Poor Man's home office setup

Scott Hanselman and Jeff Atwood, two of my favorite programmers have long talked about the perfect home office and components. However, their access to resources far exceeds mine and I suspect most people in India. For instance - IKEA is not an option here (yet).

I still believe in working from home is efficient and have put in some thought and money (more thought and less money - I'm cheap)O on getting the components of this right -

Room / Space

I need a room separate from the place where I have strewn dirty clothing to focus on work. Just the act of moving from space to another dedicated for work helps in narrowing down focus and limit distractions. If you don't have the option of a separate room, consider carving out a space that is delineated with some simple elements like maybe a different flooring, or focused lighting or painting the walls around the area in a different color. It's a psychological trick that make a huge difference.

Desk

Here's one that most people get wrong and tend to buy something labeled as a computer desk. Computer desk is simply a marketing gimmick. The worst thing you can do is have a pull out keyboard rest - that simply does not work.

Here are the ones I see sold in India purporting to be computer desks

 


ALL OF THE ABOVE ARE WRONG 

Instead look for a 4-seater dining table like one of these - They will give you better surface area as well as plenty of legroom.

 



Also - most working desks are designed for writing rather than computer work and thus get the height all wrong. You will not find an office chair that will adjust to the height of a writing desk, and even if it does it will result in dangling feet.

Footstool

Despite sounding like a luxury item from the Ottoman empire, the footstool is extremely handy (footy?) to give you options for your legs. Having a foot stool will give you the flexibility to slump back or forward. Back pain prevention is 90% adjusting positions regularly. Which makes it important to have multiple options while sitting.

Chair

I haven't found a perfect chair yet, so i prefer a simple dining table chair with a straight back. I find most cheap office chairs to be more uncomfortable than a simple high back dining chair. So - this is a to do. I just don't find any reasonably priced chairs around bangalore for retail.

Laptop / Desktop

This one is debatable. Most laptops do not offer the performance of a desktop at half the price. However, I still don't like having a massive desktop sitting under the desk collecting dust and getting tangled in my feet. Luckily I was able to appropriate my brothers Lenovo T400 which is simply a stunning machine. Upgraded it to 8 GB RAM and it performs on par with most work desktops. But It's pricey.

Wireless Headset with mic 

If you tend to do a lot of meetings from home like I do, this is essential. I've come to the point that I find VoIP far more reliable than my cellular connection. I've gone for the Plantronics 995 and i'm quite happy with the purchase. The only issue I have with this is that  i cannot use this when its on charge, which seems like lazy engineering. But I was surprised when some of my audiophile friends used this for extreme EDM and stated that its audio quality was astounding. 

It does not use bluetooth and has its own USB dongle, which i don't object because the range and fidelity is far superior to any bluetooth headset i've tried. Which means that I can discuss architecture with people in the US while playing fetch with my dog in the yard (I love living in the future of the past)

Wireless Speaker with Mic

This one is kind of optional from a pure home office perspective, but just in the last week it has become irreplaceable part of my setup. I've been doing night long calls last week and having headsets on for eight hour calls simply is not an option. So I went and got the BIG jambox which comes with a built t in 360 degree mic. Usually i've found that being on a speaker phone is the quickest way to annoy people on a call followed by heavy breathing. But the Jambox has excellent mic fidelity and so far no one has been able to make out the difference. This also comes in handy while making Video calls and you don't want to look like a DJ in a club with massive headsets.

Keyboards / Mouse 

A controversial personal preference, but I prefer a wired keyboard and mouse over wireless versions. Given my aversion towards anything wired, I suppose this trait is because even a single stutter of the mouse because of wirelessness is just not acceptable to me. Maybe its gotten better, but I hate lifting up the mouse and checking if the red light is on. Even more so for the keyboard. Wireless keyboards have a different problem in that most of them tend to target portability over usability.

USB Hub

This little Rs 100 device has a huge impact in my work day. No more do I have to bend over into ill-lit corners and jiggle the USB cables of my keyboard and mouse into the laptop. I simply have all my USB devices plugged into the hub and connect a single wire into the laptop. Kinda like a ghetto docking station for the laptop.

Extension cord

i've learnt the hard way to invest in a great extension cord - not an average one, not a good one, but a great one. The best available currently in bangalore is by Belkin. Don't think about how much it's costing - it will make a huge difference in the quality of any geek's life to have an assortment of cables plugged in snugly into this beast. And don't make the mistake of getting a single row version - you always need the space for that one pesky outsized adapter that takes multiple rows of parking room like that overcompensating Toyota Fortuner guy at the mall

Monitor and Projector

2 display screens are a must. it's not even a debate anymore. What remains to be decided is what kind of monitor. I've hunted down a Square TFT Dell monitor because it was the one I had at work and had gotten used to it. TFT is easier on the eye than LCD, and I always thought of wide screen monitors were for the casual movie watching crowd. I'm not so  sure about that anymore. A couple of sessions on a wide screen monitor has made me rethink my choice.

I don't YET have a projector, but I think it will complement my wireless speakers well in enabling me to get a little more distance from the monitor for long presentation. Lately, I've been getting paranoid about my constant focal distance of about two feet for long durations of the day.

Other Stuff 

I'm a big fan of this little Havells's fan. Small, light, yet powerful, this one has a unique air distribution system which works by the shell rotating on its axis instead of the entire assembly swingin gpback and forth.







Since i'm a fiddle person by nature I usually have an assortment of hand exercisers, a yoyo, and maybe  a kendama lying around. The fiddling helps me think.


Be sure to check out Jeff's and Scott's home office setups that make mine look like a 3rd world ghetto.

And here are some links on getting it just right for your home office -

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/07/investing-in-a-quality-programming-chair.html
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/01/five-things-you-didnt-know-about-me-and-my-office.html
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/NewJobNewHouseNewBabyAndDesigningATotallyNewHomeOffice.aspx
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/WorkingRemotelyFromHomeTelepresenceAndVideoConferencingOneYearLater.aspx