Home Work Setup
As a freelance Software Developer I work from home quite a but. The amount of time I work from home rather than in client offices has increased recently with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end I have decided recently to improve my home office. This is what my home working setup looks like now.
I generally use laptops rather than desktops as I like the portability, for example to take some equipment to a client office. When at home I can then plug a laptop in to my main setup and I have everything available, no syncing between a home and portable setup.
Laptops
I use a variety of laptops dependent on the scenario
An old Lenovo Thinkpad. This was a cheap ebay purchase so that I could run Linux on something dedicated rather than a virtual machine.
A 1st Generation Surface Book i5-6300U 2.4GHz, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD with the NVIDIA GPU in the base. This is about four years old now and Windows is running like a dog on it. Prior to this I had used Macbook Pros, when Apple released the Macbook Pro with the stupid Touchbar I got fed up. Seeing as I hadn’t had a personal Windows machine for quite some time I took the opportunity to try out Windows again. That was a mistake which has now been rectified. This machine is still used occasionally for when I need Windows. I’ve found that over time the main part of the laptop has actually bent near the hinge from being opened and closed. If I were to buy a Windows laptop now I would definitely go for a Dell XPS, probably Dell XPS 13 9300, i7-1065G7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD I had them before and they were great workhorses.
My latest purchase was a 2020 13" Macbook Pro 2GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5, 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD. I bought this around the time Apple announced the transition to Apple Silicon. I stand by the purchase as I was ready for an upgrade and wasn’t overly happy at the idea of being an early adopter during the transition period. I am really liking returning to the Apple ecosystem.
Peripherals
For a while I used two monitors but about 4 years ago I switched to using a single super wide monitor.
I am currently using the Dell 34" Super wide monitor. I really enjoy having a decent sized screen but not having black bars in the middle like you would on a traditional multi-monitor setup. I also like the fact that it is curved as there is a consistent distance between you and the monitor scree.
This is mounted on an Amazon Basic Monitor Arm. I find it to be good enough for what I need, although it is a little sensitive to being knocked.
As far as mice are concerned I use the obligatory Logitech MX Master 3. It is just a nice well built mouse with useful not over the top features.
For Windows I use a UK Filco Majestouch-2 Tenkeyless keyboard, who doesn’t like a clacky-keyboard. This has been a trusty workhorse of a keyboard.
Now that I am switching back to Apple products I have dusted off my old Apple Magic Keyboard I did try and use the Filco Majestouch-2, but I just couldn’t get my fingers to operate the key mappings. I may in the future replace this with a proper clacky-keybaord with an Apple key layout as the low profile keys on the Apple Keyboard is bound to induce RSI.
To plug this all together I use an OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock. This allows me to plug all my peripherals in to a single dock and then a single cable from the dock to a Macbook Pro. This also includes power which means the Macbook Pro powerbrick can stay in my bag for travelling. This has the added benefit of allowing my to plug in a variety of laptops and use the same peripheral setup.
When I was running a Windows setup, I used the Surface Dock instead of the OWC one as it came with proprietary Surface connector (eugh). It did the job though!
To reduce eye-strain and to add some pretty RGB to the setup I use Philips Hue Play lights as bias lighting behind the monitor.
Although we live in a digital age I always find myself having to print or scan some documents. To this end I have a HP Deskjet 3760 It is not going to win any awards for quality or speed but it does just about enough of what I need. I have paired this up with HP Instant Ink, HP’s printing subscription service. I have not upgraded past the basic free 15 pages a month subscription. This means that all my printing (well, anything less than 15 pages a month) is entirely free. The great thing about this is that when I say all printing I mean it. High quality colour photos count as a single page the same as low quality black and white. This leads me to print everything in colour no matter what it is.
Furniture
I recently upgraded my desk. I used to have a Ikea Alex Desk with built in cable management. It was nice, but it was really too small for the amount of stuff that I have to put on it. It also had a really low height due to the in built drawers. This meant that my legs were being rammed in to a metal bar if I wanted to sit at the correct height.
I now have a 2.5m long kitchen worktop for a desk. I use the Ikea Karlby Oak kitchen worktop sat on two Ikea Alex Oak Drawers at either end. To ensure that the middle does not sag I have placed an old Ikea Eket cupboard in the middle of the desk. This cupboard houses a bunch of IT equipment, which keeps it nicely hidden out of the way. I really like this desk, it is just at the right height and is large enough for whatever I need to do. I did toy with a sit/stand desk, but having had no experience of one I didn’t want to risk the large outlay in the case that I didn’t like it.
I currently use a truly terrible chair that I purchased from John Lewis eons ago. This is the next item in the office to be upgraded.