The working from home thread: tips and advice

Exactly my sentiment. I want a bigger monitor, but I don't want to send the current one to landfill.

Tell your employer it's fucked, get a new one, sell the old one?

They'll want the asset back

I have the same feeling with a 10 year old monitor and a newer one I got beginning of lockdown. I'm thinking I'll donate them to people in my building who are WFH to feel better about myself upgrading.

maybe you can mess with the settings to make it more eye strainy

lol

Our place didn't ship any monitors home. I went in to the office for the first time in 11 months a few weeks ago to collect some stuff and there are hundreds of lovely WQHD (2560x1440) monitors sitting there idle. If I'd known 11 months ago I would have gone in and borrowed 2 of them.

(They're all the ilyama "Eye Care" model too.)

I have found a negative of an ultrawide monitor: Screen sharing on teams is a pain, you can only share individual programmes (anyone if you are switching between things) or the whole screen (looks crazy for other people), zoom allows you to share partial screens, Teams does not... Arses.

What are the different things you're sharing? If it's a ppt and an excel, can you upload the ppt to the room and share the excel as a programme?

Its mainly when I am collaboratively working with other people in the company, so likely to be switching between multiple excels, and never quite know which excels it will be... we do have a zoom account, but we use Teams for chat etc. so just easier to do it in that. Hopefully they will sort it out, for now I will just share individual windows I guess, it wouldn't be so bad if they had a better way to switch, but currently you have to unshare then reshare each time.

That's good to know.

Still on a single QHD 27" monitor at the moment. Don't really need to change but might end up with a slightly large display in the coming months.

Quite liked the look of the Samsung M7 as it's got decent speakers, 4k and comes with Apple Airplay and other connected TV features.

Yeah, its worth bearing in mind if you are linked to Teams.

I do wish that the one I got had built in speakers and also USB-C charging , especially as I am planning to switch to a keychron keyboard, so would be useful to charge that off the monitor when needed, but they are small annoyances really.

That is annoying. When I know I'll need that I open my laptop so I can use that screen as the one to share

Yeah, I am on desktop so don't really have that option. I am contemplating installing another small monitor next to the large one to do screenshare on, would then have to move my webcam as well, else it would always look like I am looking off elsewhere (most of the time I am...)

Dominic Raab demonstrating the "broom lock" method of maintaining privacy on a zoom call

I finally managed to get my Dell docking station to work, turns out I had been using the laptop power pack which was 65w and it needed the proper charger which is 130w. It makes life much easier as now I can use both (borrowed from work) 27inch monitors.

I want to keep the laptop tucked away and I'm going to o screw a cage to the underneth of the desk to do this. It means getting a webcam for the team's calls, is there a cheap forum choice on a budget of as little as possible as work wont reimburse me? I decided using an old phone is going to be a faff and with the laptop being relatively locked down tough to set up.

130w

😳

I've stuck an Anker one on my monitor. It's okay quality for video and sound, and for the price I'm pleasantly surprised.

Does the monitor have picture by picture mode? I've read (in passing) that this is like having 2 monitors

I have a Logitech C270 which is fine for the cheaper end (I paid £20 but it seems to have bumped up to £30 now). Picture is decent and mic is good.

After almost 12 months working from home with a 13" macbook sat on a pile of magazines, I finally bought a €20 stand and am furious with myself for not doing it earlier.

Just took receipt of my Steelcase Leap v2 today, let's see how this goes!

Taken a while but think I'm there.

😳

Is that all from one laptop or is there a second one behind it (and possibly other machines hidden elsewhere)?

What job requires that??