The working from home thread: tips and advice

Interesting, are you able to do a screenshot of what the step on the bios looks like as I tried doing something similar but not joy?

Won't it be laptop dependent? It also might not always be an option. Probably best Googling / YouTubing your brand.

This is on my Dell laptop.

Tick here

Also tick here (I don't know if this makes any difference. I get bored and start tapping my keyboard and it comes on but I don't know if it would come on anyway).

As hugo7 says, it will depend on the brand but it's very likely you'll have similar options.

I'm on a Dell too but not sure where I'm meant to be looking as it isn't in the settings under power and management

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That's not the BIOS.

BIOS is as soon as you turn the laptop on, before Windows starts loading. Generally get to it by tapping F2 or F12 or something as soon as you turn the laptop on.

You may also be able to get through it via Windows https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-uk/000126121/access-uefi-bios-system-setup-from-windows-on-your-dell-system

I’m sure this has been mentioned a fair bit but any office chair advice? Around £200 and some not overly techy/gamer looking as my wife won’t have it.

https://www.2ndhnd.com/

I bought a refurbished Steelcase V2 from https://www.officeresale.co.uk - very happy with it.

Got steelcase please v2 from 2ndhnd and very happy

Nice one - thanks

Some of the chairs that I'd be interested in buying from the above site specify they come "with no forward tilt".

Would I ever need a forward tilt working at a desk? It's not something that I've ever felt I needed.

I have a forward tilt aeron at work and regret not buying a chair with forward tilt for home last year.

provides the most ergo position (for me at least) the forward tilt allows me to have an exact 90 degree knee bend, even weight across my feet on the ground and my ass, super comfy and supposedly good for strength

Worth paying double for the aeron?

full price? no.

if you’re getting second hand and its a bit more i personally would

They're like £400 without and around £600 with it

i would 🤷‍♂️

I want to get a laptop stand to make my kitchen table into a standing desk. I like the look of this but it's £75, anyone seen similar for cheaper?

Did post this in the Mac thread but allow me to ask here as well -

work has changed in a way that I now don't move around with the laptop (2019 16" MBP) a lot any more but sit on a desk for many hours a week.

tldr: my back hurts, I need a proper ergonomic setup.

I like the screen of my macbook (got a Moshi iVisor anti-glare thing on it, which is great), and I don't really need more screen estate - but do I get an external display (that I can adjust to a proper height / distance from eyes etc.) or do I just get a laptop stand that moves the whole macbook about 20cm up and further away from me?
How do you do it?

Of course the second / external screen sounds nice even though I don't really need it, plus the sight of having the 16" on some apparatus on my desk is quite annoying, aestetically. What sort of external screen would be a good fit?
My main concerns are:

I do not want to spend a fortune on a screen - but quality should be somewhat on par with the MBP display (it does not need to have 100% colour accuracy or anything though it would be cool if the external display would be in sync with the built-in screen regarding the "true tone" functionality - is this even possible, or do you just have to deal with one screen being warm and the other cold?)
I would really love the mac to be able to run this screen for hours without getting so hot that I hear the fucking fans running constantly (I don't really push the mac a lot, it's just browsing, pages, light photoshop.. but I heard external displays tend to heat up those 16" macs quite a bit so would love to keep things silent or near-silent at least

Either way I would need a mouse or (second) trackpad, I guess this means the apple magic 2 thing. Can't deal with their mice and also want the gestures to be the same, so that's settled basically.

Also need a keyboard if I go this route - and actually am looking forward to using a nice mechanical one again - yet I was thinking:

does it get annoying switching from a mechanical- to a shallow-travel "magic" keyboard all the time, or is this a non-issue? Do you mac laptop users opt for a external magic keyboard or just use anything?
Those of you that use a nice mechanical one - which does work well with apple regarding cmd / option / fn key etc. ?

Thanks for your feedback!

The pre-magic mac keyboards are good, a little hard go find now but Matias make a modern version that's basically identical.
http://www.matias.ca/aluminum/mac/

If you like the gestures the magic mouse is good.

If you dont want an external screen you don't need to have one. If you want to keep sitting one of those laptop stands that holds it at an angle would do the job otherwise you can get standing desk things like this

Thanks for the link to that keyboard, looks like a good option if I don't go the mechanical route!

The magic trackpad is capable of doing the same gestures as the built-in trackpad of the macbook pro - the magic mouse isn't, unfortunately (found that out the hard way; even with third party tricks via BetterTouchTool it just sucks, the touch-sensitive area of the mouse is not great / just good enough for simple swiping and scrolling, and even for that it's not great in my opinion).
The magic trackpads are expensive but worth it I guess, everybody who uses one loves it.

Will likely try one of those laptop stands before buying a screen yes, but those standing desk things don't work for me; frankly I can focus better while sitting down : )

I have laptop on a couple of shoeboxes and a Bluetooth keyboard (old apple one, prbly the most comfortable), which works well enough if you have both those things, while waiting on / deciding which stand to buy.

I've been loving my combo of Keychron K3 and Logitech MX Master 3

I thought that K3 is pre-order only so far?
Like the slim-ness and the 75% layout a lot, colour sheme not so much - ther's not much choice for (slim) replacement keycaps I suppose?

couple of shoeboxes and a Bluetooth keyboard

Ha, my other setup (teaching via Zoom) is already like that, with wooden boxes / shoe boxes, a lot of cables and things that need to be connected.. would love to keep my actual desk more uncluttered 😅
It's a smart interim solution though of course and I have just done that, with an old rubber dome Dell keyboard which is massive and really shit to type, definitely need to upgrade this..

I did get it through the original Kickstarter so could still be hard to get your hands on but like you're saying slim ish and mechanical is quite hard to find. Not sure about keycaps as I'm not really into that but yeah I think they're special Gateron ones that aren't used widely.