a contorted position every time I wanted to use the keyboard and mouse at the same time. The keyboard shelf also, of course, forces you to sit lower down to fit under the desk. Then there was a monitor shelf, so whilst sitting lower down to be in comfort using the keyboard, the monitor would be raised so high you'd get a sore neck after a few hours. There wasn't a single compromise I could find to sit in comfort for any period of time.

So incredibly glad I got this desk.

that's what i have at home. But i have it for 17 or 18 years (i love it so much that my mom let me have it) so that's what i'm used to

To my right in my office I have a second desk used for a printer and various VCR's and DVD players. It dates from about 1986/1987 when it was purchased from Argos as a computer desk for my CPC.

The only adjustment is that I removed the casters as one broke off when we moved it in here.

So not only is it a retro desk but it has a proper 8 bit pedigree. Not in bad nick either (apart from the lack of casters, natch).

I got one like this:

Only its bright orange
Stunningly comfy, and the mesh means my back doesn't get all sweaty & stick to my tshirt - & its one of the few that can take 12+ hours a day without the padding going all flat.

Its kind of like the bit in Pratchett when Vimes realises that he spends more on cheap boots that wear out that rich people who pay alot for a pair that last forever

That's like my office one except I don't have the head bit. Problem is that although those chairs try and look like Aeron chairs, I speak from experience that they aren't as good. They are better than most office chairs, but not as good as "the real deal". I inherited an Aeron that my collegue had pilfered from our edit suite at my old job and it was great. I still miss it.

Hence for my home office I've gone for leather. Aeron knock off for office, leather for home.

2 years on, chair update.

The leather chair at home is not up to the job. So I've just ordered this:

http://www.officefurnitureonline.co.uk/shop/ergohuman-mesh-office-chairs-without-headrest-.html

Hopefully won't give me chronic backache like this leather chair does. Sure it looks lovely but I'm now convinced looks aren't everything.

I did consider an Aeron, but that chair looks like a good compromise.

[edit] And I also refer the honourable readers to my first comment in this thread 2 years ago since the new chair is 3.65 times the cost.

I actually thought Dimrill was back then.

Dimrill was on the Eggbox last night talking about anal prolapse.

That is all.

CAST: RESURRECTION!

Things are progressing nicely with the house move and I have been granted the smallest bedroom as an office/man-cave. By way of staying ahead of the the game, I have decided to plan my desk situation in advance.

The room is 2.95m x 1.96m and currently looks like this:



The angled roof/wall is mirrored on the other side of the window.

I plan to put a desk against the wall under the window. Reading through the thread I reckon I can do this on the cheap. So what do you reckon? Sheet of MDF? Kitchen worksurface? IKEA flat desk? I don't need anything fancy and a large flat rectangle will do the job I reckon.

I bought a big rectangular desk top and legs from Ikea.

But I replaced the legs with two Expedit (4 squares) units so I can have more record storage. You can slot drawer units in them too.

Ikea do a selection of different sized desk tops and different legs to attach to them. I'd probably just do that if there is one that fits nice, or get the legs from ikea and some mdf from a diy shop and cut it to whatever crazy shape you want

One thing is for certain, make the desktop twice the size you think you'll need, as it won't be big enough regardless.

Plus you want lots of shelves going up those walls.

Spent pretty much the whole day sorting the spare room and now have the uber desk of awesome

I got a pretty sizeable desk top from Ikea and four legs. It wasn't expensive at all. HOWEVER. Despite telling me in the shop it would be fine on four legs and being pictured in the catalogue on four legs, it was completely un-sturdy. It wobbled like fuck. So I had to go back and buy a £60 set of drawers to replace two of the legs. Now it's fine.

Mine is a desktop from Ikea (well 2 actually, the full desk is 3m long ) It's a tiny bit wobbly, but not too bad. It helps that it is weighted down by heavy shit.

I have a kitchen worktop wood effect with chrome legs. Stretches the length of my computer room and is full of crap.

I am currently sat at my recycled desk in my new office chair in my new home office.

Feels good, man.

The Dave Cave by MrDavPaz, on Flickr

You foolish fool! That screen facing the door is a terrible decision!

It's a pretty small room. Options are limited, sadly.

Your PC has fallen over.

Put a lock on the door. Tell 'em it's your dark room.

That's no pc, that's my pimped gaming rig. It's rocking a single core athlon 64 at 2.4ghz (stock speed), 4gb of ram and a htpc grade 8500gt graphics card.

Fear my powah!

Is that mouse on a wire?

Low latency for the twitch gaming, innit?

I dislike the balance of wireless mouses. I had one at work for a while but didn't get on with it.

I'm the opposite. I have a wired mouse at work and a wireless one at home and I find that the wire gets in the way at work.

My mouse is many years old. I've had it longer than I've had my wife. The wire doesn't bother me.

Conversely, I've had two wired mice in about 10 years. Each of them cost me about £40ish.