Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?

377 pointsbehnamoh835 comments

E.g., any special mouse, keyboard, ring, headset, ... that has made a significant impact on your workflow.

Gaming wireless headphones, not for gaming but for videoconferencing. Bluetooth headphones are universally terrible for videoconferencing because the Bluetooth standard sucks and requires downgrading to telephone audio quality whenever the mic is enabled. Plus terrible latency. Gaming wireless headphones that come with their own dongle completely fix these issues and are perfect for videoconferencing. Someday the Bluetooth ecosystem will get their act together, but it'll be a while and you'll have to buy all new devices because it's a standard made by hardware manufacturers for hardware manufacturers.

Also, some of those magnetic USB charging cables to keep them charged without fiddling with plugging in cables. The nice thing about these is that the same magnetic cable can attach to both microUSB and USB-C dongles, so you can charge any small device with one cable. And the dongles are tiny so you just put them into all your devices and leave them there, super convenient.

do you have a recommended brand/model?

I'm using a SteelSeries Arctis 1 ($69) and I like it overall. Only minor flaws: the battery life is good but not exceptional (magnetic charging helps), the charge port is micro USB (despite the fact that the dongle is USB-C), the wireless range is good but not exceptional, the shape of the dongle is wide and tends to block nearby ports, but the biggest flaw is the power button which you have to hold down for an eternity to turn it on or off. Everything else about it (functionality, sound, comfort, reliability, compatibility, etc) is perfect for me.

If you want options, rtings.com does extremely detailed reviews with more quantitative information than you could ever reasonably apply to a purchasing decision.

you could get a usb extension cable and mount the dongle anywhere.

It comes with one. But I'd rather have a smaller dongle than an extra and much larger piece to carry around and lose. But like I said, minor flaws.

OP says the dongle is USB-C, and USB-C extension cables don't really exist.

Quoting OSTz on Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/10xj74r/why_d...):

> Direct USB-C to USB-C extensions are explicitly forbidden for safety and performance reasons because they defeat built-in safety mechanisms.

> All USB-C to USB-C cables should support 60W charging, but there are also cables that support 100W and 240W. USB-C chargers and devices identify a cable's capabilities by reading what's known as an electronic marker (e-marker) inside the cable that explicitly reports >60W charging and/or 5Gbps or faster data transfer capabilities. A USB-C charger will first read a cable's e-marker and adjust its power output based on what the connected cable's maximum charging capacity is.

> The problem with extension cables in general is that they don't (and can't) have an e-marker, since by design, normal cables only have one addressable e-marker. Therefore, neither the device nor the charger is aware of the presence of an extension. If your USB-C to USB-C extension only supported 60W, and you connected it to a charger/device combo that could do 100W or more, you could start a fire. This failure is particularly insidious because it can potentially lull the user into a false sense of security; everything might work as expected until they change something, like upgrading the charger, and then it could fail catastrophically.

> Another reason extension cables don't work well is that the signal integrity requirements for USB-C's higher transmission rates are very strict. Believe me when I say that cable makers would make longer cables if they could.

Those power buttons have a tendency to pop out just ouf of warranty. A few of my friends have them and its 50/50 as to whether theyve survived 6 months longer than warranty

I believe this. I have two and I guess I've been lucky because it hasn't happened to me.

It's a pity. it's a great headset for all the reasons above, they just didn't last for us.

I own SS Arctis 7 (2 gen) and can't really recommend them. 4 out 5 at most. Despite claiming increased ear space they still hurt my ears after prolonged sessions, and rubber headband is also not comfortable over long time. Another minor thing is that low charge notification is raised very late and while it is on it can't be suspended and very annoying. Dull sound, if understand correctly it's for bigger bass response, but for me bass is irrelevant. Controls and features are nice though. Microfon and it's controls are very good. Personally I would not buy Arctis series again, not because it is bad, but because it is not a compelling offer for this price.

I swear by my Corsair Void Pro headset. I have recommended it endlessly and everyone is extremely happy. Good price (less than $100 usually), great battery, great sound, the mic mutes itself if you flip it up... Best thing is that they are quite hackable, and when the battery life starts decreasing you can just change it for a bigger LiPo and be done with it.

logitech g pro x wireless

Logitech Zone Vibe 100 Bluetooth headset.

Came here just to mention magnetic charger adapters!

I bought a cheap set off of Amazon, and then realized I also wanted non-USB-C tips as well. While the brand I bought wasn't selling them, turns out that the same factory manufacturing them also manufactures for other brands, and so on like the third page of Amazon results I found another product using the exact same tips, but this time also including other types!

>Also, some of those magnetic USB charging cables to keep them charged without fiddling with plugging in cables.

I've had MacBooks for two decades. Until my recent purchase of an Apple Silicon model, they all used proprietary power connections (first barrel, then MagSafe) on one side of the computer. Since I needed a power supply in two different places, this always meant obtaining a second Apple charger.

My current MacBook is the first I've owned that also allows charging from any USB-C port. For the first time, I can

* use a small USB charger I already owned (A 27W unit in my case. Yes, the computer does charge under use, albeit slower than with the Apple charger)

* charge on the opposite side of where the Apple charger goes (which is very useful for my aforementioned multiple-location usage pattern)

* still have an auto-detachable connection by, like you, using a magnetic USB connection (<https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BCJVL7CD/> is what I use)

Can you recommend some models for the gaming wireless headphones? Are you using Kleer?

Seconding the magnetic adapters. I use one to quick switch my keyboard between my work mac and gaming machine.

Magnetic USB cables are a godsend for young kids with tablets.

I've been thinking of buying a wireless gaming headset too. How good is the Linux support on the dongles?

Perfect for mine. I think they usually don't need special drivers.

They almost all show up as a standard USB sound card to the OS, sometimes two on particularly fancy ones allowing you to separately balance chat and game, so you should be fine.

Same here. My Logitech gaming headset works great in Linux. I do have to use some third party thing to adjust the goofy LED colors and side channel volume, though.

https://github.com/Sapd/HeadsetControl

I use wired. No hassle with charging or dongles. It's not as if I am going anywhere in these since the mic arm is quite awkward looking (but provides unbeatable sound quality).

No dongle? The whole thing is a giant dongle hanging off your computer. Headphone cables are far more annoying than mouse cables IMO, and they even affect the sound because it's quite audible when they hit or rub on stuff. Plus I find it surprisingly useful to be able to get out of my chair to grab something while still listening and/or talking. I can even go to another room.

Or take a shit. And then worry that you didn't mute properly even though you triple checked it before walking out of the room.

I once moved to the couch while wearing wireless headphones and accidentally fell asleep at an important meeting. Thankfully I didn't need to speak anymore (I think). A wire anchoring me to the desk isn't the worst idea...

That's equally on them for running a boring meeting.

Sometimes you gotta do boring meetings, and sometimes everyone has to be there.

Most of them could be better, have fewer people, be more focused, etc. -- sure, no doubt. But you can't make every meeting into an action-packed saturday morning cartoon.

Like, these compliance forms ain't gotta fill themselves out, and each team has to be there. These JIRA and code-review meets are gonna be lame, but we gotta do em...

true but additionally the meeting was boring to me, and I was more or less a nobody. I am sure it was not boring to others.

Haha fair enough!

I distinguish between a casual voice chat and an important meeting/presentation, casual I often take on the go and use whatever is the most convenient option (definitely not a proper headset... bone conductors more like it). At an important meeting I usually don't walk to another room.

And if you specifically mean the cheapest possible models, yes wired will have cable noise, but wireless will have horrible connection and battery issues, so let's assume we are talking about a good above-average model and in that case you can expect no cable noise.

It's just the typical wire vs no wire trade-off combined with personal situation/preference. I see your perceived disadvantages and advantages, none of which I have had ever issues with which made me want to fix something in my particular setup, and think: as long as I don't ruin the cable my headphones just work on my external soundcard and with my music player (and with every device which has a 3.5mm jack), and I don't have to charge them. Good enough for me. And this might depend on culture or particular job, but if I'm in a meeting I can just say 'brb gonna grab something' and no-one cares.

edit oops there was already a whole comment thread lower on the page essentially saying the same things, sorry about that

I find it nice to not be tethered to my desk for hours when I'm at home. But I guess it depends how long you spend on calls during your day.

For a casual chat I wouldn't necessarily use it. It's when sound quality is important, and then it's also important that I pay attention to what's happening anyway

I just use my wired headphones with my smartphone when I want to walk around the house / yard and still attend a meeting.

Using laptop mic’s fixes bluetooth issue and massively improves audio quality

Then it sounds like you are playing the bongos if you type during a meeting.

And like you're in an airplane hangar when the laptop gets a bit hot.

Yeah it's better than Bluetooth but a mic next to your mouth works far better than a mic in your laptop no matter how good it is.

You obviously never tried recent macbook...

I have a M1 MacBook Air and what I said is still true. It's a matter of physics.

Really depends on the laptop. On my work laptop, the microphone is located next to the fans (instead of for instance next to the webcam). You can imagine the audio quality.

This also depends on what service you are using. I have done video calls over Jitsi where nobody reported any issues, but immediately after a switch to Discord my voice got apparently drowned in so much noise nobody could understand me and people could only continue talking after I muted myself.

Don't use magnetic USB adapters. They run a decent risk of frying your device. The USB-C spec was not designed to have the connection broken in that way. You will have no issues 99% of the time, but you will eventually have that time when your device gets fried. It takes a very precise design and a lot of clever engineering to have a high-current power connector with tiny pins be able to break without having the ground be the last connection to be broken.

It is also easy for the magnetic connector to short the power into a data line, and because it doesn't connect in the proper pin order and has no 'mid-plate' it has no mitigation against arcing. See this picture:

* https://imgur.com/a/bMvYtfy

Notice how some pins are longer than others? They are designed that way so that they connect first and disconnect last, so that ground is always established before and after other pins connect. This prevents connecting and disconnecting a cable from frying your electronics.

"The mid-plate shall be connected to the PCB ground with at least two grounding points. The mid-plate shall be designed such that plug pins A4, A5, A6, A7, A8, A9, and B4, B5, B6, B7, B8, B9 do not short to ground during the connector mating process with an effective 6.2 mm receptacle shell implementation." [1]

[0] USB Type-C Spec R2.2 - October 2022, Figure 3-13, Page 65.

[1] USB Type-C Spec R2.2 - October 2022, Section 3.2.1 Interface Definition, Page 43.

* https://www.usb.org/document-library/usb-type-cr-cable-and-c...

Thanks for the heads up. This is a useful warning, as the magnetic adapters seem attractive, but they are not worth it if they risk frying your device.

They're worth it if the risk is small and the device is relatively cheap and low power (5v charging). I'm not going to use these on my MacBook or phone with fast charging but I'll use them on my gamepad and headphones no problem. And I use them for charging only, not data.

I use some magnetic tips, but only for all my non-USB-C.

Almost everything I have now uses USB-C. The few micro USB and Lightning devices hanging around don’t have the same high current concerns.

I stopped using magnetic USB adapters when I noticed some sort of interference from them was causing other USB devices from being properly connected. Windows wouldn't recognize or detect the devices.

It could've also been the USB hub I was using, but the problem disappeared once I changed the USB cable with magnetic adapters to a cable with ordinary connectors.

A power-only (2 wire) magnetic USB-C cable will be as safe as prior generation magnetic USB cables (it won't be more likely to damage your device)

I’m comfortable using the round two pin charging ones for things that only use the port for charging, not data, like mice, headphones, radios and speakers.

The data ones are almost universally sketchy, as they expose pins (and sensitive internal circuitry) that should absolutely be kept away from the outside world.

There is an emerging range that reduce the exposure somewhat, but I’m still wary.

Sure, it will be safe because it won't be able to go above 5V 3.0A (15W) at absolute max since it won't be negotiating PD. Most likely it won't have the proper termination resistors on the CC line and will get a whopping 900mA@5V = 4.5W

* https://i.imgur.com/n3IjcQE.png

I encourage everyone to actually read the USB 3.2/C/PD spec sheets.

15W (and even 4.5W) sound like enough for charging stuff like controllers, headphones and whatever other small battery-powered devices one has. (Also, do devices like that actually respect that 900mA thing, assuming they're capable of pulling that much power?)

Aside from that: It's obviously not enough for a laptop, but what other devices do you really need that much more for in your day-to-day life? I think I haven't used a USB charger capable of outputting more than 10W in a while (aside from my Nintendo Switch and its charging brick, but because of the dock it wouldn't make much sense to use a magnet adapter anyway). At home, there's always a charger nearby, and when I leave the house my phone usually has enough power anyways, or the trip is long enough for me to throw a powerbank in my backpack no matter how full the phone battery is.

And if you end up in a situation where you really need to quick-charge something, there's nothing stopping you from just taking the plug out for a short while.

The thing is that USB-C was designed to be the universal connector, for both high and low power devices, for charging and data. Should there be a qualification: 'use the specification and standards violating magnetic adapters IF your device is X and not Y or else your macbook might get toasted and btw your warranty is now void for using it.'

Or, just 'don't use shady spec violating components that don't exist in spec for good reasons'?

> Also, do devices like that actually respect that 900mA thing, assuming they're capable of pulling that much power?

USB-C will not 'give it' power unless it conforms to certain parameters like having a resistor on the CC line. This is the reason that crappy devices which merely changed the physical ports from micro-USB to USB-C and come with a USB-C (device end) to USB-A (charge end) will not charge with a USB-C to USB-C cable. The device never got updated to request the power and the USB-C port on the charger just ignores it.

Among the neurotic optimizations I’ve made to my cable setup - retracting USB-C cables and normal cables of any length, adapters for any and all devices I own - I have avoided magnetic adapters for the above reasons.

How did you make retracting cables?

You just buy them. I wouldn't trust them for high-power or high-drain devices, personally, but you can just search amazon and see what they have.

As the other poster said, I just buy them, but I’m in Japan and also pick up these cable organizers for the cost of an American candy bar (¥190): https://www.amazon.com/MUJI-Cable-Smart-Phone-Stand/dp/B097R...

I fried a hub, a wall charger, and the USB ports on my monitor before I identified my magnetic USB-C connector as the problem.

I use wired headphones (ATH-M50x) with a boom microphone cable, no worries about batteries or dongles.

But how do you get up and walk across your house to your fridge to get a snack in the middle of a meeting without missing any of the meeting?

Headsets with a mic arm that auto-mutes in hardware also have the benefit that you can go to the bathroom, use the kitchen, etc. on mute, but still respond quickly if someone addresses you.

That sounds risky

Well... I still do a stealth pee + deferred flush in those scenarios.

Unless it's a Logitech headset, in which case 90% of the time the functionality of the mic-arm-mute breaks at the software level requiring various troubleshooting dances before anyone can hear you again. How they can be such a leader in the peripheral space but still produce absolutely the worst garbage software will never stop being annoying.

When you're a leader you can just coast on your brand name!

Wow, I have a semi-old Sennheiser PC 320 G4ME (with a cable) and the hw mute has never let me down, also I'm pretty sure it's actually in HW, so how would the software fail?

I found out, after a full year-and-a-bit that Teams did not respect my Logitech G930 push-to-mute.

How no colleague ever informed me, I can only speculate.

G930 got me too. If it's powered on while connected to external power (like a USB battery) it works as an audio device but none of the inputs work, including the mute command.

It seems like the mistake there would be implementing the mute in the software instead of a proper hardware shutoff.

You'll want to be very confident that it actually mutes in hardware.

I thought my old headset (Logitech G930) did, until I found out the hard way that it was in fact just sending a software command to mute the mic at the system level, and that if the headset was turned on while plugged in to external power it would not properly communicate any inputs to the host system.

Audio still worked perfectly, but volume controls, the "G Keys", and most importantly mic mute did not work in this state. The red light at the tip of the mic would come on but nothing actually changed and audio was always being transmitted to the host PC (which I guess was always true, but the host PC now wasn't muting it either).

I found this out during a lunch break on a multi-day training session, where I let out a Barney Gumble class belch with my mic in the up/off position and the background chatter in the conference call fell silent until someone commented about how my lunch must have been good. After figuring out what happened I then wondered how much had been heard on previous days, but never got around to going back and listening through the session recordings to figure it out.

I live by the principle where I just won't say anything incriminating or extremely embarrassing if there is a mic or phone that could possibly be active. Little embarrassing stuff is fine, but for everything else, I assume the mic is hot even if I just muted it and I can see the mute indicator.

In addition to protecting against technical failures like you describe, I also don't get in the habit of saying stuff that one day I could accidentally say on a blatantly hot mic or in front of someone else.

The only mute button I really trust is the one inside my head.

I didn't say anything problematic, but I certainly might have used the restroom thinking I was muted.

A rite of passage!

This is a real MVP of the work from home life. Some of them, like the Arctis I have, will present two devices to the computer, so you can have music playing quietly under a meeting, but still have voice for calls at a good quality and controlled independently.

Odd, I went the opposite way -- a full blown high-end Bluetooth headset. I'm also a field warrior as well part of the time, so on-the-road audio is important to me and my callers.

The Blueparrott B450-XT is an amazing headset. Did I buy it at a truck stop? Yeah. But I've been on an audio call where I literally stood in front of a box fan with my face against the fan and nobody could hear the fan in the microphone at all. The noise cancellation on the mics is downright amazing and everyone heard me loud and clear over fans, datacenter environments, the works.

After working for almost 3 years with a barebones work-from-home setup (standup desk + laptop), I finally invested recently in some equipment to improve upon my crappy laptop camera and a room with little natural light. The difference in my video call quality is night and day. This is what I got:

  - A key light (Godox ES45) to throw a bunch of bright, natural white light at my face. Attached to the desk and positioned tilted above my head so that it doesn't blind me. I don't notice it when it's on.

  - A mic (Razer Seiren Mini) on a boom arm attached to the desk, positioned above my face, just out of the camera's sight. Nice, clean sound. Would sound even better if I were speaking directly into it, but I don't like having the mic visible.

  - Repurposed an old mirrorless camera (Sony RX100 III) into a webcam for that sweet HD quality. Way better than any of the webcams out there. Needed to buy a cam link 4K card and connect it via a MicroHDMI <-> HDMI cable. Required a dummy battery kit to connect to AC and some setting tweaking, but it works beautifully. Connected the camera to the key light stand with a clamp mount.

Yes, I love this. Most people don't realize this setup but I feel it is very important. I have a normal soft & warm light (not flat white) that I can flick quickly (point upwards that bounced off the walls). An additional flood light in stand-by for interviews and other more important meetings.

A well mounted setup with a dedicated microphone is a time saver and no brainer. I'm not too keen on the video and think is lesser important than audio but have been thinking on that too. I invested in an extended mount for a separate display, mic, and lights. I has paid off pretty well.

I didn't realize how much a difference the lighting makes until I got one. I got the Google dLight and it has both brightness and warmness sliders and can change it from computer or app (and has profiles) so it's really convenient.

It seems the Google dLight isn't sold and is reserved to employees. Did you get it from a Google employee? Or are you working at Google?

Can you provide some more details about what you needed to do to set up your RX100 III? I have the same camera and would love to do the same.

Sure thing. Here are the specific items I ended up with:

  - Cam link 4K card: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B09XXBTBYB
  - Dummy battery kit: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B078PDCF7D
  - Micro HDMI cable: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B08C2QMT4R

In terms of camera settings, I think the main ones were switching the file format to XAVC and turning off the display icons so they don't show when I'm on video. Might be worth going through https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00245829 and trying a bunch of these, even though the page is not exactly for the same camera.

After that just plug it in and it's recognized as a USB camera. One other thing I ran into was the camera kept losing settings after being turned off. Turns out there is an internal battery that got discharged after years of non-use. I think I used a micro USB cable with a running camera to get it juiced up.

Good luck!

Or save yourself the cost and latency of the HDMI grabber and use it via gphoto2/v4l2 if you don't mind a little command line action. https://girishjoshi.io/post/using-dslr-camera-as-webcam-on-l...

Not sure this would work with every camera. My particular model does not support remote shooting over USB. Newer models of the same camera do and Sony even provides software to go the USB route.

The native Sony software will only support 720p resolution. So gphoto2 still offers better resolution.

"Shooting over USB" is not a requirement to use this. The camera only needs to be able to output the preview stream via USB, which works with most cameras.

I tried this approach and the latency was through the roof, easily a second or so off, making it effectively useless for video conferencing. Switched to an HDMI grabber so I could get something that was actually realtime.

You need to dial in the fps. It's a little bit of work to try different parameters and might not work for every camera. But with most cameras I was able to get the latency below 300ms which should work for most use cases.

> Would sound even better if I were speaking directly into it, but I don't like having the mic visible.

I've found that the sound is better if I keep it off to the side out of frame instead of above. Especially if you have the setting to make it directional and aim it towards your mouth. You can speak directly to the camera and it picks it up.

Interesting. I tested out a bunch of positions before landing on the current one, but I'll go ahead and try to replicate this. Thanks!

I keep mine down and to the right. About 8 inches from my face. Sounds good and stays out of frame since my camera is a little above eye level.

I got a Seeed ReSpeaker mic array and have been really happy with it. At first it wasn't working at all, but then I did a firmware update on it and it's been great since. It's a 4 mic array with speaker output, and it does some fancy processing to remove the output played from the speakers and uses the 4 mics to detect voice location and "zoom in" on it.

I went from terrible echoy voice to rock solid.

Then I got a 16" MBP, which is what I mostly use now for video conferences because I upgraded my Linux work laptop and switched to Wayland and can no longer do screen sharing.

https://www.seeedstudio.com/ReSpeaker-USB-Mic-Array-p-4247.h...

Unfortunately the RX100MIII isn’t supported, but the Mark IV and over 30 other Sony cameras work with its [Imaging Edge Webcam utility](https://support.d-imaging.sony.co.jp/app/webcam/en/) so you can use the camera directly as a webcam without the need for a capture card or HDMI cable.

That's right, this was a bummer to find out

I tried using this for a while on my Mac and while it generally works, it just wasn’t reliable enough. Sometimes the camera wouldn’t turn on automatically or it would claim to be in use by another process. It’s also not supported in all programs, and even when it is, it can be a pain to switch cameras due to UI annoyances.

In short, your webcam is one of those things that really needs to work 100% or it’ll end up causing problems at exactly the wrong time. No one wants to have to fiddle with the camera during an important meeting.

The problem is that all the old digital cameras I have at hand are either too old or not high-price-segment enough to support any sort of looping video through, which is a shame. I have 2-3 of those and while they're not awesome, the video would totally beat every laptop webcam...

> - A key light (Godox ES45) to throw a bunch of bright, natural white light at my face. Attached to the desk and positioned tilted above my head so that it doesn't blind me. I don't notice it when it's on.

I found a sunlamp aimed away or behind something helped me a lot. So much so that I got one of those kitchen countertop hydroponic kits that's time to go off usually when I start work.

The sunlamp + morning coffee perk me right up. Plus herbs and stuff.

If you can, sit at a south facing window for natural light, you can also buy a flexible wire rimmed light diffuser used for photography. If you can get the right diffuser for your window frame it should flex into the frame and stay in place (unless the window is open and it cat he's the wind!)

you're ready to twitch stream at this rate!

I have a heating pad under my keyboard which keeps my hands warm in the winter. Was like $20 on amazon, and I can't even begin to describe how amazing it is, since I was really tired of always having a mug of hot water / tea / coffee to hold and didn't want to keep the heat on my house super high when I could just wear a sweatshirt and be fine except my fingers.

This is a genius idea. I’ve been using fingerless gloves. Is there anything in particular to look for when buying one?

I used this one through this winter and it worked fine: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09C5LQ86D/

I'd just look for what people say in the bad reviews. I generally use mine on the lowest temps, 80 or 90. I don't know what kind of maniac would use them at the higher temps. Every time I turn it on I have to press the button to cycle through the temperatures, a mild annoyance but NBD. It automatically turns off after a few hours which is a feature, not a bug. It used to be that I'd sit down at my desk and my hands would never warm up, now they warm up from the mat and stay warm even after the thing turns off.

That is a much bigger pad than what I've used! Wow. That's amazing.

I've used a oversized body wrap pad (120V input) and a 24V pad with wall-wart designed for mini-green-house seed planters. The former was comfortable & wrapped in soft, but wasn't a great mousing surface. I do want to point out: in my experience, these are nice for the arm, but notably the keyboard and mouse never really warmed up very much, both remained a bit chill, back when I was in a fairly un-warm draft-y room. It was still really nice to have, but my hands could remain kind of chill, I'd still keep on my nice fingerless gloves. Still, a great addition.

Some of the amazon ones are barely 6 months old and are failing at the 6 month mark. I picked one of those. Be weary of high review counts, and ensure the reviews are all for the particular product.

I'm guessing you want one with a low enough temp setting that it doesn't bake your keyboard. Around 80-90F degrees I'd guess, but haven't tested. Especially important if you have a 'smart' keyboard, which has an actual small computer (more than an i8048) in it.

Mine died in 6 months of light use, looking for a better one. They work well on the floor too if you have a basement.

Good idea - although you can always put more socks, a boot, etc. Thats why the hands are so hard, because you need mobility for working.

You know who won't complain when winter arrives? ChatGPT...

Yeah I’ve thought about how the desk gets cold - maybe putting foam under the legs to reduce cold transfers into the frame and table top might help.

Alternatively maybe there’s a way to mount a desk warmer under the desk instead of top.

There are some pretty dedicated foot warmers out there too. Depending on the climate zone one is in, all socks and shoes get cold eventually.

Why have I never thought of this? I get really cold hands in the winter to the point where I have to take very frequent breaks from typing because my fingers freeze up. I'll definitely get one!

What kind of helps since we all needs breaks for the keyboard every hour anyway is to do clasp your hands and bring your arms up above you and do some movements like turning. Alternatively do some lifts with weights as well for more strengthening and extra bloodflow.

Any inexpensive heating pad will work, but there are some things to look out for. Use a few Velcro adhesive dots to keep the pad from moving around on your desk. You will probably need to put a piece of stiff cardboard over the pad since most mice need a very flat surface. Choose a pad that allows you to conveniently adjust the heat. Cover the mouse and your hand with a towel, but be aware that its easy to let the mouse get too warm. Look for a pad with "auto-shutoff". A cheap mouse may stop working if it gets too hot, but let it cool down and it should start working again in a few minutes. My shop is typically about 55 deg F in the winter but this makes it very comfortable to use a mouse. I've done this for many years and never killed a mouse.

Is there a device that does the opposite -- something to keep your hand cool? It is getting hotter and sweaty in India.

you mean a fan?

when I lived in Vietnam years ago, my Mac laptop fan broke and there was nowhere to repair it ... there are cooling pads with fans beneath them that you can buy, but my temporary solution was freezing a stack of Wired magazines in the freezer, then putting them under the laptop and changing them every 20 minutes.

How long did this last? Would the mac hard shutoff if it got too hot? Every twenty minutes would be brutal.

It was one of those Titanium G4 beasts. My gf called it the "war machine" since the keys were worn to the point you couldn't read most of the letters. So it got way too hot before it even throttled down, and I never saw it shut off from the heat. It radiated heat through that metal... it would almost scald your legs.

I could usually control my CPU use so a magazine could last up to half an hour... but basically I'd feel the warmth coming through the magazine, jump up and switch it with another one from the freezer. Easy peasy.

This comes with its own set of problems though: I've done something similar and the mechanical stress from difference of temperatures caused the motherboard to crack.

Yes. The keywords are "semiconductor cooling pad" or "thermoelectric cooling pad".

I use a USB fan and a small mister/spray bottle of water. I spray my forearms periodically (top of hands are fine too I guess) and this creates more of a cooling effect from the fan.

It's also nice to have a wet cooling towel for the neck, I find...I tried one of those dual neck-mount fans as well, and while it wasn't bad, when it broke I didn't feel it was good enough to replace.

There are lots of whole-body tricks as well, from extra hydration (at least 100 oz. daily here in summer) to sitting on a cushion with more air flow...good luck.

Back when I was younger and lived in a hot place, I removed one of my chassi fans and put it next to my keyboard instead. Cheap and worked wonders.

Bucket of cold water for your feet

One of those gel wrist rests, with added cooling, would be perfect. Lots of bloodflow just under the surface of the skin there. Would adding Peltier modules be a practical solution?

I have an older laptop and user Docker for Mac daily. My fingers never get cold!

Put a few slices of bacon under the macbook and you even have breakfast.

Try out Colima[0]. I saw someone else mention it on here a few months ago and thought to try it and it's been very good. I did encounter my first problem yesterday so I have moved back to Docker Desktop for now but even if it only worked half the time I'd still suggest it, the memory usage is under a quarter of Docker's offering!

[0] https://github.com/abiosoft/colima

I think the OP actually prefers the heat generated from Docker.

relevant: https://xkcd.com/1172/

Is it tho

Another thing to try is podman. I run it on my mac and my mac is no longer trying to fly away on the strength of the cooling fans alone.

Podman used to be a bit rough on mac but it's gotten significantly better, especially with podman-desktop. docker-compose even works with it as it does something on the backend to swap out the docker socket. I wouldn't recommend doing podman-compose as it looks to be mostly unmaintained? Or at least no new releases have been cut in a couple of years.

I'll have to give podman another look. Last I checked I couldn't see how to replace my routine docker commands.

Ooi how much power do they consume?

I've started wearing arthritis compression gloves when my hands are cold while using my PC. Colleague suggested the idea and it's been great.

Same here! I have no arthritis of any kind, but these are very thin gloves that do not get in the way when typing (unlike most other gloves) and still make a huge difference wrt cold hands. Got two additional pairs for my parents; they love them as much as I do.

I’ve ordered something similar but 12V for car - I find my feet freeze on longer trips and esp so since I like driving barefeet

Cars come with heated seats, steering, armrests, mirrors, wipers - why not mats?

I use a tabletop infrared lamp for this.

Reminds me of this 2010 article: "micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill"

https://www.richsoil.com/electric-heat.jsp

Mini heaters are great, the portable ones I have make winter bearable.

But as far as I know, using heat lamps directly in your face can be a bad idea because they can emit IR radiation that can harm your eyes, cause cataracts, etc.

edit: it's actually just a normal lightbulb, nevermind

Several of you would seem to enjoy a Kotatsu:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotatsu

When I was a kid, I used the power transformer of my C64 to warm up my feet

I still do that. Only it's not a C64, but rather the power brick to my TB4 dock.

That, and I have a small infrared panel mounted under the desk, which can keep my thighs nice and toasty in winter.

I have a floor heating pad for my feet that I love for the same reason.

Could someone provide some link or picture? I struggle with cold hands and I have no idea what to look for :-(

I don't use a heating pad but I use a pair of fingerless gloves for this. They're nothing fancy, something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Finger-Touchscreen-Stretchy-Mittens-F...

I have a heated mouse specifically for this same issue. Was experiencing arthritic symptoms in my fingers and tied it back to my extremities getting cold while working. There looks to be only one company that makes a heated mouse, if they ever fold up shop I don't know what I'll do.

I have this same thing except to put my feet on, I can stay nice and warm while the house is at 15C. Nice touch using it as a desk mat as well.

Interesting idea, I have the same problem with cold hands. I currently wear finger-less wool gloves but it isn't a perfect solution either.

I do this but for my feet. They’re always wrapped up nice and toasty under my desk because I have poor circulation in my hands and feet. It’s very nice ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Good idea! Fingerless gloves are sub-optimal.

I wouldn't have thought they were lesser-known, but I've been surprised how many people don't know about today's cheap portable external monitors. They're essentially laptop panels with a USB-C+HDMI board. $100-$150-ish and easily found in 15.6" and 13-14", 1080p or 2K. All the ones I've tried have 2 USB-C ports, mini-HDMI, and speakers. This all depends on what USB-C ports your machine actually has and the right USB-C cables, but a single cable can do power and display from the laptop. Or plug the monitor into USB-C PD source and the same cable will charge the laptop and run the monitor. Mine even has a third USB-C "OTG" port for USB 2.0 speed devices. Good for a second screen on the go or debugging single board computers.

What is the contrast/brightness like with these? I've always wanted one for working with two screens on the go but the ones I've seen in public never seemed to get bright enough.

In a cafe or other bright environment they seem to reflect everything around them similar to the way my MacBook screen does which makes it hard to see anything.

I'm speaking only from limited time seeing them from afar though--I've not actually sat in front of one to use or test out in person.

It's bad. I have a ASUS MB16AHP (claiming a brightness of 220cd/㎡, contrast ratio 700:1) and yeah, in a brightly lit room viewing can be difficult. It's ok under normal office lighting but you'll be out of luck if you have sunlight flooding in. I've been searching for a brighter option but most (all?) the current offerings seem to be based on the same or similar internals.

Still, it's a useful device while traveling – nice to be able to plop a decent multi-monitor setup out of a backpack. My model also has a micro HDMI port (and an internal battery) which can be handy if you need a temporary screen for a Raspberry Pi or a machine that usually runs headless.

I have one like yours and it's usually enough - if you are willing to switch your IDE to light mode.

Yeah, I'm a monster who does Solarized Light.

You might be interested in a "field monitor" over in the photography department, though they are often small.

I have a 2200 nit (not a typo) piece of kit: Feelworld P7, very sturdy aluminum body, either camcorder batteries (multiple sleds) or 7-24V, 1920x1200 7" screen, HDMI in & out. Works well. I've seen larger displays.

Do you have a specific model you can recommend? I searched a brighter one out especially (300 nits), read reviews, etc. Paid 200€. What I got absolutely sucks, definitely not 300 nits, glitches half the time I try to use it, doesn't remember my settings. When I finally got around to return it, I discovered the company no longer exists lol.

This seems to be one of the categories where there are 42 different "companies" selling 2-3 actual products just with different branding.

The one I use now is branded YGG. I'd link it but someone already swapped out the Amazon listing to a different model. I think this is very close to what I have: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099DKQS8C/

It claimed 350 nits. Side-by-side with my M1 MBP, I'd say it might be close to that. A lot of them claim HDR but it's some bullshit definition of HDR - definitely not like the MBP's HDR mode.

I think it's a little bit of a crapshoot as to which panel and board you'll get no matter what the branding so somewhere like Amazon with free returns helps. There are a few more premium brands like Viewsonic and Lenovo.

I've enjoyed magnetic usb c adapters (20 pin - I've not tried a newer 24 pin adapter).

The wireless second screen feature on Samsung tablets works surprisingly well on Windows for this too! I haven't found the need to use it much though. I don't really bring a laptop when I travel anymore.

I think the reason why is that not many mainstream manufacturers are creating them.

From the top of my head, I only know ASUS.

Dell has some too

Lenovo as well. They're called ThinkVision if someone wants to match that sweet ThinkPad aesthetics.

Viewsonic too. Lenovo has some nice looking ones.

I tried the ASUS ZenScreen MB16ACE and the quality/resolution/rendering was bad compared to a Macbook screen, I returned it straight away.

I've wanted one for gaming on the go with the Switch and Steam Deck, but couldn't really justify the purchase.

...but if I can pretend I use it as a second monitor for work, then it's OK! :D

I've got a Lenovo Yoga Tab 13 (https://www.amazon.de/Lenovo-2160x1350-WideView-Tablet-PC-Sn...) for "development" purposes. It's a nice tablet with 2k screen and enough power for pretty much everything, Android 13 and the killer feature for me: a micro-HDMI input. It works like a charm with MacOs/Linux as a second screen, but you can also connect a Switch or SteamDeck, grab a controller and you can play everywhere on a 13' screen.

Wow that is a killer feature!

Nice.

The iPad and Mac have Sidecar which lets you use the iPad wired/wirelessly as an additional display for the Mac but it's so damn flaky that I gave up and got the portable monitor.

I do carry a cheap HDMI->USB adapter (Elgato Cam Link knock-off) which lets me use my Macbook as a monitor for things like Raspberry Pi's but not sure what the capture rate is.

I’m surprised no one has mentioned repurposed iPad screens[0]. I just received mine, and it’s fairly nice given the price. It uses a 4:3 aspect ratio, but that’s fine for secondary content when working on my laptop. It also works great for retro gaming as indicated in the link I shared. I only wish it were in the original iPad case and I could use an iPad stand. As it is, it’s housed in a photo frame with cutouts for the new buttons. I selected the USB C option for mine, which is how I connect it to my laptop. Very happy for $80.

[0] https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=3373

A lot of tablets also let you use them as second screens!

For people complaining about ASUS offering - it did look bad on paper with it's crappy latency and even crappier brightness, so I never pulled trigger on one. I did find some decent options on Ali Express, though.

Got 2 monitors from there - one 15 inch and one 17 inch. Both run in 2k 120Hz. Brightness is OK, never had a problem in a brightly lit room, but I have not tried them out in the sun, like for "working on the beach" type of situation.

When not traveling, I use the smaller one on a VESA arm (the smaller one has screw holes) in vertical orientation for extra screen space next to my 4k larger monitor. And I use the larger portable monitor for sheet music on my piano (connected to Raspberry Pi).

Ordered both from "HDHIFI Store", pretty happy so far.

as a laptop user due to portability constraints, i definitely get their appeal, especially the ones that make a three-screen setup. but they are still a bit too pricey for my tastes and fiddly with the cables.

I use two 13" 2k monitors underneath a 34" ultrawide. I absolutely love them

An Elgato Stream Deck but for general purposes https://www.elgato.com/en/stream-deck-mk2 Basically imagine having 15 physical buttons to use with any kind of actions, shortcuts, macros etc. but you have a visual feedback too. It’s pretty great! I know there are alternatives like the Adafruit RP2040 https://www.adafruit.com/product/5128 but the visual knobs make the Stream Deck much better imo.

I was thinking of doing something similar, but was never sure what to use that many keys for. Can you provide a photo or list a few examples of what you're doing with yours? Thanks!

I use the JIRA Plugin to have various open issues/tasks/bugs visible. With API Plugins you can send requests, integrate Gitlab/Github. Have a look at https://apps.elgato.com/plugins?categories=com.elgato.develo... for Developer Tools. With the bunch of plugins from BarRaider you can control window layout etc.

Thanks! I didn't know there were already ready made integrations for dev tooling

I bought one of these a couple of years ago with plans to use it for macros, shortcuts etc, but gave up using it because I found the system for writing your own plugins and generally configuring it was beyond awful, it felt like a designed-by-committee horror show. The complexity to just just set the button image and make it run a bash script when pressed was insane.

But I really wanted it to work, I can think of tons of useful buttons I want to have on my desk. Maybe I will give it another try. Can you tell me, have you got any tips, found any good third party tools for working with it? Maybe I just went down the wrong rabbit holes.

Are you using a mac? If so then the perfect combo is streamdeck + keyboard maestro. There are several great plugins for streamdeck that makes it easy to run keyboard maestro automations

Also honorable mention for the Mac, Hammerspoon. It has a native interface for Stream Deck and can do a considerable amount by itself for the price of a taskbar executable. My favorite is its ability to send keystrokes directly to specific apps. so I can have global a/v mute for Zoom.

tbh I didn’t have a problem with the official Windows app so I can’t say anything about that much

But under Linux I used this

https://timothycrosley.github.io/streamdeck-ui/

Works pretty well by my experience under Debian. There are some edge cases like Wayland (see the issues) though.

I also use streamdeck-ui with linux, but it's fair to say that it's really basic. Nothing compared with the windows-app. And lately it has also some quirks, which made me basically abonden most usage of my streamdeck.

I use a combination of a usb joypad + a 50 line C app for a similar effect

I got Stream Deck mainly to control Teams on my work computer, which is Windows 10. Teams does not have global hotkey for mute and video toggle (or on/off) and that would be compatible with the status. (You can use Windows global mute and control video, but that status is not updated if you use Teams mute). The Teams video conference must be active for the mute button to work. The whole point of seperate keyboard is that I don't need to switch to the application. So I never got this to work well enough.

Microsoft recently (~6 weeks ago) released a Microsoft Teams Plugin for the Streamdeck. It uses an API instead of hotkeys and so far it works for me.

https://apps.elgato.com/plugins/com.microsoft.teams

I used a Stream Deck XL for a long time, mostly as an app launcher, but the most useful feature was a "universal MUTE key". I used Keyboard Maestro to set up macros that would mute/unmute the microphone in any videoconferencing app, with the same physical key that also indicated the current status. This worked for Zoom, GoToMeeting and Google Meet.

I sold the Stream Deck XL for two reasons: I didn't need that many keys, and I found out that if you are to use a device like this at home and in the office, you really need two. The setup needs to be the same in all your work places, otherwise you won't bother learning to use the accessory.

As for some other less typical accessories: I use a 3DConnexion SpaceMouse and can't imagine doing any 3D CAD work without it.

Oh, also: for many years now all my monitors are on arms. The supplied stands are always too low, and arm mounting has the additional advantage of freeing up lots of space on the desk.

Does a 16-port USB-A hub count? (in addition to the CalDigit thunderbolt dock)

Came to search for Spacemouse. Even as a fairly casual Fusion360 user, that was a great purchase.

I upgraded from regular stream deck to the XL and haven't used a lot of the space yet. The folder actions really make it unnecessary for me - but I still love it

I have a small Stream Deck (6 buttons), and although I don't have a lot of inspiration, I found a few really useful use cases:

- global mute button (plugin Audio Mute). This is amazing and the most useful action I've setup.

- screenshot tool. I'm on a Mac and always forget the combination for opening the capture tool, so a physical button is nice to have

- iTerm button. It just opens a terminal, or make it appear if there's already one open.

- clock, because when using fullscreen mode, macOS doesn't show the clock

- weather, because it's cool

- specific to iTerm: a "split vertically" button, because after years of use, I can't remember how to split iTerm

- specific to Firefox: a macro to write this text "-method:OPTIONS domain:xxx.com" because I'm tired of typing it again and again in the network devtools filters

> global mute button

Is this different than the system mute button next to volume up and down?

> iTerm: a "split vertically" button

FYI: you can customize your own shortcuts. I use i3 on linux, so I bound my split and movement keys in iterm to be the same as my Linux ones

> Is this different than the system mute button next to volume up and down?

A global mute button for the mic, sorry for the confusion. I don't think there's an easy way to get on on mac.

I use a Stream Deck daily to control AV production gear using BitFocus Companion (https://bitfocus.io/companion). I am constantly surprised at the range of supported equipment.

Complex operations that used to take three people can be done by a single person.

For a basic example:

Audio operator fades out background music and brings up video playback audio channels Lighting operator puts lighting into video state Video operator switches from holding slide input on screen to video playback input

Is now one button. Same equipment, same production value. One button. Boop. Go.

Admittedly it takes some additional configuration time, but for something like a roadshow where it is the same sequence of actions every day it ends up being a great time saver.

If you don't care about lcd icons (you can use self-printed ones anyway on transparent caps), there are loads of cheap programmable keypads on AliExpress, some with knobs, some with bluetooth, most with color lcd. The configuration software is not great, but in most cases you'll only have to suffer through that only once or twice. All for a very small fraction of ElGatos.

You are talking about the Macropads right? I wish they could send custom printed keycaps together with it. Would be a good compromise for no LCD ;)

Stream Deck can indeed be nice, but it entirely depends on the environment on what you make of it. With windows the official software is very well-equipped with all kind of integrations and plugins, making good use of the abilities. Under linux, not so much, you are mostly on your own with quirky tools.

That said, if you can't make good use of the display anyway, then you can also just take a normal keyboard or numpad and remap the keys. There is some software around for this, or just write your own hacky script. Repurposing old hardware is such an overlooked solution.

I mapped all my IDE’s debug buttons to it, I could never go back. Debugging by hitting sequences of 3 button hotkeys isn’t fun and there’s no alternative without a collision.

You mean like F7, F8, and F9 in IntelliJ?

In Visual Studio there are lots of subtle actions that start with ctrl+k then some other letter. They can be hard to remember/discover.

It would be nice if it were that simple. You can just look at the default keymap and see there are tons of shortcuts that are not one button, and many are not even 2. Nor could they be, there are too many features. Step debugging alone uses like 10 features.

What buttons/actions do you commonly use?

I got one to play the DJ air horn sound effect in meetings but between google hangouts, my m2 xlr device, and the stream deck something doesn’t work quite right.

I was looking at getting one but couldn't stomach the price for an unknown benefit since I wasn't sure if I'd use it.

I ended up using Touch Portal[1] and put a phone on an old stand, and it pretty much does everything I want to do. Integrates with teams with mic on/off, hand raise, and reactions, and I created some nice graphs for cpu/gpu/disk load and a UTC clock for when I'm not in a meeting. Desktop app is free and phone app is like $13 or so. Works on Windows/MacOS and Linux support is apparently coming.

It's probably clunkier than a Stream Deck but it's a fraction of the price.

[1] https://www.touch-portal.com/

By far my most used actions for triggering Dell Display Manager to switch my monitor inputs. I don't have a full kvm set-up (separate keyboard, mouse but shared monitor) for my home desktop, work laptop.

I also have media control buttons to control music playing on my desktop throughout the day without having to toggle the monitor. A mute button to silence things for calls is also frequently used.

Finally, extra buttons to toggle some smart lights if I need to override some pre-programmed schedule.

Other than that, It's been a bit of overkill.

I used to have a control panel [1] with physical switches for various tasks on my desk. I built it mainly to switch between multiple VPNs and switch bluetooth audio mode between high-quality unidirectional A2DP and low-quality bidirectional HSP for meetings, mounting network drives.

But once I moved from XFCE/xubuntu to KDE (on gentoo, later opensuse), I noticed I don't need it anymore. Bluetooth switching works automatically and NetworkManager has nice widget, SMB/SFTP works out of box.

Now it become a toy space rocket control panel for my kids.

[1] https://tomas.janco.link/projects/?control-panel.html

How does this have no replies? So effing cool.

When your kids get tired of it, can I buy it?

Rearview mirror at the top of my 52" curved widescreen monitor. I work at home in limited space with family around and there's always activity behind me, doors opening, etc. I also work with noise cancelling headphones. Hard to explain why, but the mirror stops my constant need to turn around to figure out what's happening. It took me a minute to hang, with fishing line and zip-ties. Way less cognitive overhead and fewer self-made interruptions since implementing this. $13 - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MFD7BT7

+1.

I've got a simple bike rear-view mirror, like $10 off of amazon. has a clip on thing, fits fine on my monitor stand.

Same goal -- I've got big ear covering headphones w/ noise cancelling, so you feel crazy isolated and it's hard to tell if/when people, my kids, the dog, etc. is around until basically they're on top of you.

Oh boy, I found/invented a tweak that I can't live without anymore. I use an MX Ergo trackball, not sure how it'd fare on a mouse, but here are the magic runes:

    xinput set-prop <mouse device id> "libinput Scroll Method Enabled" 0 0 1
    xinput set-prop <mouse device id> "libinput Button Scrolling Button" 8

Where you'd change 8 to a chosen mouse button and the mouse device id to its appropriate value from `xinput list`.

What this does is make it so that as long as that button is being held, moving the cursors scrolls instead. It's hard to describe how much better of n experience it is vs. using the scroll wheel. It's much faster, much more precise, and less finger-tiring.

Here's a gist of the Python script I use to set it up - https://gist.github.com/pedrovhb/41e9d5b7b7b5c13fe2c94aa4cee...

X-Mouse for windows lets you do this and it's a godsend for RSI since most mouse manufacturers have a heavy trigger weight on the middle mouse click for some reason. There is also scrollAnywhere browser extension for similar thing.

If I understand you correctly, this is exactly how Trackpoints have been scrolling for decades -- hold the middle button and move the pointer.

wow that's neat! I use and love the same device and while it feels a bit odd at first it also feels better than using the scroll wheel. btw in case anyone wants to try a different button (8 is "Page back") you can use `xinput test <device id>` to listen to events and see which number each button is. Good news: it seems like the Back button still works when using this. Thanks!

edit:

Putting this in ~/.xsessionrc seems to work fine for me on Ubuntu:

xinput set-prop "pointer:Logitech MX Ergo" "libinput Button Scrolling Button" 8

xinput set-prop "pointer:Logitech MX Ergo" "libinput Scroll Method Enabled" 0 0 1

Nice, using "pointer:Logitech MX Ergo" beats my hacky regex. Thanks!

Wired headphones. I’ve never had to start a meeting by trying to mess with my audio settings, or had to think about charging another battery.

I’ll add moderately high quality mic to this. If you’re spending a lot of working hours on calls, putting the resources into providing clear, intelligible voice for the people you’re working with will definitely be appreciated.

I have a Plantronics (now Polycom, or Poly?) wired headset. Makes me look like a call center worker but the audio and mic are great quality. Sometimes I’m on a call and can’t hear someone well over the bad speakers I have in my monitor. The headset always clears it up.

> now Polycom, or Poly?

HP: https://press.hp.com/us/en/press-releases/2022/hp-inc-to-acq...

Like what?

For my personal setup: Rode NT-USB Mini (https://rode.com/en/microphones/usb/nt-usb-mini). It also give me a physical volume control for attached headphones.

I second that device, but it even though it says it has a directional cardioid polar pattern, it is fairly omnidirectional, only use it when you have little background noise next to you (other people, animals, etc).

I like V-Mode BoomPro which is boom mic that connects to any headphones.

Not GP but I love my WorkTunes. Excellent passive noise protection.

Headphones are a "lesser known accessory" ???

What about a USB radioactivity detector from 1998?

How does that sound?

If you like you can enable the audio and hear each time a particle hit the Geiger-Mueller tube, right through the headphones.

Wireless headphones. Because sometimes I really have to go and it's literally no problem to walk to the bathroom. Or to go make tea. Or to do whatever. Freedom to not be chained up is amazing. Try it.

I too don't feel like I've had to mess with audio settings. I have some SteelSeries Actis Pro's I bought a long time ago. They have bluetooth, but there's also a nice usb-based head-unit I use with higher quality, lower latency, and no pairing concerns. It shows present battery level quite clearly (which is highly enduring). The head unit also has a battery charger built in, and the headphones come with a secondary battery. I don't feel like I have to think about charging batteries either; if I have a slammed day of non-stop talking, it's easy to see at the end of the day I have half a battery left & I swap it (which takes <10s). People selling you Fear Uncertainty and Doubt about batteries seem misguided & silly to me. The freedom is amazing. Letting yourself get bothered & concerned enough to trap yourself into a narrow situation is dumb: be skeptical, at least.

Good to have both for different reasons.

A good wired headset can be superior to wireless mic audio when presenting or interacting.

If merely consuming, and hanging around wireless is good too.

I have some mid-grade Rode Wireless Go and nice >$100 Samsung lavaier mics I can use when needed, which is faultless, reliable, amazing prosumer gear no one could conceivably gripe about, but honestly the Actis Pro headset I have is probably a better choice for both cases.

The Actis has better microphone positioning by far, which counts for so much.

I'm interested to test the range versus the Rode, but given that I can be 3 floors away & the Actis still fine, I'd be surprised if the Rode really had shockingly better range/reliability/interference-resistance.

I continue to think there's a paranoia & level-of-concern that does not match what modern hardware can do.

> I continue to think there's a paranoia & level-of-concern that does not match what modern hardware can do.

I think this is related to the fact that most wireless headphones people have experience with are Bluetooth.

BT headphones have lag, and, when used in duplex mode, have terrible quality. And this lag adds to the one introduced by the conferencing software.

I've got myself a Jabra headset that communicates over DECT. This thing is spectacular. No discernible lag (as tested with games) and the mic quality is better than what I hear from people rocking Bose and Sony BT headphones. The range is great, too. Much better than what I get from my BT headphones.

Agreed! I also use DECT based headset (Poly i.e. ex-Plantronics - recently acquired by HP) and it is amazingly good. Range up to f*ckintillion meters (anywhere within the house or garden basically), up to 8 hours use on a single charge (I regularly forget to charge it overnight and I can still use it the next day), no delays, no weird disconnects in the middle of a call, great mic quality and it works both with my PC and home landline.

Wireless bluetooth headset mics can vary wildly (rtings.com has nice breakdowns).

I have tested a few and find the noise cancelling on the mic for the other party is awful if that's something you are looking for on far too many.

Both is the answer. I'm using wireless if I anticipate whether I'll need mobility sooner or later, and wired as backup and other cases.

It’s possible to combine both.

I have a Philips SHP-9000 headphone with a vmoda boom pro mic, which plugs into the 3.5mm jack on the headphones. On the other end, I sometimes attach a cheap Chinese Bluetooth receiver, which can be plugged into any 3.5mm jack, so any wired headphones can be made wireless as needed.

I got a Sony that is both wired and wireless, really nice!

I use wireless headphones because cords get in my way, but the “step away to make tea” seems like an unlikely use case to me. It isn’t as if you don’t have to see the screen anyway… more than half the time someone is sharing a window and saying things like, “what do we do about THIS?” while waving their pointer over something.

I often do not need to see their screen because I am a vestigial appendage to the meeting

This is where you grab the entire laptop and lie down in bed, only to wake up alone in the meeting an hour later.

You underestimate how much time is commonly spent in meetings literally waiting for a moment you are interested in.

In addition to the other replies, I've noticed that during meetings, my insatiable desire for coffee or tea rises about 10000%

I just need to be sipping something.

Your meetings must be much better than the average. It's been quite a while since I had meetings regularly, but I'd guess that on average I needed to see (or think about) maybe 20% of the meeting.

Wireless headphones with the option of plugging them in when the battery dies. Best of both worlds. I use an industrial pair with passive noise canceling since I work on a treadmill.

Sadly with today's auto-detecting OSes I've more than once found my audio output setting itself to speakers, or worse, to my monitor (which doesn't and has never had speakers, but that doesn't seem to matter).

This. Never had any issue with my wireless headphones, but Teams insists on picking random outputs and inputs even from one call to the next.

The only logic I've found is that it prefers devices that handle both input and output. So, it works OK with my combined headphones + mic, but if I want to use my external dedicated mic + headphones without mic, I have to fiddle with the settings whenever I join a new call.

Teams and Goole Meet have the worst UX for switching inputs and outputs. Dunno why they still insist on not doing in properly.

On Zoom changing either is literally a click away. AND you can test your mic while already on a call so you can listen while you fix your setup.

To me, Zoom's killer feature is that "use system settings" actually does what it says.

In Teams, I may have "custom setup" selected, but it'll go right ahead and pick whatever it wants.

Yeah, and then Teams recently went out of its way to ask, "what if we buried Device Settings one more layer down the menu hierarchy?"

Fuck teams! Omg it's garbage. I keep trying to get the company to change, but they're basically getting teams for free.

We have webex and Teams at work. Neither one of them are great but unless I'm missing something Teams lacked a precheck feature where I can test my Mic before actually joining the meeting which is easily the main reason I despise it. Teams also occasionally just refuses to work with part of my audio setup until I rejoin so it also the one that I need the precheck for most.

I joined a meeting one day, couldn't hear anyone, turned the volume up before checking the output device (because I rarely ever change them) and ... it was connected to my kitchen Bluetooth. I had been blasting my wife with a meeting room full of people shouting "CAN YOU HEAR US NOW??"

Dual arm monitors to free up lots of space on my desk and more easily hold displays at eye level so I don’t get pain.

A split ortho homebrew keyboard (helix) that I can program with qmk so that I have shift esc enter space and special keys on other layers right where I want them. Or a dedicated Ctrl-a key for tmux. It virtually eliminated my pain. The OLED screens are useless though and I retrospect I should just have skipped them. I should also have put the two arduinos in it on sockets right away because that USB port will of course break and it’s a pain to desolder it.

A “clearly superior technology” (CST) trackball in the middle of the split keyboard that I try and use most with my left hand to give my right hand a break. It’s chunky, well made, uses standard pool balls as the trackball, and can be easily taken apart for cleaning or servicing. Wasn’t cheap though.

What kind of trackball?

Clearly Superior Technologies (CST) is the brand :) After a quick search, I think they're being manufactured by a different company now: https://xkeys.com/xkeys/trackballs.html

I've been using mine for 9 years, I just wish they would make a bluetooth one which can switch between mulitple devices like my keyboard does.

I did email them asking but they said they had no plans to do this.

Yes it seems like they’re set on a proven design.

I used to use a USB hub and have the two cables next to one another on my desk, manually unplugging replugging it to transfer keyboard and mouse at once. With USB extenders so both machines have their plus right next to another.

But I saw in this thread there are USB switchers so maybe that’s a solution?

I tried getting a couple arms for my desk, but they required 8 inches of clearance behind the desk for the monitors to be at a reasonable distance from my face and my desk is backed up to a wall

Ah yes, i always get deep desks for myself so the arm can be flush with the wall because the monitors need to stick out further to be at arms length.

Just mount the pole off-center, then you can get around the clearance problem somewhat. I only have one monitor mounted centrally, and my laptop to the side on the second arm. The desk is almost flush to the wall at 2cm (~1 inch) and the monitor and laptop are around 15cm (~6 inches) away from the wall.

Yeah, I had 3x 32" monitors mounted on arms (one twin arm and one single arm) on a desk pushed almost right up to the wall this way. The arms can go sideways in one direction and then sideways in the other right behind the monitor, as long as the base is not centred.

This is my problem also. I have a shallow desk (2') and then the mount intrudes the displays enough that I can't push my laptop back or tilt it as far as I sometimes need. Further, the riser isn't tall enough so my screens hang about an inch below my laptop display.

If I was more confident that my work area wouldn't change in the future, I'd try an extendable wall mount. I probably should do that anyway.

I use a small USB switcher box to let me control my personal machine and my work machine at the same desk. I also use a keyboard that lets me flip a switch to change between Mac/Windows layouts. It has been very helpful to let me cleanly separate work from leisure, without having to give up the ergonomics of my desk setup. The friction to switch is low enough that I don't feel tempted to keep work related stuff on my personal machine.

I used to have dual monitors, but now I use a super ultrawide 32:9 monitor. It required learning to use window managers since most OS's don't support multitasking setups like that, but I can use layouts now that I couldn't before. I also use PaperWM[1] with it and it feels particularly effective on ultrawides.

[1]: https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM

Any advice on the USB switcher? I've had a hard time finding one that was of high enough quality to be a daily driver. I need USB3 for my webcam as well

This is the one I use:

UGREEN USB 3.0 Switch Selector 2... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N6GD9JO?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_shar...

I used a cheaper one before that but it was garbage - kept dropping inputs for a few seconds here and there.

Been using this one for a year, no issues so far https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08MVXZM9G/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...

A USB hub is plugged into it, and all needed peripherals go into the hub first, including audio interface, external hard drive, printer etc.

I use this Tripp Lite USB 3.0 switch into a powered USB 3.0 hub: https://tripplite.eaton.com/4-port-superspeed-usb-3-peripher...

It's solid, boring, and works perfectly. I've never had a single problem with it, even with my X570 chipset constantly doing the old USB disconnect-a-roo that it's infamous for.

> I use a small USB switcher box

Came to the thread to post this in case it wasn’t posted. Quite a ton of actual utility from a small noname box from Amazon for my same-displays-but-different-sources setup (Mac mini for work, PC for gaming).

I use the MX Master mouse and keyboard with the Flow options in the Logi Options+ software to achieve a similar thing.

I use a 4-computer USB switch; it has 3 device inputs. So I can switch keyboard, trackball, and a vertical mouse between 4 computers at one desk. Pretty handy. Work laptop, personal/gaming laptop, linux laptop, and desktop/server.

With 2 monitors, I use one monitor exclusively with the linux laptop, and the other monitor I have on a HDMI switch to switch between the other 3 computers.

I use Microsoft Garage Mouse Without Borders[1] to control my old and new PC with one mouse/keyboard. Works over WiFi flawlessly for me. All you have to do is move the mouse cursor towards the monitor with the other computer(s) and it automatically switches.

[1]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=354...

I love this tool - back at Uni, I discovered the lab PCs allowed me to use my Active Directory account on multiple machines simultaneously. I'd push 3 machines together, grab Mouse Without Borders from my student drive, open my online IDE (Cloud9) and wham, instant triple monitor setup.

How do you switch video? Just change inputs on the monitor?

Yeah, and some monitors can be controlled to switch inputs from software, so you can setup hotkeys to do it just like a real KVM.

Yeah. It's not the greatest but KVM switches with video support drive up the cost quite a lot. I'll gladly press an extra button to switch the monitor input.

Thanks I figure its better quality to do this than try a kvm switch.

Oh yeah I have one of those no name brand USB switching hubs, they are great. Comes with several "illegal" USB-A male to male cables, which I find funny. If your monitor supports it you can also switch inputs from software, and you have a complete KVM setup without the ridiculously expensive KVM box.

Did you know that some monitors have built-in KVM nowadays? I discovered that recently and switched to one. Basically I can connect my laptop with a single USB-C cable for display/charging/peripherals and instantly switch to my desktop PC that is connected via HDMI + USB.

The fact that the monitor itself is responsible for display inputs removes all kind of problems that traditional KVM boxes have.

In theory the monitor could also switch headphones audio from one computer to the other, and it works, but the output quality is garbage. So I still have that cable to switch manually.

Cool! I thought my monitor had this but I tried it and it didn't work. Good to know that some of them work.

I have the same setup, with some speakers, and it works great. So happy with solution. I also use a DP instead of HDMI, so I can daisy-chain multiple monitors

I have the same setup and use the following software to send the switch signal to the monitor.

https://github.com/haimgel/display-switch

Learned about this on HN a few months ago. Less than 20 minutes to set it up with a cheapo USB KVM switch and it works great. I have a Model M keyboard plugged into a PS/2-USB adapter and the switches don't even confuse the keyboard.

I do this virtually with a piece od software called barrier. https://github.com/debauchee/barrier

It's not clear from the page, but there's an issue somewhere that points out barrier has been abandoned for a fork called input-leap.

https://github.com/input-leap/input-leap

Also recently learned about waynergy as a upcoming wayland client. Haven't used either yet as barrier still handles my setup.

For anyone curious, I think this is the issue,

https://github.com/input-leap/input-leap/issues/1414

I do the same thing, but I've got an USB-C monitor with an USB hub that has all my peripherals connected.

When switching from personal to work mode, I just swap the USB-C between computers.

Dunno if any USB-C switchers exist though.

I wish there were Thunderbolt 4 "KVMs". I have my laptop connected to my TB4 ThinkPad dock, which takes care of charging the laptop, attaches an external display over DisplayPort, has keyboard & mouse, external speakers, and has wired ethernet. When I switch to my desktop, I have to unplug the laptop from the dock and attach the desktop to the dock. It's a minor inconvenience, but it is an inconvenience, and it messes with the cable management.

A tb4 kvm would be nice. I use a dock with my 2 laptops primarily to split video and USB to use with a kvm I share with my desktop so I don't have to switch out mouse, keyboard, and headset between everything.

I will say my favorite accessory has been my particular KVM that allows me to switch between my dock and desktop with a special keyboard command. Beats fiddling directly with the many buttons I had to press on my monitor to switch video inputs previously.

I had the exact problem, and found and expensive but clean solution: I bought a U2723QE Dell screen, acting as a Hub. All my devices and RJ45 are plugged to the screen.

My laptop uses the charging USB-C port. My desktop requires 2 cables: 1 DP cable (so I can chain another screen) and 1 usb-c cable to the usb-c upstream port.

Whenever I want to switch, I just need to change the input source on my screen, between DP (desktop) or USB-C (laptop). All USB devices and internet are automatically routed to the right computer.

It works like a charm, really happy with this (but once again, that's an expensive screen)

3-color light (https://www.adafruit.com/product/5127) and associated circuitry (https://github.com/vladak/workmon/) that reminds me to change the position of the standing desk if too long in the same position (using ultrasonic distance sensor mounted underneath the table) and to take a break if working for too long without a break (using smart plug to which my display is connected) and also to alert me if I have worked for too long in total that day.

My table even has that built in.

A Shure SM-58 microphone, with a XLR soundcard to go with it.

I always wanted to get a good microphone for voice calls, thankfully a friend of mine had more than a dozen of them, of all styles: dynamic, condenser, long range, cheap, expensive, etc... We spent a couple of hours trying them.

First thing: condenser microphones are great... in a studio. You are probably not in a studio, so if you use one of them, people will hear all the noise around you. Dynamic microphones, usually cardioids, are definitely the best as they, are less affected by outside noise. You can even use speakers and not get annoying feedback. There is one inevitable drawback: you need to have it close to your mouth. It wasn't a problem for me, but it is something to consider if you are doing video, because it will most likely be in frame. It also makes aesthetics a valid consideration.

Now, why the SM-58. Well, it is possibly the most famous microphone in existence, for good reasons. At around $100, it is relatively affordable, it is indestructible, it is an industry standard and it sounds good enough for famous singers to use it. There are cheaper alternatives, some of them excellent for less than half the price, like the Lanen TT1, and higher output level too, but I just like the way the SM-58 sounds, and it was within my budget. There are also podcasting mics like the Shure MV7. A bit expensive, sound quality wasn't worth the extra for me, but it has convenient features, and arguably looks more in place in a video call.

And generally, you should get a XLR microphone, they tend to be much better value for money than the USB or Jack type. That's what the pros use, and getting a XLR input is not expensive. I bought a Behringer U-Phoria UMC204HD for a bit less than $100, but there are cheaper options that work fine (and also better, more expensive ones). Note that for dynamic microphones, you don't need phantom power.

Note that these are wired microphones. The wireless kind tend to be prohibitively expensive. You can get wireless kits for XLR though, they start at around $100.

> Now, why the SM-58

You also fail to mention that, presumably, if you ever need to assert yourself in a meeting you can use proximity effect to sound like a movie trailer ;-)

I use the same Behringer UMC204HD interface but I paired it with a SM-58 "clone": the Behringer XM8500 [1]. I think its performance is unbeatable considering the price. I love the combination.

[1] https://www.thomann.de/gb/behringer_xm8500.htm?

I recently just got my self an SM7B. I love the thing. I don't do WFH so my work mates won't ever get to hear my wonderful voice on it but oh well, eventually they will! I love it. You do need a beefy interface to power it, I have an Elgato Wave XLR.

I also use an sm7. Love it. Rigged up reaper as my daw, and use and apogee duet. Everyone tells me to start a podcast...

Yeah, I don't do anything fancy with mine, I used to use quite a few VSTs on my other mics to get the sound I want but honestly... the SM7B at its default settings, no low-cut, no other EQs, no compression, etc... it just sounds right on my voice

I like these too, nothing beats a stage mic when you're on cam as well as on stage.

But I was afraid the U-Phonia was USB.

These type dynamic mics actually can be used with a carefully wired XLR-to-1/8 inch cable, and plug straight into the regular analog PC mic input.

Even though the PC supplies 5VDC intended for a cheap condenser mic, if the voltage runs through the SM58 it will not hurt it.

Your carefully shielded (well-grounded shield) sensitive unbalanced precious signal goes somewhat unprotected on the motherboard down a copper trace for a few cm until it goes in a single analog input pin of the A/D converter section of the audio IC. From that point on it's as digital as your specs will support, so ideally in this configuration there are actually no "active" electron devices like transistors or vacuum tubes (even the best have some hiss and distortion) in between your mic capsule and your A/D.

Well when you enable the PC's software-controlled analog mic boost, that's when you engage an active transistor gain stage for your mic signal before it goes A/D, it makes the mic volume a lot more comfortable, but then you depend on the audio quality and noise level of an on-chip analog silicon feature which may not be so good, depending on the exact audio IC.

But at least the mic boost is only one little gain stage, not a number of components that your analog mic input, however balanced, can often encounter before reaching the A/D process of a USB audio adapter.

Now there is not zero latency with the mic plugged into the 1/8 inch jack, but people sometimes think so when they're accustomed to USB.

Why you are recommending XLR but not recommending jack for delayless output to headphones? I have Samson C01 in USB version and all I miss is an ability to listen the signal. This is not a microphone for singers because it is very sensitive but it makes a good sound of me for video meetings and that's it.

That's because the UMC204HD has a monitor built into the device, GP doesn't need any software to do that.

I used to use an SM7B in to a DBX-286 in to an RME DA/AD but I sold them and switched to a Sennheiser Profile USB, it's much quicker for me to switch between my different systems, works without drivers or software, saves on desk space and is a fraction of the price. It sounds like a dynamic mic and doesn't even pick up my typing sounds during calls.

I'm only using it for calls, delivering training and co-working though. If I was recording an audiobook or doing music production I would switch back to my previous setup I think.

I use a Kinesis advantage keyboard. It's expensive and ugly but comfortable. I would not go back to another keyboard ever again.

Have a look at this review https://www.anandtech.com/show/7125/kinesis-advantage-review...

While great, the Kinesis Advantage is perhaps the most famous keyboard in the tech world, so I wouldn't say it's lesser known.

I came from using two Microsoft Natural keyboards at once, as my "split" keyboard. I eventually upgraded to a Kinesis FreeStyle 2. I've tried some ortholinear keyboards but hated hated hated every minute of it. I'm back on the FreeStyle 2 at work and a newer FreeStyle Edge at home.

I have a Freestyle Edge as well and highly recommend it.

it makes me very sad that I can't get a microsoft natural ergo keyboard in mechanical switches

Look at the cloud nine split mechanical ergo keyboard. Feels just like a microsoft ergo snd I was able to type full speed immediately. I had to shelve my ergodox ez - just too foreign with moved keys.

Also Kinesis Advantage, but with the KinT mod to run QMK, the default firmware is pretty limited.

And now with the Kinesis Advantage 360, if you opt for the “professional” model, you can use it wirelessly and with QMK firmware by default.

The "Pro" model uses the ZMK firmware. And it's squarely aimed at programmers; the primary way to configure the keyboard is to edit the configuration files and rebuild the firmware- and their documented way of doing this is to fork the configuration files in GitHub and use the included GitHub Actions to actually run the build and generate the firmware blobs.

You can do it locally with Docker or Podman, if you don't want to be tethered to GitHub.

Tried to use it for 3 months, couldn’t adapt, had to sell it.

Also, it has Cherry MX brown switches, which are not my favorite to say the least, with their middle-of-the-ground sort-of bumpiness. I much prefer either fully clicky or fully linear ones.

They do cherry red versions too for linear switches.

I used to have awful RSI and switching to the Kinesis Advantage for a year fixed it. I don't use it anymore but I don't use the apple keyboard either which I think caused the RSI in the first place, or maybe it was just how I was banging away on it.

Yeah it was RSI that caused me to use the Advantage too. The learning curve was brutal but now I love typing on it. Also I added o rings. I like the fact that I can bottom out and have a soft impact.

upgrade keyboards (company name) will replace kinesis switches with ultralight ones that can cut fatigue in half. they have several options down to 25g or so activation force

The keyboardio Model 100 is also worth a look.

As a long time RSI-sufferer that has tried everything I can confirm the KeyboardIO was also very nice... but nothing beats Kinesis Advantage. I think it's the domed arrangement as I did feel the thumb arrangement on the KeyboardIO was superior.

I've bought a Kinesis Advantage about every three years since 2003 (I think). Still the best keyboard out there despite being USB-A and the lack of bluetooth. I really want to like the Kinesis 360, but the lack of a function key row keeps me from buying one.

Here’s an actual lesser known accessory: a mouse bungee. It is a small weighted disc with a spring arm that holds the mouse cord up and away from the mousepad.

I don’t like the lag, connectivity, and battery issues of wireless mice, this fixes all of that! It feels _better_ than a wireless mouse, because it has no wires in the way also with zero lag.

I've used a black binder clip to do just that for a long time. I'd route the cord through the silver clips and pinch the main black clip on whatever was above my mouse pad.

I don't use a mouse pad but I taped the wire to the top of my desk with a just enough slack to cover my typical range of motion so it doesn't slide behind the desk when I move up, causing drag when moving back down.

I'm laughing because I did the same thing. Just a loop made with tape so the cord doesn't stick to the tape and then taped somewhere slightly higher.

But mouse bungees are cute, so I might upgrade and retire my tape solution.

There’s essentially no lag in a dedicated wireless receiver mouse - the additional latency is dwarfed by the baseline latency of the hardware and software. https://www.rtings.com/mouse/tests/control/latency

Yes connectivity issues can be a problem in certain environments but luckily this has usually not been a problem with receivers not in close proximity to interference, including USB3. Battery wise I have had cheapie mouses that last months on a pair of batteries and expensive mice like the Mx master that are pretty no fuss recharging.

But you do you with the mouse bungee cord :).

The problem I have with wireless mice is they always die when I'm in the middle of something important or an fps game. Switched back to wired because of that.

For what it’s worth mice like the Mxmaster have a usb-c charging port in the sensible location and can be used while being charged. They also give you pretty fair warning before they die.

Battery adds significant weight. The mxMaster weights almost 50% more (141g vs 97g) than the wired mouse I use (Zowie EC1, NOT a small mouse, it's like the glorious old MS Intellimouse)... and the 97g is counting the cable.

Also, from my experience USB-C likes to giggle itself loose under really energetic movement.

I just use a wireless mouse that accepts AA batteries.

Just buy 2 sets of rechargeable batteries then I won't have to worry about battery life ever again.

Yeah, on the work laptop I've got...some sort of logitech thing. 2 AA batteries last over a year.

The USB-c cable connector in the mx-matter 3 is annoyingly tight. I could probably swing it around my head by the cable and it wouldn't come out.

It is heavy though.

The wireless version of the EC1 is a whole two grams heavier, excluding the cable.

https://zowie.benq.com/en-us/mouse/ec1.html https://zowie.benq.com/en-us/mouse/ec1-cw.html

The Logitech G Pro X Superlight is 63g and some of the newer wireless mice are coming in at under 50g.

It's now very unusual to see a professional FPS player using a wired mouse. The performance is indistinguishable and for most people, charging is less of a nuisance than cable management.

https://prosettings.net/lists/cs-go/

Sensible. I love that we need to mention this after the Magic Mouse debacle.

My wireless mouse has a dock that glows a color depending on the battery state of the mouse. When it's getting orange, I know to drop it on the dock for a bit.

The apparent battery life might be distorted a bit by my work and gaming machines being separate, but the mouse in my gaming setup (Logitech G604 Lightspeed) gets months of life out of a single Eneloop Pro rechargeable AA when using its USB RF dongle. It was a bit of a surprise with my last wireless mouse having been the mid-2000s Logitech MX1000 which had an integrated battery and needed to be docked a lot more frequently… it's fuzzy but I think I might've gotten a week out of it on average.

lol I had wired mice die on me mid game as well. While buying items in csgo one of my clicks was 3x more loud than the ones before. The white bit that you push on was no longer sticking out of the switch.

You can get some now that have wireless charging (with a compatible mousemat).

e.g. Logitech PowerPlay

I had some extra cash after buying a new PC and decided to splurge on the PowerPlay, thinking it would just be an expensive trinket. I was wrong. It charges the mouse while you're using it, keeping it at an appropriate level (80%?) so that it doesn't ruin the battery by being at 100%. You literally do not have to remember to plug it in or swap out a battery. It's a gamechanger.

To make it really nice, I paired it with one of those XXL mousepads. Cut some corflute or other material that's the same thickness as the PowerPlay, and you can have your own nice large mousepad while having the wireless mouse charger hidden beneath it.

I use wired mice because I like the feeling more. Difficult to explain.

I prefer wired because no batteries, no lost mouse, no lost usb receiver.

No question about it, wireless is the GOAT.

Buddy, I posted a link - the actual difference in latency in time to click and movements with wireless mice with dedicated receivers. Some do better than wired models - in any event the latency of the RF link is on the order or hundreds of microseconds and the wired part of the peripheral bus (ie USB) and the software is at least a couple milliseconds.

It's very well possible my wireless mouse setup has lower latency than most wired setups.

That’s why I said essentially no lag. A good gaming wireless mouse will do better than many wired mice. In those cases it’s better but it’s still not enough difference to matter to anyone.

The advantage of wired is not just aesthetics. This thread started because of any accessory to deal with the wire. I don't need to bother at all with a damn wire in the way.

> This might as be considered a law of physics - electromagnetic energy will always travel faster, more accurately, with less interference, with less required current through a conductive medium than through air.

I mean you might want to go back and read a high school physics textbook - because you’ve got the speed of light exactly backwards.

The reason digital wireless signals may have additional latency has nothing to do with the propagation which is faster in air.

Also I’ve never seen a networking over powerline system that worked better than Wi-Fi. Not all conductive paths are effective for signals.

> Wired is ALWAYS the objectively superior option in all metrics except for superficial & subjective "aesthetics", all else equal.

Which is why professional musicians and broadcasters would never use wireless microphones and pickups. (sarcasm)

A good number of these mouse show a difference of 0.2 ms betwen wired & wireless. That's one frame at 500fps. As you say, there are so many other factors that radically dwarf this transport concern. It's hard to take this as a discussion when people protest so vehemently against such a tiny figure, when it's such a small factor.

Also griefing about battery seem like horseshit too. I have a travel mouse with a single rechargeable AA battery in it. I have a variety of gaming mice, including a Razer Naga Epic from ~2010 that I've literally worn the buttons through to unreliability on. These mice all have li-ion batteries and they all work fine. Maybe in aggregate I've worn through like a single rechargable AA cells worth of use over a decade. The rate of attrition on rechargeable batteries is tiny.

It's just incredible what the cables-or-die undead-alliance goes through to justify their fanatical anti-cause.

I agree, the real world difference is negligible.

Oh I absolutely have a long-held aversion to the sight of cables. Because I have had to live among them, among many many many many of them, because I have had to manage them, growing up amidst so very many of them. They have never been fun to manage. I have long toiled to not be so enwrapped by cables.

Slower? Not really, not according to the links already shared. Less bandwidth? My headphones, my mouse, my keyboard are nowhere near their practical limits over wireless. Higher latency? I just cited 0.2ms, which seems absurd to grumble over. Higher error rate? This is not a problem I've ever experienced. More prone to interference? Literally never seen an issue. There's just no real solid reports on this being an issue. It's not seen with any statistical significance in real reviews.

Higher power requirements? Yes, having some awareness of batteries is required, but if you set things up (slash most devices are set up) to not be caught unprepared it's a remarkable low-toil system. Most devices can charge themselves. Most will operate for a week without charge. The only problem is being a total newb who doesn't have any handle at all, who gets caught out unprepared in the cold, by having absolutely no indicators & no warning. Once you actually start trying to use these devices, once you actually start looking at the battery level, the power concern is remarkably low issue.

Many great points made.

ok editing my reply here too thanks

Couldn't agree more. Upvoting for visibility.

Why do stage musicians use wireless microphones? Is it because they have a hatred strictly for aesthetic reasons?

Nobody said you can’t use your damn wired mouse if it makes you happy - but latency is not an actual reason to prefer a wired mouse.

> Again, wireless can be superior, but only when you are deliberately cherry-picking the least efficient wired setup to compare to the most efficient wireless setup, just like your argument for mice.

But earlier I thought you said it was a law of physics that conductive mediums were always superior to air. Also that the speed of light in air is slower than a “conductive” medium.

You don’t seem well.

No argument here! Great points.

> Just to be clear, your wireless mouse, keyboard, headset, and network connection are not making use of light through air

Yes they are. “The terms light, electromagnetic waves, and radiation all refer to the same physical phenomenon: electromagnetic energy.”

https://science.nasa.gov/ems/02_anatomy

Light and radio are both electromagnetic energy. Radio waves and light both propagate at the speed of light. The speed of light in a vacuum is a universal constant. The speed of light in various mediums is always slower. Among copper, air and glass, light/EM waves will propagate the slowest in glass and the fastest in air.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light

> cannot make use of light through air even a fraction as efficiently as light through fiber optic cable, due to a guaranteed minimum amount of light interference in air that a fiber optic cable will never have, right?

No, not right. As someone else pointed out a point to point link through the air will have lower latency than fiber (glass or plastic).

Whether or not a signal can be carried accurately and error free through any medium involves concepts beyond a basic understanding of the speed of light. But in the real world one will encounter reliable well designed wireless links and poorly performing wired links.

> ...are not making use of light through air, and your wireless network connection cannot make use of light through air even a fraction as efficiently as light through fiber optic cable...

There's a clear misunderstanding here.

Light and wireless signals used by mice etc are the same thing though, just at a different frequency. They propagate at the same speed, the speed of light, which ironically is slower in glass.

Wireless signals in air travel faster than light in a fiber optic cable (and faster than electricity in copper).

>Also I’ve never seen a networking over powerline system that worked better than Wi-Fi. Not all conductive paths are effective for signals.

although I agree that powerline networking is garbage, I have encountered older construction houses that create an environment that is just about impossible to conquer without specialist wireless equipment.

passive blocking via exotic wall materials, older drywall and fairing compounds that contained metallic particulate, various metallic accoutrements -- and accidental active jamming from poor wiring.

>Which is why professional musicians and broadcasters would never use wireless microphones and pickups. (sarcasm)

eh -- this is just an effective and allowed compromise. A performer will usually prefer not to drag wires around a stage just from the sheer physical discomfort from the additional weight and the worry of a trip hazard on an already hazardous stage.

That said , many performers opt to avoid such conveniences due to a perceived difference in quality. [0]

[0]: https://www.quora.com/Why-are-wireless-rigs-not-the-standard...

> A performer will usually prefer not to drag wires around a stage just from the sheer physical discomfort from the additional weight and the worry of a trip hazard on an already hazardous stage.

eh — this is not a “purely” aesthetic or superficial difference, which was the foolishness I was replying to: “Wired is ALWAYS the objectively superior option in all metrics except for superficial & subjective "aesthetics", all else equal.”

Ah, I better understand. Thanks, my mistake; I had forgotten the superficial element. I'm not sure if the mocking elements that you edited in after the initial reply added much, I wasn't trying to come across as derogatory, I just speak/type like that.

Sorry. I was not appreciative of the uncalled for personal attacks (not from you) - that have now been mostly edited away.

I only semi-recently started deploying multiple AP's, which would have helped (but there was no open source software to do so, before the recent DAWN software on OpenWRT). But my heavens, powerline networking has been a massive salvation for me.

I've never seen it go beyond 200mbps for any real run I've had. Often the link in these shitty big row-houses I've lived in has resulted in more like ~40mbps. Those numbers sound awful. But I'll take it any day, in these wifi noisey spaces. Having reliable <2ms latency with absolutely no drop outs has been an absolutely killer advantage. The powerline networking has so much less variability, so much less jitter & chaos than wifi, even very complex multi-drop wifi. I might get more throughput over wifi, but it comes with far far higher base latency, and will fall to shit multiple times a day. Powerline's reliability has been one of the best upgrades I've ever made.

I don't agree with your either/or. My wireless mouse on the rtings table has a 6.3ms latency, is sub $40, and accepts a standard AA which I use a rechargable for. Battery life lasts 4-5 months on a single battery, and I'm reusing batteries I've had for 5 years.

I do personally agree that unstandardized batteries are a problem in wireless mice as eventually you'll be unlikely to find an exact replacement, but I think there can be plenty of wins from wireless. No cable drag (annoying!), no cable running across the desk (I can stow my mouse in a drawer in less than a second to clear my desktop), and I don't have to worry about the cable fraying over time (legitimately something that happened with my razer years ago!)

> Let's be honest here, you're either prejudiced against cables or you don't really care about performance.

Let's be honest here, you clearly have never used a decent or good wireless mouse, and have little or no knowledge of the marketplace (and oddly have a lot of opinions about them...)

> Having to change batteries several times a year is objectively more expensive, wasteful, worse for the environment, and burdensome than never having to change batteries.

Rechargeable batteries (either built-in li-ion or nimh AAA/AA) exist. Before you start going on about the inconvenience of charging: when I see my mouse dock's LED ring glowing orange as opposed to a more greenish color, I know I've got a couple of hours before I should go through the incredibly arduous process of...placing it on the dock for a bit.

> Wired is ALWAYS the objectively superior option in all metrics except for superficial & subjective "aesthetics", all else equal.

Not having a cord is substantially nicer from a usability and feel standpoint, and not just for gaming.

> "Essentially no lag" is objectively not the same as "no lag".

Go look at rtings or any other site that reviews mice, and you'll see that just like wired mice, wireless mice can vary in latency, but there are plenty of mice (even non-gaming ones) with latency matching or so close to wired mice it's within the realm of measurement error and the difference could not possibly matter even in competitive gaming.

You have a lot of opinions about wireless mice for someone who clearly has never used one.

> This might as be considered a law of physics - electromagnetic energy will always travel faster, more... through a conductive medium than through air.

it actually travels faster through air (no vacuum necessary) than through fiber or copper as those transmit information at 2/3rd of the speed of light while air transmits it at 99% [1].

which is why starlink could in theory achieve better latency than a straight run of fiber optic across the world [2].

this of course doesn't mean that it's better in a mouse because of the overhead of processing such a short distance.

[1] https://archive.is/c859M [2] https://youtu.be/QEIUdMiColU?t=238

Agreed and upvoted.

In practice, microwave networks are used over long distances precisely because they are lower latency than fibre.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/priva...

> Right up until you account for interference.

could you provide more info? the source I gave you has a real-world example of a wireless link used over fiber to achieve better latency.

What's the etiquette here or are we just being trolled?

Parent has edited all their comments now making the rest of the comment tree less useful. Essentially they were arguing that wireless signals themselves couldn't be faster than a wired/optical signal despite physics disagreeing.

I'd like a wireless mouse but I'm worried about security.

I've never had a problem in my entire life with wired keyboards, mice, or headphones. I've had probably aggregate thousands of separate instances of problems with wireless devices across the last 20 years.

Wireless is awesome for when you're on the go, but if you're going to be sitting at a desk for hours anyway, wired is life.

I have zero tolerance for crappy wireless stuff in general but my wireless Logitech mouse has worked flawlessly. I can't think of a reason to prefer a wired mouse over it.

The latency graph in the article you post actually shows sporadic but substantial lag of around 100% (12ms to 25+ ms) with the wireless dongle. The average of all the lag might be low, but the lag when it does occur seems quite high.

But in the real world, there can be even more lag.

I've tested a bunch of different high-end wireless mice that purport to have super-low wireless lag, and they all exhibit lag in my apartment.

Not constant lag, but sporadic occasional lag of like 600ms or more, every once in a while. For both clicking the mouse, or just moving the cursor.

Because I've seen it on Mac, Windows, and Linux, and with fairly pricey mice from Logitech, Corsair, Razer, and others, I think the reason is probably radio interference. I live in a dense apartment block in Tokyo, and also have kids with a bunch of wireless crap of their own.

Whatever it is, the only way I can have a mouse that doesn't ever lag is to connect it with a cable. I don't even play games, but the every-once-in-a-while lag is annoying enough when coding and web browsing that I now only buy mice that support wireless USB, Bluetooth, and USB-C wired connection.

After six months of using a Logitech g pro x superlight, i haven't seen any degradation in my performance in video games and even have improved a few of my records on FPS Aim trainer (Ranked top 50 in a few popular scenarios). There are people who reached the #1 world rank using that mouse too. I have played at high level for many years with a Microsoft Intellimouse 1.1 which had more than 10 ms of input latency despite being wired. I have noticed that the amount of frames per second has a much higher influence (If you shoot on a target then move the mouse before the next frame, then you may actually miss the target because the game may handles the mouse moves before the shoot event).

Was also about to reply with the Superlight recommendation. Cannot stand the lag of bluetooth mice and was working my way through various mice over the years, usually trying at least 5-10 alts per year. Have not bought another mouse since the Superlight. Other Logitech mice (gaming and otherwise) eventually failed in one way or another. Not only is the Superlight a superior experience — it performs just as well today as it did 1.5 years ago when I got it. Wish the dongle and charging port were USB-C and that the Logitech SW wasn't the hot garbage that it is (I eventually settled on using a spare machine to update its config bc I won't have that SW on my daily) but from the perspective of the actual mouse itself, it's amazing.

Alone the possibility that I could suddenly have an empty battery while being productive make wireless devices a obvious bad choice for a home desktop. IMO

My Logitech mouse uses 1 AA battery per more than 1 year and I even never turn it off. Also it has a red lamp which signals a low battery, it can work a week with that red lamp.

as a person who knew about this because of its gaming background, nowadays (as the others pointed out) a wireless gaming mouse is good enough to bypass the issue altogether. unless you like a lot of buttons or specific ergonomics for your mouse, give them a try!

After experimenting for many years with many kinds of mice, trackballs, touchpads, trackpoints etc. in the search for the most comfortable graphic pointing device, I have settled to use, instead of a mouse, a small Wacom Intuos graphic tablet (usually with Linux), configured in its "mouse" mode, i.e. with relative coordinates, not with its default absolute coordinates.

At least for me, using a stylus has proven to be much more comfortable, much faster and more precise than using any kind of mouse or any other pointing device.

Now I regret that I did not have the idea of replacing the mouse with a small graphic tablet many years earlier.

Can you switch to and from the keyboard just as fast or even faster than with a mouse?

See my answer above.

For short typing sequences I retain the pen between the thumb and the palm while touch typing and the switching between keyboard and pointer is faster than with a mouse or trackball.

Before typing a long text, I drop the pen on the tablet and I pick it up later, which takes about the same time as releasing then grabbing again a mouse or a trackball.

I was thinking about something like this for some time as well... care to elaborate? do you pick up the pen every time you switch from keyboard to "mouse" or do you have some type of ring holder?

The tablet, which has about the same size as a traditional mouse pad, has a concave space at the upper ridge, where you drop the pen when switching to the keyboard.

However, the pen is very light and I can retain it between the fingers without it limiting much the movements of the fingers. Because of that, if I have to type only a few words between some pointing actions I do not bother to drop the pen, but I touch type with the pen still between the fingers of my right hand. If I have to type more than one sentence, I drop the pen on the tablet and I pick it up again after finishing typing.

This actually makes on average the switching of the right hand between typing and pointing less distracting than with a mouse, because the heavier mouse must be released and grabbed after that, even when typing a single letter, which takes more time than moving the hand holding the pen between tablet and keyboard (especially now, after I have recently switched to a narrower ergonomic keyboard, without numeric pad, where the movement of the right hand is minimized).

The left mouse click is done by touching the tablet with the pen. The pen has 2 buttons for the thumb, which can be mapped to various events. I map one button to be the right mouse click and the other to be the double left mouse click.

I just dump my pen in the gap between the function keys and number keys.

I still have a mouse, so for quick stuff I tend to use that. but when I want to give my right hand a rest, or if I am doing precision stuff (ie copy pasting with small fonts, or drawing/CAD) then I use the table in absolute mode( that is the top right of the tablet is always top right of the screen)

Nice to see this here. I’ve using a tablet for cursor movement since around 2010, and I find it amazing except for one small issue I’ve never been able to solve: tapping with the pen in order to click is finicky, because if I even drag a few pixels during the tap, it turns into a drag gesture.

Right now I’m using a Huion tablet, which does not appear to allow customizing the drag-to-disable-click distance. Is there any Mac utility that would work for this?

I believe that there should be a way to increase the drag-and-drop threshold that is independent of the pointing device that happens to be used.

I have stopped using MacOS many years ago, so I do not know how this is done there, but on Linux I always increase the drag-and-drop threshold, because on high-resolution displays this can be a problem even with traditional mice, not only with tablets.

came here looking for this. i would HIGHLY recommend trying this if you, like me, suffer from wrist pain due to extended mouse use

Yes, my searches have also been initially been motivated by incipient problems with the wrist (and with the middle finger, caused by the scrolling wheel).

All hand discomfort has disappeared after switching to a tablet with pen and the fact that pointing with a pen is much faster and more accurate than with a mouse has been an unexpected bonus.

What kind of usage do you do with your pointer? I find that with code editing, it's annoying to pick up / put down the stylus all the time.

Have you tried a vertical mouse? That is the best for me: comfortable, yet mouse-y :)

With code editing, I keep the pen between the thumb and the palm while touch typing, which works because the pen is very light, so you can almost forget that you are still holding it.

This allows much faster transitions between typing and pointing than with a mouse.

I have not tried a vertical mouse, but I agree that it is likely to solve most of the comfort problems caused by a classic mouse.

Nevertheless, there is no chance for it to be as fast and accurate as a pen. With the pen I can point to any place on the screen pretty much instantaneously and using a negligible muscular force, due to its lightness.

My ideal device would be one where the pen is in absolute mode, but you can also use it as a touchpad in relative mode with your fingers.

Not sure about other OSes, but I occasionally use a Wacom Bamboo Pen&Touch (CTH-470) on Linux, and I have it set up to do exactly that. It's really easy to configure it with the KDE settings plugin thingy, but I think that just talks to the Linux Wacom drivers, so it should be possible to do something like this with other DEs too (if it isn't even the default). It's also trivial to set one the hardware buttons to do sruff like send Ctrl+Z or toggle the touch input on and off, which is nice. Plus, they're really cheap to buy used, I bought two for like 15€.

It's not without problems, I personally don't like the pointer speed / acceleration, scrolling and zooming are way too sensitive, and palm rejection isn't too great (it pretty much just disables touch whenever the pen is near the surface). However, I have put exactly zero effort into customising the first two things, so these might be fixable, and for me the latter isn't a huge problem because I don't use the pen and the touchpad together a lot, so having a toggle button as mentioned before works just fine for me.

A large format (A1 or A0) roll plotter, pencils, compass, protractor and set squares.

Obviously highly dependant on what you do. After being heavily screen only for most of my professional life, having the ability to print off a table sized drawing of an engineering diagram, review it, mark it up, and work with others in that process is really nice. It’s definitely more efficient in pure IO terms to work solely in the digital realm, but the forced interaction barriers help provide a little more room for rough thought before returning there for fine tuning.

I did something similar for a while with a drafting setup. One thing I liked about it was the utility in simple visualization techniques like drawing quickly in perspective or in various media.

After doing that for a while, I found Inkscape and Free mind/Freeplane to be pretty reasonable alternatives that are still digital.

Even in plain text mode I learned later that there are some practices that also help the big picture emerge faster, so the spacial effects aren't as necessary in many cases.

Still, it's fun sometimes to get out the supplies and work in that way...

can I ask in what field you work ?

Audiovisual systems integration. It's a mix of systems engineering, software development, DSP, acoustics, interaction design and physical infrastructure. Think of the tech that makes or captures sound or light at a venue, in meeting room, stadium or other bits of built environment. It's a fairly eclectic mix of disciplines and a lot of fun.

I use a 60% keyboard that doesn’t even have dedicated arrow keys. My caps-lock is configured as the Fn key and, when it’s held down, the JKLI letters are the arrow keys. This (and other macros) are actually really convenient when you get used to them. Unfortunately, it’s hard for me to type on “normal” keyboards because when I end up tiYping thinks like that. My keyboard is a Mistel MD600 split.

My favorite unusual accessory is a little 9 key mechanical auxiliary keyboard. I programmed it to be my debug keyboard with all of key combos for my IDEs debugger - run, stop, pause, next, step over/into, set breakpoints, etc. it saves a lot of time (or seems like it does).

I have done the JKLI to arrows thing too (well HJKL for me), huge quality of life improvement.

I have a 60% without arrow keys and I really miss them. I think in part because the built-in Fn arrow functionality on that keyboard is UJHK (Up-Down-Left-Right). If it's not vi's KJHL (Up-Down-Left-Right), I can never remember it. My daily driver is a 60% with arrow keys - The CoolerMaster SK622. I tried some larger Fekir ones wit arrow keys and function keys, but I find it better to have a smaller keyboard and a Stream Deck.

I moved down from a Logitech G19 to the current configuration. The ergonomics are much better with a smaller keyboard if your desk space is limited.

I have a similar setup with QMK. Where holding down the space bar with my thumb switches to the NAV layer and hjkl become arrow keys and other keys functions change too, like m and n to PGDN and PGUP.

Agree it is difficult at first switching back to a "normal" keyboard.

I have several 60% ANSI HHKB layout[0] boards that I'm fond of, which similarly lack dedicated arrows. They feel more natural to me than typical QWERTY boards, both in arrows being a layer (which reduces hand movement) and in Backspace being one row lower where it's a lot easier to reach.

[0]: https://hhkb.io/layout/

>My caps-lock is configured as the Fn key and, when it’s held down, the JKLI letters are the arrow keys

This is my favourite hack and I do it too, but I'm never giving up on having 105 keys in ISO format.

Same, but I use hjkl and I have the Home, End, PgUp, PgDwn, del keys also accessible with my right pinky when caps-lock is held down. I could never go back. Actually, I now have a 65% keyboard with arrow keys (Keychron V4), but I've never used them, so I'm thinking of going back to 60%.

I also have a Autohotkey script to replicate this when I use my laptop on the go. But I haven't managed to make it work when I need to hold other modifier keys at the same time, like shift or ctrl.

I feel like I could never get used to a keyboard like this. I use arrow keys all the goddamned time, along with home, insert, page up/down

The point is that this way arrow keys are right under your hand when you're typing.

Yeah but you have to hold down some kind of fn key to make them work

I used to think the same, but once you get used to it, you cannot go back to regular arrow keys. Probably a DFJK combo would be better than HIJK (because H forces me to move my finger from the middle row). But still is way better than the most common layout. And, yes, I delete with alt+D and alt+F :)

It's either 60% or TKL for me. If I'm going to use arrows, they need to be where they've always been. Those bastardized 65% and 72% layouts are an absolute non-starter for me. That being said, I got used to my Vortex II very quickly. Surprisingly quickly. By default, it uses Fn-WASD, NOT Fn-HJKL (vim) like on the newer Vortex 3. I find this very natural because I hold Fn with my right hand, and, well, I've been a gamer for 40 years, and WASD is ingrained in my left hand. If you use HJKL, you have to remap Fn to Caps Lock, which I've used as CTRL or Command, depending on platform, for about 25 years now. (After seeing the light with Sun keyboards.)

As who use 75% keyboard with QMK, I use both dedicated and hjkl mapped arrow keys. I don't understand why so many people love smaller keyboards for that reason.

(I have worked at home my whole career, so if this seems extravagant consider it is nearly my only business expense. :)

I have a 98” TV on the wall, with two 55 inch TVs in portrait orientation on each side, tilted 45 degrees toward me.

It turns out, the long dimension of the 55” screens equals the short dimension of a 98” screen. So all three screens have the same height.

Having huge screens on the wall means I don’t need my reading glasses, can demo easily, can look at my screen while walking around the room and thinking.

It keeps my desk clear of clutter, cables etc. Wireless keyboard, track pad, mouse & headphones.

Furniture is minimized with a small desk and no screen stands.

Clutter and crowding silently sap my productivity.

I use the two side screens to constantly show my todo’s & reminders, and messages that need responses, respectively. Otherwise for me, out of sight is out of mind.

The TVs are mounted low, only 18 inches from the floor, for a comfortable seated viewing angle. also this leaves room for motivational, decorative art over the screens.

Can you show us a photo of your setup please? Very intrigued

Sounds fascinating. Do you have a picture of the setup?

This sounds like a great 'artificial window' setup

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bv88wM6AN6Y

98/55=1.7818181...

16/8=1.777...

Only .2% off!

A document camera. Just an ordinary webcam, but pointed straight down at a blotter. It's much nicer than all of the "whiteboard" options I've tried.

What is the camera mounted on? Do you have a picture of the setup?

Most document cameras come with their own stand. I have an IPEVO VZ-R [1], which you can route through your capture card with an HDMI switch if you already have that kind of setup. Being able to draw on a piece of paper to explain a concept feels amazing compared to whatever drawing tools one otherwise would have in software.

[1]: https://www.ipevo.com/products/vz-r

That looks amazing; I just use a $50 webcam on a DIY arm with lots of zip ties, and I'm pretty happy with it.

It's on a springy swing arm from a decapitated lamp. Googling for "camera swing arm" brings up a few images and products that look better than my hackjob.

I'm using a simple support arm[1]. It is not even a camera, as I mounted a smartphone running a remote webcam app[2].

[1] https://www.amazon.com/OXENDURE-Webcam-Stand/dp/B07RNHZYGW (look for a cheaper vendor) [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pas.webcam...

For home use, Logitech have just recently released a webcam for this: https://www.logitech.com/products/webcams/brio-500-webcam.ht.... Built in tilt stand and an internal vertical image flip when pointed down.

For commercial setups (or personal use where money is no object): https://wolfvision.com/en/products/vz-c6.

I think the most significant keyboard feature is "small spacebar".

Most keyboards have a spacebar which is the size of 5 or more keys. It's more convenient if this very wide key gets replaced with Esc, Tab, Space, Backspace, Enter. (Which saves the pinky from having to reach for those keys).

For better or worse, keyboards which do follow this "no large spacebar" approach then tend to have other design improvements: e.g. the columns will be aligned, & not have the asymmetric row-stagger that normal keyboards have; or they'll be split keyboards (like ZSA's moonlander). -- Many will also opt to have fewer keys, so that layers can be leveraged to allow for a smaller keyboard.

I just checked on my own hand; I think I only use my pinky to hit Enter. Other keys:

Esc - Left Middle Finger

Tab - Left Ring Finger

Space - Either thumb, but usually right thumb

Backspace - Right ring finger

Enter - Right Pinky

I do use my left pinky for shift and caps lock though

Sure, but it's quite a reach to hit Esc where it is. You either need to move your hand, or to really stretch the fingers.

With more thumb keys, it's much easier to have access to these keys with hands rested on home row.

Escape isn't a key I find myself using very often. I think I probably just lift my hand up off the keyboard since it's used so infrequently.

A Crystalfont 2x16 LCD with 4 cursor and tick/cross keys which sits just below the middle monitor of my triple-head programming setup. Normally displays date, time, media volume and incoming email/voicemail counts. When a call arrives it shows the Caller ID (and contact name if recognised). The keys are used to adjust media volume and mute/unmute (and in hot weather, the left/right keys adjust the speed of a pair of 120mm PC fans that blow air over the keyboard).

I used to work for a company whose core product took forever to build (in maven) but we had to build it all the time. A coworker hooked up a USB LED traffic light to his macbook and wrote a driver for it that would display yellow when building, green when successfully built, and red when there were errors.

Two companies ago we had an actual old traffic light hooked up to that, but that was maybe a bit over the top.

I have a giant knife switch bolted to what looks like a thick slate base, which (reportedly, according to ebay seller) used to operate a lift in a goldmine in Colorado. Long term plan is to mount it to the wall, so when I leave the office at night I can throw this big old switch and turn everything off.

Many (many!) years ago I worked with a PDP-8 that had ferrite core memory. Because the magnetic state was persistent, come 5pm we'd just throw the switch and turn the machine off. 9am the next day we'd turn it back on, and it would continue with whatever calculation it had been doing the night before. It would have been cool to have a real mad-scientist switch like that, though.

I started on PDP-11s and big old boards stuffed with 64x1kb RAM so I had it relatively easy. Not quite the same, but every morning the boss would boot the system with 5 sweeps across the toggle switches to key in the bootloader. After that, all we have to do was occasionally move the teletype back into its corner on the room when it went walkies.

Have a look for "Vintage knife switch" on ebay; here's a current offering (only double pole): https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/295179145552

The vast majority of people still haven't realised the productivity benefits of properly big monitors. The desktop UI metaphor actually makes sense when you've got a monitor that's the size of a desk.

I'm with you. Mine is not particularly big either, just a common 27" 4k monitor but it's already a game changer for me because I used to only use 14" or 19" 1080p, it's night and day.

Big and/or multiple monitors. I'm baffled that some people apparently work entirely on laptop screens.

I tried to work as a nomad. I really missed my monitor and chair.

Portable screen. Didn't know that such exists, till about few weeks ago. Have a small apartment and sometimes have to work at the dining table. Using a big screen is not an option.

Portable screen is light, size of the laptop and charges/sends data through one cable. Perfect!

Wow. Nice! Didn't know this exists. Planning to get one. Do you have any recommendations?

Not OP, but I've been using the Asus ZenScreen and been happy with it.

Right now I'm at a co-working space and I have: - My MacBook on a stand to the left - My Asus ZenScreen to the right - The monitor the coworking space provides at some desks (If you get there in time before it's taken, lol) in the middle

Pretty great setup to know I'll have 3 screens and barely need to pack anything when I come in.

I got ASUS ZenScreen MB16AH.

Choosing one it's a bit confusing, Asus offers many models, and hard to understand the difference. There are some which have separate display port and power. Different covers. With a battery etc. I really wanted just one having only one cable.

On Amazon there are some other less/not known brands, offering bigger screens, but I felt more convinced by the mainstream brand.

Remember that your laptop has to support this. I tested it with an older MacBook Pro, and Lenovo ThinkPad. On my old Ideapad I don't have such port.

I've been looking at these. Any time I meet the team at a rented office space I really miss my dual monitor setup.

That's why I don't see the team in person much, tbh

Another possibility: if you own a mac, almost any ipad manufactured in last 6-7 years can act as an external screen.

There are apps like Duet and a number of others for Win use as well.

Another possibility: if you own any computer and any tablet, they can act as an external screen. That has been around for years before apple sherlocked it.

Another possibility. Get a Quest Pro VR headset.

I do have an Android tablet mostly sitting and a Linux laptop (running KDE) can I do it in a really seemless way?

Only through apps that work as RDP/remote desktop. You can't use native X/wayland screens with Android unless you root it.

will check it out

I use Deskreen with Windows, it has a Linux version that probably works similarly. I think it leverages browser streaming tech.

https://deskreen.com/

Easiest way to get it working is with a dummy plug (because it just casts displays, it can't create one), but maybe there's more options on Linux to fake a display in software.

Will check it out

also good with luna display

I've just bought a 16 inch high-ish res (QHD) one.

I don't do dedicated co-working spaces, but when desk-space and etiquette allow, I use it as a replacement for my 14inch FHD work laptop screen, rather than a second screen. I use it with a portable keyboard and mouse and just stand it on the folded laptop.

When I'm in a normal cafe or pub I just use the small laptop and mouse, no external keyboard or monitor.

My friend has one that mounts to the back of a laptop and slides out to become a second monitor. Probably useful if you need portability but also dual monitors.

Mx Ergo (by Logitech) is far and away the best "mouse" for me and probably for you. It only takes about two hours to transfer your motor skills of regular mouse to the Mx Ergo. Because this "thumb ball" mouse only involves your thumb to work the mouse you won't get the full wrist, shoulder and neck pain that you can get from a normal mouse. If you have any kind of arm pain then check this out.

If you're having those issues, please address the underlying problem instead of thinking that having the perfect ergonomic setup will fix your body. Getting up from the desk each day and getting some physical activity in will help your body a lot more in the long run.

Working with a computer is the underlying problem here. If a special mouse reduces tension, nothing wrong with that. Also you cannot know how often and intensely the parent poster exercises already.

True. I am speaking from my own experience of having a lot of pain at the desk at one point in my life. After I started exercising regularly I have had zero problems for years.

Your attitude is quite unpleasant, teetering on the edge of ableism. Some people (myself included) are just very sensitive to RSI. I get up and about plenty, but without my ergodox keyboard and mx ergo I'm in a world of pain after a regular workday.

If you heard me say this in person I'm sure that you'd hear in the tone of my voice that I'm more coming from a place of concern than anything. I understand that what I said landed wrong though. Sorry. I'm just trying to say to other people what I wish I heard from someone years ago when I was having the same issues.

I use an external touchpad instead of a mouse for the same reason. Zero wrist problems + I get the extra efficiency from gestures.

touchpads are literally the worst kind of mousing interfaces ergonomically

Have you got the precision of the regular mouse with this trackball?

I have tried a number of trackballs, and haven't been able to reach the precision of a regular mouse from any — after a week of usage of each of several trackballs I only got to the convenience/precision of trackpoint or bad touchpad.

Moving in straight lines, predictable directions and moving just a few pixels was the biggest issue.

Not OP but using the mx ergo since more than a year. Never really had problems with the precision, the precision in the first week of using the mouse will definitely be different, because your brain needs to adapt. The only time I have problems is, when I haven't cleaned the trackball for some time, then it will get jittery. But the mouse has a precision button next to the trackball where you can move really slow and will definitely have a chance to move just a few pixels.

There’s a dedicated button right at your thumb that increases precision on demand. :)

Love mine. Expensive but nice. The downside is the button switches failed for me after about 15 months. I'm Currently waiting for some time to replace the left and right buttons

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29448776

I had this problem as well and, as I recall, I fixed it by blowing high pressure air under the button. A 'can of air' under pressure will do.

Huge fan of the Ergo. I pair mine with the keyboard in the same family, both of which allow you to connect to and switch between multiple computers. It’s just perfect.

I have the MX Vertical from them, by far the best mouse I've ever used, bluetooth or proprietary wireless, sensible place for the charging cable to connect (rarely I might add).

I also have the Lift vertical, for use when travelling, but it's not nearly as nice as the MX.

edit: also the Ergo keyboard is fantastic. I can't overstate how using ergonomic keyboard/mouse is important; you're using them basically all day.

I have got a Mx Ergo, and to everyone else out there asking questions about this trackball. Let me tell you.

As long as you are not using the mouse to draw (photoshop, gis software, cad software etc...) you will adapt. And the thingy is comfortable to use.

If you need to do some of those tasks that requires drawing a polygon, snap vertex into other things etc... The MX Ergo is not for you. You can do it, but you will be significantly more slow, even after months of practice. Look something else. I wish someone would have told me this before.

A Tidbyt: https://tidbyt.com/

It's next to my computer, and I use it for notifications and smaller dashboards: https://github.com/tidbyt/community

What are its power requirements?

USB-C plugged into mains electric

Can you expand on what you use it for? What dashboards? Why do you like this more than a regular desktop notification?

Is there anything like this but... not as nice? (and not as expensive) I wouldn't mind having something like this to mess around on but not for $180 USD

Before the pandemic I would've suggested raspi & the official raspi display. But those are damn expensive.

The second option would be any cheapo Android tablet + Kiosk browser. It lets you have any web page visible and the screen turns on at voice/motion.

Or a more ready-made option would be an Elgato Stream Deck. You can customise the buttons pretty well.

If you don't mind a wired connection and a smaller screen you can use a USB-I2C bridge (such as https://www.adafruit.com/product/4471) with an I2C OLED screen and a couple lines in Python.

If you want it to be wireless you can build it around an ESP32 module or similar.

That looks like a stock LED panel, pretty cheap on Amazon/ebay and can be driven directly by a Pi (with a bit of wiring) or more simply via a Pimoroni RGB matrix driver. Search for 'HUB75' panel and you'll find plenty of stuff to play with.

You can get displays or a bluetooth speaker from DiVoom with a display that can be controlled from a PC, too.

I have the speaker called Timebox Evo with a 16x16 display. They used to be around $35 or so, i think now they cost $50. Its sound quality is mediocre at best but the display is nice, the app is pretty slick and the builtin battery lasts long. The build quality is also good.

product homepage:

https://divoom.com/en-de/collections/smart-pixel-speaker/pro...

github: (unofficial)

https://github.com/ScR4tCh/timebox

Yes! This one is half the price, but a bit more fiddling is required: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/cosmic-unicorn

Bonus points for a fun promo video:

https://player.vimeo.com/video/521081003

I use one of those desktop whiteboards. Love it. I’m used to use post-it notes all over my desk, but not anymore.

https://fluidstance.com/products/slope

Lesser-known keyboards: I use a small 40% (45-key keyboard) or an ortholinear keyboard for my daily work.

On both I have layers for a built-in Numpad, mouse keys (for controlling the mouse cursor without taking my hand off the keyboard), shortcuts for working with text (selecting an entire line, copying and pasting, etc) and various other finger- and wrist-saving shortcuts that help me ward off the likelihood of RSI.

I had a wrist injury in the past and it had a big impact on my productivity as a tech worker so using these small compact keyboards is a real godsend.

Everything I need is literally just one key away from another--no more stretching or contorting my hands and fingers to do CTRL+ALT+DELETE or CTRL+SHIFT+F5 for example.

The 40% keyboard can be used as a daily driver but the ortholinear keyboard is my go-to since it's perfect for both work and play.

What keyboards are they?

Left handed trackball (Elecom). Sits to the left of my Moonlander while my vertical mouse sits to the right. Not only is it convenient, as an old school Diablo player I get to tell people I duel wield.

I also have a cheap X-Pen graphics tablet that I use for ‘white boarding’ on zoom calls.

Almost forgot I also have a usb wireless numpad that I pair with a usb hid remapped on a pi zero to make hot keys for frequent actions.

+1 on the trackball.

When I travel I wind up working in all sorts of odd setups. No need to find a flat place to move a mouse. It works in tight places and uneven surfaces such as a couch.

+1 on the left-handed trackball and right-handed vertical mouse. I don't use both together, though. My trackball is a Kensington Orbit, with scroll ring.

I also have a cheap graphics tables, a Huion, for some digital painting or to help with creating software architecture diagrams.

+1 on graphics tablet. I got a Huion HS611. Surprisingly cheap and it becomes much easier to draw diagrams, annotate images, sign signatures, etc with your hand instead of a mouse. Highly recommended for those who need to draw, make diagrams etc.

I have an XP-Pen as well. Works great in Linux. I'm still amazed at how high quality these non-Wacom tablets are today. I had one of those cheap 6" Wacom Graphites back in the early 2000s and that was the best you could get. My XP-Pen blows that thing away. Still haven't found a great place to put it though. I'm just stashing it off to the side but it's awkward moving it around all the time.

If you're on Linux, Gromit-MPX is a great companion app to annotate anything on your desktop. https://github.com/bk138/gromit-mpx

I have a mouse cable bungee.

Particularly useful for twitch based FPS shooters such as Counter Strike, but overall ensures never to get the cable in your way.

PS: You don't use wireless for competitive shooters. LAN Cable, cable mouse, etc.

See: https://www.amazon.com/Glorious-PC-Gaming-Race-Bungee/dp/B07...

For mice they may have used to be the case, but recently wireless has become more popular (at least in CSGO.) 3/5 of the most popular mice used by pros are wireless (including the #1 spot.)

Highly doubtful

https://prosettings.net/games/cs-go/

Logitech X Pro Superlight seems pretty popular and sadly doesn’t work via cable but only Logitechs lightning receiver.

I’ve played with the Superlight for a year or so and and couldn’t notice the difference to the mouse is used before and am using now, both with a cable.

Ah, interesting. I haven't heard of these yet.

even with an older model like the g603 you cant tell the difference anymore

Long before the FPS shooters started showing up I had the problem with mouse cables pulling on my hand and causing pain in the wrist. The solution was to use cable ties to fix the mouse cable to the keyboard cable so the mouse cable does a little loop up in the air and leaves enough space to move the mouse everywhere. Extra useful when you accidentally knock the mouse down because you are using an ergonomic mouse that is higher than you are used to. Instead of hitting the floor in three pieces, it just hangs in the air :-)

Yeah, reduces the free-hanging cable weight. Been doing this too for decades.

I was thinking of picking one up and then accidentally built one using a cup of pens...

But I told myself if I can't improve on the pens with some kind of wire mock-up (the idea being to tuck the bottom under my desk mat for security) I'll spring for the real thing. It's a really nice effect.

I never knew I needed this... When you're moving your mouse and the cable snags on... "What? What the hell did it snag on this time? AIR???"

All the clutter in that area on the desk...

BTW, I don't use a mouse bungie. The cable hangs from behind the monitor screen.

Several pros today use wireless mice. I think your notions of wireless is a bit outdated :)

In CS:GO tournaments basically everyone uses wireless now. Logitech G PRO X Superlight is amazing. Never used a lighter mouse and will never go back to wired.

https://liquipedia.net/counterstrike/List_of_player_mouse_se...

UPS that can run my PC, monitors, USB hub for 10-30 minutes. I rarely have power outages, but when I do have one it's a non-event Cheap boom arm for the webcam. Stream Deck makes it was to quickly control audio and lights and aps Tourbox makes it easy to edit video Elgato Keylight Airs for video calls Neumi powered speakers. Corsair K100 keyboard. I love the feel and being able to disabled the capslock key Logitech MX Vertical mouse. I hate using any other mouse at this point Syba Sonic USB DAC. Better audio to the headphones plus a big volume knob Jabra Evolve2 30 wired headset. They are comfortable and I don't need to charge them. Since they are USB-C, I can plug them into my phone for longer calls. Audio-Technica ATH M50 headphones. When I want to listen or work on video. Under the desk headphone mount. The convenience of being able to quickly grab either headset without having to look away Desktop mat from drop.com. It looks better and it's another layer of padding for your hand. ErgoFoam Adjustable Foot Rest. It makes my feet happy Steelcase Leap chair. Spend the money on a good chair. Your back will thank you STEALTHO Office Chair Caster Wheels Set. Replace the wheels of your office chair with polyurethane wheels and skateboard quality bearings. Amazon Echo Show 5. It's a desktop clock and a display for the doorbell camera.

Can you please reformat this comment it is really hard to read.

Sometimes people forget that you need two newlines to break text into paragraphs on HN. I opened the browser inspector and copied the raw text, which still has the single newlines, then doubled the newlines.

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UPS that can run my PC, monitors, USB hub for 10-30 minutes. I rarely have power outages, but when I do have one it's a non-event

Cheap boom arm for the webcam.

Stream Deck makes it was to quickly control audio and lights and aps

Tourbox makes it easy to edit video

Elgato Keylight Airs for video calls

Neumi powered speakers.

Corsair K100 keyboard. I love the feel and being able to disabled the capslock key

Logitech MX Vertical mouse. I hate using any other mouse at this point

Syba Sonic USB DAC. Better audio to the headphones plus a big volume knob

Jabra Evolve2 30 wired headset. They are comfortable and I don't need to charge them. Since they are USB-C, I can plug them into my phone for longer calls.

Audio-Technica ATH M50 headphones. When I want to listen or work on video.

Under the desk headphone mount. The convenience of being able to quickly grab either headset without having to look away

Desktop mat from drop.com. It looks better and it's another layer of padding for your hand.

ErgoFoam Adjustable Foot Rest. It makes my feet happy

Steelcase Leap chair. Spend the money on a good chair. Your back will thank you

STEALTHO Office Chair Caster Wheels Set. Replace the wheels of your office chair with polyurethane wheels and skateboard quality bearings.

Amazon Echo Show 5. It's a desktop clock and a display for the doorbell camera.

The MX Vertical is great but as soon as they release a version with the same scroll wheels (plural) from the MX Master, mine will go straight into the trash (well, not really).

This is the dream for people who don't like "wasted screen estate"!

have you tried actually running the pc and everything for 30 min on the battery? I also have a UPS that claims a certain wattage and the one time I tried it, it seemed to be losing power very quickly even when I only had my router and modem on it.

Simply a question of capacity planning, load balancing, and configuration.

+1 recommendation for a cheap UPS.

I was kinda amazed when I plugged in the UPS to my M1 Mac Mini with USB and macOS just detected it without any software. It just shows up as a battery just like on a laptop with all the same options.

People will love you much more if you use a real microphone. I have a travel-sized one from RØDE; the difference it made, in how people perceive my voice, is massive - I sound like a professional speaker rather than a geek in the basement. This brought significant reputational advantages.

I also have an UPS under the desk, keeping up the wifi hub in all circumstances; it has a couple of USB charging ports on the front, so I use those with most random things that need charging. For some things I recently started using elbow USB-C connectors, or ones that can bend either way, to tidy up some corners and reduce strain on connectors.

The rest is about ergonomics - screen at the right level, good chair (Aeron, although tbh I miss my previous Mirrah) to avoid back pain, good split keyboard (Kinesis, although I wish i could afford an ergodox) to take away wrist pain (massive difference), that sort of thing.

Yeah when I went full remote I decided to buy both a 4k Webcam (at the time, for job interviews) and a microphone marketed for podcasts, and everybody likes both. I do find people commenting on the background of my apartment more often though lol

I use a logitech brio 4k webcam (only 4k at certain resolutions) with a JLAB Talk Pro Omnidirectional microphone.

I also started recording programming tutorial videos to justify the cost of the microphone

I have a DSLR with video capability, so I bought a HDMI to USB input dongle. Works fine with MS Teams, but for some reason Zoom selects the lowest possible resolution setting which has the wrong aspect ratio and makes me look squished. There's no setting in Zoom to get it to select a different input video mode, and I haven't been successful in getting V4L2 to pretend that the wrong video mode doesn't exist.

The advantage of using a DSLR with a nice big lens is that you can open the aperture up wide, and you'll be the only thing in focus.

Hey! Which mic you have from RODE?

The NT-USB. Came with a pop filter and stand. Bought it ages ago and still going, with the only problem being the USB socket at the bottom got a bit loose - my kids abused it when I wasn't there.

I have USB footpedals.

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/01/review-usb-foot-pedals-fs3_...

I joke that I have them programmed for select all, copy, and paste. But, really, it is for microphone mute, camera toggle, and boss key.

Takes up a small amount of under desk space, but worth it.

What pray tell does the "boss key" do?

Closes HN and opens up tabs for work I reckon.

This is old school: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_key

I think Wolfenstein had one.

I have a heated mat for my cat to sit or sleep on, my workflow is greatly improved when she's not sitting on my keyboard.

I recently ditched my external monitor and I’m finding myself less distracted. 16 inch MacBook Pro screen is all I really need. Anyone else prefer working with minimal peripherals?

This is much worse for posture though. I much prefer having a monitor that is elevated so that when I sit up straight it is directly in front of me

I do put it on a stand and use a Magic Keyboard and trackpad.

Tried it but the viewing distance makes it too small for me.

The only way I could go laptop-exclusive is with a VESA mount laptop stand attached to an adjustable monitor arm. I've grown too used to my desktop monitors sitting at the perfect height thanks to the arms they're attached to.

I think I'd be quickly frustrated though because even on a 16" MBP, using an IDE like Xcode or Android Studio the screen gets jam-packed so easily with all the panes and inspectors and such. That screen size is probably like a football field to the vim/emacs types though.

That screen size is probably like a football field to the vim/emacs types though.

I do webdev in Vim. It is nice to have the browser on one side and the editor on the other. With a pretty standard 1080p 24" monitor, that is just barely doable with a comfy font size. My coworkers often write very longgg lines of code :/

I use a Roost laptop stand with a keyboard and mouse. Works great.

https://www.therooststand.com/

When I was not self-employed my company forced us to use an external monitor, keyboard, mouse and a chair with armrests, because of regulations. I bet those regulations are there for a good reason but after 16 years of self-employed working from home on my laptop (no external monitor) on a 5 wheels chair with no armrest I'm still fine. I definitely prefer looking down than up. It's easier on my neck and I can look both at the screen and at my hands and touchpad. Not that I need it but it probably helps somewhat.

I removed armrests because my wrists are resting at the side of the touchpad. I never touched the armrest unless I was standing up or sitting down.

I remove or drop armrests because the ulnar nerve pressume makes half my hand go numb.

I’ll see your 16” MacBook and raise you 12” iPad with external mech keyboard. I’ll admit that I’ve recently reverted to a 16:10 external display as I’m working more with engineering drawings and this reduces printing for short term use, but having one and only one thing to focus on can definitely be good under the right conditions.

Do you work in iOS apps or with Remote Desktop?

SSH or mosh (via https://blink.sh/) back to a cloud/remote NixOS VM. The iPad is purely a self-contained interface with a local browser.

Sometimes. It's definitely situational. Some tasks that involve a lot of visual cross-referencing can really use the screen space, but my deep work mode is curling up somewhere with nothing but a 13" laptop. Never at my desks, though: I'll roam around my environment or go out if I'm laptop-only. It's probably obvious that I'm a big tiling WM and terminal multiplexing fan.

I went with one ultrawide external monitor that I use in “clamshell mode.”

I vary between one to many. Sometimes it's beneficial to have an entire workflow up across 2 or 3 screens.

Used to have huge three screen set up, arch linux, all sorts of complicated nonsense.

These days I have a 14 inch macbook, which I put on top of a few books and control with a keyboard + magic trackpad. Can't say it's made me any more or less productive.

The biggest improvement i've made was acquiring a desk treadmill, hasn't affected my productivity but now I'm getting 10-20k steps a day without really thinking much about it.

That's me. I definitely feel like I focus better with a single display and not having things like Slack, Spotify, etc. visible. The 16" MBP is about the minimum screen space I like.

Honestly, it baffles me how people can do this. I would typically have four working windows across a pair of monitors: one for the current primary code file, one for its interfaces (header file), one for its unit tests, one for documentation.

Similarly I resent the loss of 16:10 or taller monitors — I want those extra few lines of context.

Now, there was a time long long ago when I could work with a single 80x24 screen. But then I had a huge L-shaped desk with one printed listing for the current primary code file, one for its interfaces (header file), one for its unit tests (who am I kidding), one for documentation.

Probably a little late for anyone to actually see this, but I am REALLY happy with this desk lamp solution:

https://amzn.to/3MlWGhH

It perches up on top of my monitor (taking up no desk real estate which was my original goal), runs on USB, and puts off a pleasant light.

I use a Bastard Keyboard Charybdis Nano. It's an ergo 3x5 keyboard with built in trackball. I built it myself but you can get them pre built too.

https://github.com/Bastardkb/Charybdis

Toslink switch. A kind of device that can switch a path between multiple inputs and multiple outputs. Mine has 4 inputs and 4 outputs and a remote that lets me select current input and output separately with two button presses.

My inputs:

- laptop with external Behringer audio interface with optical output,

- bluetooth receiver/transmitter with optical output

- PS4 (through toslink output)

My outputs:

- DAC (with optical input) into headphone amplifier into headphones

- "large" amplifier (with optical input) for my bookshelf speakers,

- bluetooth receiver/transmitter with optical input

The bluetooth receiver/transmitter is a funny device that can perform one of two roles and has separate remote to toggle. It is connected to the switch twice, once for output, once for input. I use this to send signal to up to two pairs of bluetooth headphones (for example for watching movies on external monitor). I also use this to capture output from my phone or laptop when the laptop is not connected to the docking stotion.

What all this does is it allows me to send any listed input to any listed output, except bluetooth into bluetooth -- that device can only operate in one selected mode. For example I may play PS4 on my speakers and with one button press send it to my bluetooth headphones or my wired headphones. Or I can use my bookshelf speakers with my laptop on my lap. Everything without connecting any cables at all -- just up to three presses on two remotes.

I had non-optical solution before but this caused a lot of interference. Rather than try to debug and fix this I decided to just not have any copper between devices. Optical cables fixed it all for me.

I have a similar setup, but with Monoprice coaxial audio cables that seem totally immune to interference, and using mixers so there's no input switching.

I have simultaneous inputs from my old analog consoles hooked up to a CRT, my OLED TV's analog out (meaning that automatically gets audio from whatever HDMI source), my turntable, and my computer.

The only switching I have is for the output: to my home theater speakers (2.1) or to headphones.

Slightly off-topic, but a "lesser known accessory I use(d)" back in the 1970's was the Microwriter [1], a chording keyboard that provided for a typing speed not possible with normal keyboards. I am a proficient (Pitman) touch typist, but after a clumsy learning curve, the Microwriter more than doubled my input speed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwriter

I had forgotten all about these! I have a vague memory of being a kid and seeing someone in a store with one of these hammering away - I assume doing inventory of some kind? I was amazed at their speed.

Interestingly I cant seem to find any youtube videos if someone using one.

I've been using an Elecom EX-G left-handed wireless trackball (thumb operated) for ages: https://www.amazon.co.uk/ELECOM-Left-handed-Wireless-functio...

I'm naturally right-handed, but learnt to use a mouse/trackball with my left hand ages ago when I figured out the twisting/ergonomic issues with a right-handed mouse and a keyboard with a numeric keypad. I was previously prone to hurting my right-shoulder blade (pulled muscle?) as there's a constant twist compared to the mid-line of the keyboard.

I use the same trackball and I love it. * can't even imagine going back to a regular mouse.

I use a Japanese keyboard because it comes with additional thumb keys. I use software to remap the thumb keys to additional layers. For example, if I hold thumb+a, the alpha keys under my right hand turn into a numpad. If I tap the thumb key by itself, it turns the keyboard into a mouse.

How interesting! Any more details on the brand, or model? Any photos?

I use a Thinkpad keyboard with a track point mouse. So nice to not have to move my hands off the keyboard to move the mouse.

Except for their damnable placement of Fn where Ctrl should be.

You can change that in the bios.

Yeah, I did that. But I'm not sure now if that was that necessary - sometimes fingers slip to the nearby Ctrl key.

Not on the Thinkpad Trackpoint Keyboard II.

I'm one of those weirdos who remaps Caps Lock to Ctrl. Really cuts down on the hand contortions when using emacs.

None of this is really unknown, but maybe not super common.

* Standing desk. I work and play on my computer, so I try to spend at least half the working day in a standing position. It's an electric one, ime switching being effortless is very important for actual usage.

* Wired headset. If I'm on a call (work or TTRPG), I plug it in. Otherwise it's lying on the side. I hate charging so much, I even have my wireless mouse permanently connected via USB.

* Sound card. A Creative Soundblaster ZX. Probably not needed anymore, but my last laptop (2006ish) had a soundcard in that pci slot thing, and I bought one for my first Desktop afterwards and stinky kept it. I do like the Soundblaster software and it's not as if I need the pcie X1 slot it takes up for anything else.

* Document scanner. Scan all paper documents I might need again and store them in paperless ngx (the scanner software scans to a smb share on my home server that paperless consumes)

During colder weather I use a heated water bottle under my feet. Warms me up and keeps my fingers from getting stiff.

I built myself a small special-purpose keyboard with two parts: the main part is a 5-key board to control music players: play/pause, volume control, next/previous. The second (and more fun) part is a big blue arcade button that locks the screen. I worked for a while for a federally-funded R&D center where we could get in trouble if we left a computer unlocked and having a big blue button that I could slap as I stood up from my desk helped me stay in infosec's good graces. Now that I'm WFH I still enjoy it.

- DK2 VR camera so I don't need lights. (infrared)

- GV-USB2/Elgato HD60S to capture C64/Amiga1200/Raspberry 4 on Windows my desktop and/or display them on monitors.

- Many screens in a compact area (all 4:3/5:4, matte and low res): http://move.rupy.se/file/station.jpg

- 40% keyboard for that Raspberry 4 so it fits in front of my HHKB JP: http://move.rupy.se/file/last_computer.png

- Recently started using my old "Tab A" tablet with bluetooth Thinkpad keyboard and mouse, much lighter than a laptop, just wish I could install vanilla linux on it.

- UrbanEars Plattan 2 bluetooth (about 10+ of them) because it has wired and bluetooth. (sold out now unfortunately)

- Røde USB mic.

Indenting your lines wraps your content in <pre><code> tags. Remove the indent and your links will work again.

Thx!

Is this a streaming setup? I'm quite interested in seeing point 1 in action, do you have some videos of it?

It looks terrible! :D

My github username on the HN profile on twitch.

That really is terrible haha. I can’t quite tell what’s in frame on that camera feed. Is it pointed at you?

What is the benefit of having low res monitors?

- It uses less power to render to and light up.

- It's smaller.

- I can read them without expensive advanced rendering = standard bios/boot/terminal bitmap fonts are large enough.

- It looks better imo.

- It probably lasts longer.

And probably more that I forget now...

It's not an extremely unusual peripheral, but I use a rather nontraditional display with my Mac Studio, the LG DualUp. It's a 28-inch 16:18 aspect (square-ish) display with 2560x2880 native resolution (roughly the pixel density of a "4K display"). I use it rotated (for 18:16 aspect) and I love it. For general use -- web, photos, terminal windows -- it's great, and it's perfect as a dev machine, which it also is. I'm more fond of it than any display I've used in the past.

The display in my setup: https://www.flickr.com/photos/blakespot/52345176302/in/album...

I use a board with 32 RGB LEDs to show process status: https://github.com/shapr/bloohm

If you ever have multiple hour long builds and/or test suites running, this is is a big help.

Cool idea.

> time $* && fin || die

I don't know zsh, but this doesn't look escaped properly to me? Bash has so many footguns.

What does the bloom filter do? Is it sort of like a hash to try to make each process show up on a different LED on the display?

Yes, that's exactly what it does!

Also bonus feature is the LEDs that light up for the same command in the same directory are also the same LEDs.

That means I can tell exactly which processes are in which status.

Monitor arms freed up a ton of desk space.

Wireless noise cancelling headphones helped with concentration.

UPS saved me a couple times from losing work during power outages.

monitor arms are _great_. you get your desk back, plus you can really just put your monitor away, or adjust it so that two people can see it, etc.

Unless you're as anal-retentive as me and are driven insane by the slightest hint of tilt to one side or the other.

I keep a small level attached to the top so I can tweak it level.

I built my own desk, and it's ever so slightly off-level. It's .... more annoying than I would care to admit.

I use a Tiny Tower Stand with a tablet pc, which enabled my Ergo Mobile Computer setup ( https://reddit.com/r/ergomobilecomputers/ )

I haven't used a second monitor since, and don't need to wear glasses at the computer anymore since the setup is a few inches closer to the face.

(not all are computer peripherals, but other comments seem wider than initial criteria)

* whiteboard placed on a painting easel next to my desk (when I don't use whiteboard, I can use the easel it to paint acrylic) - about 90x120 cm. I put my tasks for work, but also pick exercises with checkbox to do during the day.

* AKAI mpk mini - when tired of work, can jump over to Ableton like software and relax

* MX Master 3S - ordered kind of accidentally, stayed as solid replacement of previously used Apple Trackpad.

* cutting board as mouse mat: https://www.olfa.net.pl/products/Mata-do-ciecia-CM-A4-RC.htm... If I need to cut something, it's there. As a downside - it might be wearing off my mouse quicker.

* wifi/assistant controlled light bulb behind the monitor. Easily to regulate light around my screen - bright when needed, switched to blue in the evening.

* Varier Variable Balans (bought 2nd hand for 20% of original price) - works nicely with electric-standing desk from Ikea.

wait I thought that blue light at night was bad for your sleep? Are you using it as some sort of sleep suppressant?

Recent studies I've read explained that it's not so much the color that's the problem as when and how much we're exposed to it.

I haven't tought about it, but now that you mentioned it seems obvious. It's more of a background color, when I for example watch tv in another part of that room. It gives an ambient so I see shapes of furnitures but it doesn't attract attiention. Also it's subtle dark blue, nothing like the one that shines brightly from your phone straight into your eyes (I think it matters). I also never have problems falling asleep, since I get up early, I fall asleep in a matter of few minutes around 10-11pm.

Correct, our eyes have cells that respond to certain wavelengths ("blue light") and send signals through nerves to the brain, but those nerves aren't attached to the visual cortex, they are attached elsewhere. And that's why "blue light" inhibits sleep. ...I wish I could provide a citation, these details are something I just heard late last week...

Just picked up a MX Master 3S recently. Big thing I love is that you can use it on up to 3 devices, so I can have it on my MacBook for work and then click to setting 2 and switch to the usb dongle on my gaming PC - no need for extra mice/cords!

Thing of beauty:)

Lighted USB volume knob - they're inexpensive, the large aluminum knob is on a sturdy base, can be pressed down for mute.

ReMarkable2 e-ink tablet -- okay, it's a standalone device, but interfaces to the computer in cool ways (like screen sharing), and it's changed my life as far as note-taking goes

Just wondering, do you have good handwriting? I love the idea of hand written notes, but while my writing is legible, it’s unpleasant on the eye.

My handwriting is crap, always has been, but I take handwritten notes at times because it is convenient and fast (sometimes), I don't take them to look easy on the eye, I take them for the utility of having taken them. Usually I'll OCR anything that needs keeping long-term and keep it digitally.

Things like BuJo don't appeal to me, because it strips the practical nature of handwritten notes away in favour of making something more akin to art, and thus people become precious about their aesthetics rather than quality of note taking and ability to use their notes. Sorry, bit of rant, been trying to nail notes for a long time, but my conclusion is different tools for different tasks. Trying to compile it all in one place is a nice idea, but perhaps unrealistic for a lot of fields.

The ReMarkable is so tempting but so expensive. It's just hard to stomach spending $500 at a minumum for the tablet + folio + stylus when I could have an iPad (a gimped base model one, but still) for the same price

I find it very tempting but last time I looked into it the sync is to their proprietary service (unless you mess with it). That is going to be a hard no from me.

Got mine for $279 refurb on their site, $299 new. Get a third party pen w/eraser, I think they can be had for $40.

It syncs to Google Cloud

I use plug-in Sennheiser HD 569 headphones, for better audio experience. But with that, I have a Koss in-line volume control. I'm very picky with how loud things are, so I use the volume control to fine-tune it frequently. Much easier than having to constantly tweak software settings for volume.

> Lighted USB volume knob - they're inexpensive, the large aluminum knob is on a sturdy base, can be pressed down for mute.

Any particular recommendations with Linux support?

This isn't standalone, and doesn't have press-for-mute, but the DasKeyboard 4 Pro has a nice, large aluminum volume knob (and a separate mute button near it). Works perfectly in Linux, along with the "sleep" button. It's part of the keyboard so it's close to your hands and doesn't have any separate cabling.

I got two from Amazon recently and they both work out of the box with Linux. I suspect any you can find will work. They’re standard HID devices which send multimedia key codes like KEY_VOLUMEUP and KEY_VOLUMEDOWN

https://www.amazon.com/d/B0BKG11XBQ

https://www.amazon.com/d/B0B5ZXZWS5

Everyone mentions the remarkable but the degrading pencil tips have got to be the stupidest, most infuriating, most egregiously rent-seeking product conceivable by the human mind. I refuse to play that game. Why would I want that feeling anyways? On paper I choose the slickest paper and exclusively use a fountain pen as wet as practical without being messy. I understand the glass tablet surface isn't nice for writing and I appreciate the alternative, but the $1.50 a pop guarantee that the tablet becomes a paperweight when remarkable goes out of business is insane. (On that note, I also seem to recall that features have been removed from the device via updates.)

There are a bajillion 3rd-party sellers for EMR nibs; they're just little bits of plastic.

You might be interested in the Supernote, though - it's a similar device to the Remarkable, but it comes with a hard-nib pen and has a slightly soft surface on the screen, which gives it more of a pen-on-paper feel.

VR headset, swivel chair, and 270° of screens. What's bigger than ultra-wide?

I use both a Quest 2 (running Immersed on Linux) and a Valve Index (running Virtual Desktop on Windows).

Bigger, yes, but much lower resolution.

Yea, I've been really temped to try something like this for travel but I don't wanna spend the $500 for potential disappointment, what is the real resolution?

The resolution is: [disappointing × disappointing]

The oculus quest 2 has a resolution of 1,832 x 1920. If the virtual screen takes up half your field of view (usually it will be less, even if it looks big in your field of view) then it might be effectively 900x1000, but then you have to keep in mind that none of your screens sharpening tricks are in effect, so it looks even lower.

If you're interested in VR in general, the Quest 2 is a great option today.

However, I can't recommend any current option specifically as a monitor replacement when traveling. https://simulavr.com/ will be interesting, when it eventually becomes available.

Both higher and lower resolution, since resolution can colloquially mean either pixel count or pixel size. I have more pixels available since rotating my view reveals more screen space, yet all of that screen space is at less pixels-per-degree. For some, less PPD is intolerable. What I have works for me most of the time.

Do you actually work in there? I have an Index but have never tried Virtual Desktop with it.

Yes, but not all the time. Over the long term, VR definitely averages less than half, though some days I use it all day.

I am so excited to try this when it's high resolution enough.

I'm doing the same with a Pico 4 headset (higher resolution and colour passthrough). After getting used to the Pico's crisp display, I honestly wouldn't want to use a Quest 2 anymore.

Hackcessories:

An upside-down metal drink tumbler, with an anti-static wrist strap around it, and clamped to the chassis of the computer. In the colder months, I touch it before touching parts of the computer, or my metal keyboard (which is not great for static). Before that, I hung up my system several times from static shocks on USB stuff.

A pile of random stuff with the right dimensions to put my webcam on in front of my monitor, so it looks like I'm actually looking at the person talking. This one doesn't work so well.

I use Center Cam and love it. https://thecentercam.com/

A mousepad. I don't often see them used by people with mice any more and stopped suggesting them since almost everyone turned down the idea.

I used to own the original 3M gaming mouse pad.

It felt amazing, just a bliss to use everyday. Sturdy, it was abused everyday yet showed no sign of any damage. It just works - it does not move from its place, felt rock solid, yet very thin. It always looks clean; they say that there are microscopic ridges designed to trap dirt etc, so it stays clean, yet cleanable.

Small things - but everything adds up, making it the superior mousepad.

I have yet to find a mousepad capable of all those.

Sadly lost it when I moved abroad.

Your comment made me remember this - so I looked around. Turned out now there's 3M Precise mouse pad - however, there are quite some negative comments. Too bad.

Tried to look for that old 3M mousepad instead - no luck so far. Sigh.

Currently using a hard metallic mousepad, it's almost as good, except that it looks dirty rather quickly.

A hard metallic one? That is hardcore. I prefer the fabric/foam ones for the comfort. Perhaps I have a wimpy thumb.

I think most people used mousepads so the mouse could work properly

I find that they're more comfortable than a table surface for my wrist and lower thumb, and depending on the table mean that the mouse doesn't make that horrible sandpapery noise if it's running on grain, imperfections or uh, a few months' lunch ;-)

Me too. But most people I know used mousepads so the mouse could work properly, not for their confort

I use an eye-tracker to move the mouse, voice command and a set of 3 pedals: one to toggle the eye-tracking, another to toggle voice command and third for mouse left click. I started using these during a rough patch of RSI but now that I'm recovered still used them because they prevent any of these type of issues happening again and also, they're super comfy to work with (half of my workflow is automated using voice command and moving the pointer with your eyes is essential once you've learn how to use it properly). Highly encourage to try them :D

I have multiple of these boom arms [1] clamped all around my desk. Great for things that require frequent fiddling (webcams / mics / lighting)

https://www.ulanzi.com/collections/desk-set-up/products/viji...

I do the same with 1/4" brass or stainless rod..you can make little clamps to attach them to a desk or an item by drilling and tapping a screw. to attach to the rod, drill a 1/4" hole, and a perpendicular one which you tap.

all easily obtainable at a generic hardware store and requiring only a hand drill

Got a picture? Sounds cool

Made my own minimalistic laptop stands to bring its screen to a more ergonomic height https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5633824

I have two circular gel disks to protect my elbows from rubbing the desk too hard (I've put holes in several uniforms). The product is called jelbows.

I'll never buy a new non-split keyboard

I've been using the Microsoft Natural series keyboards for years. Split, and ergonomic.

Windows works fine if you just plug 2 keyboards into it. Left hand on one keyboard, right hand on the other; works exactly as if you had one keyboard. Uses a bit more desk space but way cheaper and super easy to manage in an office setting.

I only recently tested this out on a mac and was sad to see that shift/ctl/buckey on one keyboard didn't affect keys on the other keyboard. Probably not worth opening a bug with them.

And if you take a sawzall to it, you can get rid of the unnecessary part to save desk space! :D

I've found that the "dedicated" split keyboards don't necessarily have a comfortable distance in the split. The two keyboards end up about about a body width apart especially if I use a standing desk.

These days I use an old M4-1 keyboard (first gen thinkpad keyboard / trackpoint in a standalone keyboard) because I just don't type as much as I used to and I value the desk space.

I use a ReSound Multi Mic (see https://www.resound.com/en-us/hearing-aids/accessories/multi...) with my MBP. It plugs into the headphone port and transmits the sound to my ReSound hearing aids.

As you can see at the referenced URL, the Multi Mic has other capabilities as well. I’ve used it to hear speakers at conferences, college classes, and other talks given by speakers who were at a distance from me. And, I’ve used it to pick up the signal sent by venues’ audio loops at other speaking events.

The only feature it has that I haven’t used is its “conference table mic” - ReSound says I should be able to lay it flat on a table I’m sitting at with others and it’ll automatically zero in on one speaker or another when they talk and send that person’s voice to my hearing aids. I gotta’ test that feature out one of these days soon because that sounds amazing.

Sadly, not much. The Datahands[1] are long gone. The keyboards I bought for their n-key rollover for Plover[2] are there but I can’t stenography. The Cykey chording keyboard[3] gone I think. The software I made to use a normal keyboard as chording input like that, unused. https://talonvoice.com/ free edition couldn’t make any sense of my accent I think. The webcam from when multitouch was new and could be done in software with the shadows of your hand on paper and camera, I still have but don’t use. The Remarkable tablet and pen mostly unused. Going back a lot further the infra red receiver and software to use a standard TV style remote control, nope.

I never got the Griffin PowerMate or the Leap motion or the new LED button boards aimed at streamers.

Just AutoHotkey survives. And it’s sad, computers could be so much more but I guess I don’t have much use for anything else.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DataHand

[2] http://www.openstenoproject.org/plover/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyKey

I like my USB Griffin PowerMate. Shame Griffin basically dropped all support for it.

Have you considered ASETNIOP [0]? It offers stationary hands benefits like Datahands or Cykey without the complexities of full-blown steno. G Heavy Industries formerly built the Ginny, a keyboard designed to run ASETNIOP out of the box, but the owner appears to have had a rough few years and shuttered the business. A possible alternative to a used Ginny might be this open source system [1].

Still working on my steno (with a StenoMod). It's taken some time, but I'm finally at the point where I can derive more satisfaction from success than my aggravation due to lack of speed.

[0] https://asetniop.com/ [1] https://github.com/kbjunky/Chordie

I wouldn't call it lesser-known, but I tend to use a full-size standard 104-key keyboard with my laptop. It's nice to be able to reach all the keys by feel and to have all those extra keys like Page Up and Page Down, etc. available without having to use a modifier.

I like my tenkeyless for that. Slightly more compact than a full-size, but still has PgUp and PgDn and such, and in the right place.

I rarely use the numpad, but I generally stick to salvage equipment, so standard is what I get. :)

A desk mat, like the ones by Nordik [1]. It's like a giant mouse pad that also goes under your keyboard.

I can't stand the size of normal mouse pads and I can't go without one because the years wear on my desk. Plus it also serves as coaster, art, and "clean zone" that my cats know to avoid. You can get them custom printed with anything you want.

[1]: https://amzn.to/3ZyXiU5

This little SD Card fits flush in the M1 and M2 MacBook Pro slot, provides the user with additional storage (shrug) or constant Time Machine backups (hellll yes). Almost worth giving up that fourth Thunderbolt port for.

https://9to5mac.com/2022/04/21/flush-sd-card-macbook-pro-tra...

Please keep in mind that as many Raspberry Pi owners discover SD Cards are not built to be written to constantly, they can fail in unexpected ways.

I use a clear acrylic keyboard protector to prevent my cats from treading on the keyboard, while still allowing me to type. Oddly, the version I have was originally marketed as an underwater camera stabilizer for divers called "Sea Cine FISH". Because I use it with a laptop, I had to cut gaps in the sides to allow cables to be plugged in. You can now find ones where this has been provided for.

Caldigit TSM3 - It's a usb hub + all sorts of other cables connect into it. You can then connect one cable to your mac and have everything boot up each time you reach your desk. It's expensive but worth it.

Have used the TS3 in the past and have since upgraded to the TS4, and yeah it's solid. Much better than your average USB-C port expander thing. With an additional Thunderbolt cable serves nicely as a KVM-on-a-budget, which is what I've been doing since I've started working from home — swapping one cable switches my whole desk setup between my work/personal machines.

I got one of these recently, it's great. If you don't have too many peripherals you can achieve the same thing with a USB-C hub, but the TB ones obviously have the bandwidth you need for multiple monitors etc.

I have an audiophile speaker setup that has a bit of a complicated setup - it either takes an SPDIF or 3.5mm jack, however the SPDIF way was recommended to me to achieve quality and get rid of DC POP.

For this reason I bought a 4k HDMI splitter that extracts from a HDMI signal the different video and audio channels if needed. So I connect my MacBook pro to this splitter through hdmi and run another hdmi between this and the monitor. The spdif goes to the receiver that drives my speakers.

What's cool is that the video still is at 4k@60hz and I could still get audio through my monitor if I turned on its internal speakers. It has been working flawlessly for me for years and I've only spent about 30 bucks to buy it.

Here is a link to the product if anyone wants to take a look https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07BHYXVTY?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_...

Which speakers?

KEF LS50

I travel a fair bit for work. A while ago I bought a thin tenkeyless external keyboard (Cherry Stream - it has laptop-style scissor switches). Being tenkeyless it's small enough to fit comfortably into the bag with my laptop yet has full sized keys and layout. Makes a huge difference (along with a laptop stand) to using a laptop to work in a hotel room.

A 3D mouse like https://3dconnexion.com/nl/product/spacemouse-wireless/ is really nice if you need it. It's basically a 6 degree of freedom input - you can move in x-y, up and down, tilt it or rotate it. Even for working in 2D it's useful. And it's a bit more ergonomic than a mouse as well.

I've also tried this weird mouse replacement: https://www.marzhauser.com/en/products/operating-devices/erg...

It's basically the controls of microscope with a USB cable. So that people who are used to working with a microscope can continue to work the same way.

These are the only 2 lesser-known accessories, I used. Not sure why everyone needs to talk about mice and usb hubs here

Those seem wildly expensive for something you could replicate by adding a force sensor to a trackball mouse.

trackball mouse gets you the x-y. Force sensor could get you the z. You get also the rotation and tilt, see page 4 in the manual

https://3dconnexion.com/manuals/spacemouse-wireless/en/Manua...

But yeah pricing is based on value not cost I guess. People who need it (architects, 3d designers, mechanical engineers) often have high end workstations so price of the mouse is a rounding error (and like 1 hour of their salary?)

A Big Knob Passive (not powered), which can toggle audio independently between two inputs (laptop and pc), and two outputs (speakers, and bluetooth transmitter) using tactile toggle buttons with immediate response, and it also has a big volume knob, and a button to turn stereo into mono which has turned out useful for some badly encoded videos having audio in only one channel.

The Bluetooth transmitter is used with sony WH-1000XM3 using the aptx standard and latency this way is good enough for gaming (I know what bad Bluetooth latency is like, and this setup does not have it)

The fact that pc and laptop output to audio jack and don't know I use wireless headphones (or which input or output I use at all) is a feature, not a bug, since I actually don't want the headphones to be able to change state of music players or volume on the pc as it's buggy and annoying if it does that.

The only thing the big knob passive lacks imho is an ability to mix both input sources together passively.

Is this a big knob you can buy?

Yes, Big Knob Passive is literally its product name, you can search for it (edited original post to capitalize it)

https://mackie.com/en/products/studio-monitoring/big-knob-se...

i use this pull switch to immediately end my zoom calls. https://twitter.com/lanewinfield/status/1339257875034566656

Laptop arm -- basically a clamped monitor arm with a laptop tray instead of VESA mount.

That combined with a USB-C dock and another monitor on an arm. I can quickly dock laptop and keep all my desk space.

I just got one of these last week that has a second arm for my external and I am enjoying it. It really opened up my desk.

I use my monitors in portrait mode. Some tools aren't great with it, but when I'm editing a doc it's amazing to be able to see two whole sheets of paper-worth of text.

Kinesis Advantage 360 pro.

Apple magic trackpad.

Savant Elite2 Triple Foot pedal. Left Click, Right Click, ESC.. currently. Still playing with them.

IPEVO DO-CAM USB document camera, doubles as my face camera, but I do a lot of 'whiteboard' sketches on paper which I later translate to lucid if it needs to be kept.

I use and Advantage but have not tried the 360.

How do you find it?

Have you used the older models to give a comparison?

I also bought the 360 and I love it! Haven't once thought about going back to the Kinesis Advantage I was using before it. I went with the wired / non-pro version since I've had too many bluetooth issues with peripherals to trust that it wasn't going to be an issue. Sure enough, I asked on the subreddit and some others have reported connection issues or flakiness.

The only issue I've had with it is that sometimes my laptop doesn't receive any input so I have to unplug the keyboard and plug it back in. This could just be due to my setup and unrelated to the keyboard, but I didn't have that issue before.

The magnetic snap-on wrist pads are really nice. They snap perfectly into place and haven't moved unless I want them to. The keyboard overall feels solid and ergonomic

On occasion I have issues with the left half right half pairing and have to reset it. I have yet to dig into the code to see if I could resolve a bug yet. (left half runs as a 'central' and is paired to the machine, right half pairs to the left half)

I have several KA2s (office, home office, spare) and the 360 Pro (I first had a non-Pro because I prefer wired, but the firmware still had annoying bugs).

+ Variable split is very nice.

+ Higher tenting degrees than the 20 degrees of the KA2.

+ Great firmware (ZMK) out of the box.

+ Really good build quality.

+ User-replaceable battery.

- The Gateron Brown switches are mediocre. They are not to spec and the actuation points are closer to 3mm than 2mm. This makes it much harder to type without bottoming out and doesn't permit the lighter touch you can use with the Browns or Silent Reds in the KA2.

- The two halves always connect through Bluetooth, but sometimes the right half cannot find the left half, especially after flashing. You usually have to power cycle both halves several times to get them to connect again.

- The Pro (in contrast to the non-Pro 360) comes with mediocre ABS keycaps. I replaced them by a Kinesis PBT blank set, but this adds another $50 or so to the already steep price.

- The optional palm rests are too high.

- Cannot be used on your lap.

The keyboard I still love the most is the Kinesis Advantage2 with a KinT controller (for QMK). If the split distance and tenting degree of the KA2 are acceptable, I'd recommend people to buy the KA2. If you do get a 360, I'd recommend you to go through Upgradekeyboards.com and get it with a different switch type.

Yeah If I buy a second 360pro for the office i'm going to buy it from upgrade keyboards so i can get silent reds or some other switch.

I also replaced the keycaps with the pbt ones, but i also moved a homerow from an adv1 onto my 360pro.

Yeah, I also replaced the caps and would like to get some PBT spherical caps from signature plastics.

It's a bit sad that they switched from Cherry to budget Gateron switches (on a 600 Euro keyboard). The Cherry Browns and Silent Reds may have been a bit scratchy, but at least they are always close to spec and not that bad after some break-in. Either that or one of the literally tens of tactile switches that are better than Gateron Browns, e.g. why not put some Boba U4 or U4Ts in a premium keyboard? Sure, these switches are some smaller runs, but I am sure they could have worked something out, Kinesis got Cherry to invent Browns after all.

I think replacing the non homerow caps is a bit unwise. They have weird profiles that are not simply row profiles. However I really like the spherical DSA deepdishes they used to put on the homerow. So I use the ones from one of my spare classic advantages.

I have two advantage 1s and two advantage twos. All are modified with either the blue-wizard board or the tint (or predecessor) boards as well as other mods (sound dampening, switch swaps). All but the blue-wizard runs QMK. I've been using this line of keyboards for over 20 years at this point.

The 360 is quite nice with a few caveats.

1) the split is excellent, the extra buttons are great.

2) the backlight is kinda pointless, I have it off, why waste the battery. I don't understand why they didn't put it in the non-pro... BOM price i'd guess.

3) I got the palm rests, they are comfortable and kinda a little leatherette material so they won't get gooped up as badly as the old advantage 2 cloth pads.

4) the keycaps that come with it are SHIT. Buy the PBT caps with it, or do like i did and buy them two days after you get your keyboard.. Even the the home row is shit if you are used the adv1/2. I took the homerow off of one of my original advantages and put it on the pro. You might be able to swap all the caps over, but there are a few extra keys on the 360 series that it won't cover, and some of the legends will be wrong.

5) The adjustable tenting is nice but somewhat limited, it has essentially three settings.

6) It certainly sounds better, not the hollow of the adv1/2 (which i stuffed with foam to suppress).

7) You might want to buy from upgrade keyboards unless you are ok with browns. I haven't opened it up to see how hard it would be to do a desolder/switch swap. Brown are ok for me, but I do enjoy my adv2 with silent reds.

I use ergonomic low-profile split keyboard Sweep[1]. My endgame (I hope so) keyboard after a long journey through the ergomechboard rabbit hole. If you're interesting in improving keyboard ergonomics with really custom solutions, r/ErgoMechBoards's Wiki [2] is a good place to start.

[1]: https://github.com/davidphilipbarr/Sweep

[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/wiki/resources

I don't use a camera for video conferencing. I use my last-generation mobile device with the Droidcam app. Plus a goose-neck attachment to hold it to one side of the monitor about 10-20 degrees below eye level. Better picture quality and easier to "look at" people when I'm trying to get some point across.

https://www.dev47apps.com/

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08MZGPMPX/

I have a 10-input analogue-to-digital converter plugged into one USB port, which allows me to log environmental things like current outside light levels, and a one-wire adaptor plugged into another, which lets me have a string of thermometers on a long cheap cable. I currently log temperature outside in the shade, in my "root cellar", in the greenhouse, 10cm under the soil, and the central heating radiator pipe inside. Helps with the gardening, when to sow seed, when to open windows in the greenhouse. Also, I wanted to know how much sunlight I get here for my plans for solar power.

This is really interesting. What software do you use on your computer to interface with the ADC and 1 wire adapter? Is it something industrial like LabView or is it custom code written against whatever driver there is for the peripherals?

The ADC just pretends to be a serial port, so I just (sleep 3570 ; echo "~.") | cu -l /dev/ttyUSB0 --speed 115200 to get an hour's worth of telemetry and pipe that into very simple analysis software I wrote.

The one-wire port exposes itself as lots of files in /sys/devices/w1_bus_master1/ that you can read that contain the temperature measurements.

- Sit with a white wall right behind you. Clean, fresh, quality paint, like Dulux really seems different for some reason. Put the desk in the open facing out. No blurry backgrounds, green screen, bad background edges. While everyone's modifying you're just appearing clear and less reasons to be choppy.

- Three 2K screens - 23 to 25" (2560x1440). 3 of these have more usable pixels than a 4K. I have used 3 monitors so long that breaking work into screen 1/2/3 becomes a quick and helpful thing. I don't always use the third but have told people if I'm having a 3 monitor day, to keep on sliding by.

- MIC: I am heard better by sounding the clearest. I recently bought the best wired mic headset I could find. Steelseries Tusq for $50. Voice quality has been through the roof and close to the best, to the point that almost every call someone is asking me what I'm using. Won't cancel noise, but good otherwise.

- SOUND DAC: Soundblaster G3 - Makes good sound even better. Optionally adds the ability to output to both headphones and speakers. Handier than I thought it would be. Also allows cleaning up your voice with a pre-set and outputting it through a "Creative Microphone". Works great. I had my eyes on a nicer one but don't see myself getting rid of this.

- WEBCAM: Logitech Brio 4K - Clearest low maintenance 4k image wins. Lots of other options emerging, but this one whether I'm sitting in the dark, monitor bias lights or have my overhead light on adjusts quickly enough. I like that it has it's own onboard electronics to do image smoothing or it's other features so zoom doesn't clog.. It's mic isn't bad as well in a pinch.

- AC Infinity Cabinet Fans - Quiet fans placed underneath any Apple or other laptops that are unable to manage their thermal selves. One is up at an angle and draws air away, and the other blows across. I like it enough that I would cut a hole out in my desk with the fans inserted and let the air blow down. Can be dremeled and put into ikea lapdesk laptop holders. Especially helpful for i9 laptops. Quiet.

- Heated desk mat. Use on floor as well if the floor is cold, or get a dedicated one for that.

Edit: added a few more.

1 more:

- iPad Mini with Cellular. I avoided an iPad for a long, long time, and now exclusively as my communicator to dial into meetings. It reduced my phone and laptop usage significantly in some cases. Rarely run into video issues with lag, slow downs, and can present with a whiteboard if needed. Can take a minute to unplug, and walk away with the meeting at anytime into a car. Cellular is handy in a pinch if the personal hotspot isn't going to the phone. Big enough to see the screen and presentations, mic/camera/speakers are well tuned, good battery life.

I bought an Elgato Cam Link 4K to use my Sony A7II for video calls. I didn't have a webcam before the pandemic so I would have spent at least 100$ for a passable one. Sound was already solved with an Antlion ModMic 5 on a good pair of open headphones (Drop x Sennheiser HD6XX). I like to have a modular setup to reuse/upgrade independently each component.

I use the Logitech MX Ergo as my go-to mouse. Once adapted to the thumb trackball, it's really comfortable. As an added benefit, you need very little space on your desk and no mouse pad because it's stationary.

Late question, but how do you deal with the audio lag when using the Elgato? Got the same dongle, and an old Nikon, but never got a handle on the lag.

Mic is plugged directly on the camera, so audio and video are always in sync.

Ikea Kolon - a floor protector. It's not strictly a computer hardware but I have it for 2 main desktops. Otherwise wooden floor gets damaged when you roll your chair in-place for hours each day.

The alternative is replacing the wheels with soft ones, which you can get for about 30 bucks. They are roughly the same as those on inline skates, and after getting used to them I wouldn't go back even if I didn't have wood flooring.

After years of use wheels wear much stronger materials than wood. When I moved furniture I could immediately notice where I've been sitting for years. I got a Kolon now. Easier than changing wheels.

I use a laptop with zero accessories, which is unusual in of itself for SWE.

I have been doing that for years as a nomad of sorts, but it kills your back. I recently bought a small keyboard so I can get a better posture and I recommend you so the same.

Hmm, I might do that. It's been a year since I ditched my desk. Though my 16" MBP screen is big enough that it feels almost like a desk monitor.

It’s not that unusual for a young SWE.

If you keep this up though, your wrists, neck, and back will make you pay for it in a few years.

I have an ARTcessories mixer and amplifier stacked on top of each other. Very compact, both are 4-channel stereo. I don't really use the mixer as much anymore, but it used to be connected to my desktop, laptop, phone and guitar amp. The (headphone) amplifier I connected to my headset, desk speakers and for a short time to a second headset and some recording device (I know, bad idea). When I was playing Rocksmith (think of it as Guitar Hero with real guitars) this was my contraption for routing the guitar sound through a real guitar pedal and maybe playing with a friend now and then who could also wear headphones. Nowadays it's mostly so I can switch between headphones and speakers quickly by basically just turning the speakers on and off.

The other thing are the lights that light up the walls behind my screens. I don't have a window there so it's easier on the eyes when the lights are on while I'm at my PC. They are controlled by a wi-fi power socket running Tasmota. On my NAS I got Node-RED running which pings my PC. I have an "automatic" setting for my lights so they are on if the PC is on, or when it's dark and before midnight. The "dark" part is currently determined by the time when the sun starts to set, but I'm planning on using a light sensor I already have somewhere else in my apartment instead. And I still need a better trigger that turns it off for the night - I think the humidity data from my bathroom might be the one, since the last thing I do before going to bed is showering.

External dedicated GPU enclosure. Turns a Thunderbolt-3 laptop into a workstation for CAD & AI workflows.

Shame that Apple Silicon Macbooks are not able to take advantage of dedicated GPUs.

I love my old Thinkpad, but its old nvidia is not enough for blender. How's the performance of your setup? Could you share the exact model & gpu you are using?

Gigantic mouse mat that takes up so much space it covers half of my desk. I play FPS games. But it's soooo nice. The thing is so big my whole keyboard fits on it too.

Same here, but 51% of it is covered with miscellaneous computer junk that I'm too disorganized to find a proper place for!

It seems like I'm the only person in the office or at home who uses a touch screen on my laptop. I like it, but there are some issues with software that gets too clever with UI widgets, rendering them unusable without a mouse. Routine things like web surfing are great, coding is almost impossible with a touch screen. So I wish I could say that it works better than it really does. And touch screen support for Linux distro's has been hit-or-miss so far.

My current laptop I wanted a touchscreen so badly I custom ordered my laptop. Got it setup, works under PopOS and... I literally never use it. Works fine, just always less convenient than a mouse.

My laptop in not my main machine, I only use it when traveling. I will never go back to a laptop that I can not flip the screen and turn it into a tablet. Its a laptop when I need to do some work, and a tablet when I want to watch some TV.

Solar wireless keyboards. I use both Mac and Windows versions of the Logitech K750. Even indoor lighting is enough to keep them charged if you don’t cover them up, but I typically want a window nearby anyway, which means never worrying about charging them.

My one nit to pick is that they don’t have multiple connections, so for convenience, I just have two at my desk, one that stays connected to my personal system, and one that connects to the work laptop.

> Logitech K750

A review by Linus of Linus Tech Tips from 2012:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mju3AmdoVhs

He mentions the rubber feet, specifically. Unfortunately, they are just glued on, and detach after a few years of typing and being dragged around a desk. But the keyboards are cheap enough to just buy another at that point.

I use a drawing tablet as a third monitor, and I use a USB numpad so that I can shove it out of the way when I don't need it (I basically only use it for blender).

For quite a while I used the Logitech G13 in the way you describe using the usb numpad. Just a big block of extra hotkeys when I was in different software.

https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-G13-Programmable-Gameboard-D...

Not much is less known in the tech world, so I use as a dock the CalDigit TS3 Plus, connected to two external mechanical keyboards, the blue yeti mic with wired headphones, a Logitech MX vertical mouse, and a huge monitor with a simple ring light and a webcam on top. My favorite headphones throughout the pandemic were the Drop THX pandas, but they broke a month ago and I haven’t fixed them yet, so now I use the Monolith M1060C.

I got that thunderbolt dock for my work MacBook, and now that I own a steam deck I wish I had gotten a USBC hub instead. The dock is great, just doesn’t work with the steam deck, so I can’t swap devices quickly.

I have a Stream Deck XL connected to the TS3, seems to work fine (although I'm using BetterTouchTool to power it rather than the default software)

I'm guessing it's a TB3 dock? TB4 docks usually work with USB as well.

>two external mechanical keyboards

How do you make use of two keyboards?

Actually I am thinking if we one could use 2 keyboards to have a makeshift "split" keyboard setup.

That actually works, at least in Windows. I haven't tried it on Linux or BSD.

It not only works on Linux, but you can choose between having all keyboards work together (default) or sending different keyboards' inputs to different consumers. For instance, you can have two monitors, two keyboards, and two mice, then run two X servers and have two people sitting at one computer both doing meaningful work.

Hehe...you could do the 2 user/1 machine trick on DEC Microvax IIs back in the day before it got cheaper to buy a NCD xterminal than the extra DEC kit to make it work. I recall it was a supported configuration you could order from DEC, but someone had to hack up our local fork of 4.2/4.3 BSD to make it work.

I only use one of them at a time but I may swap depending on the mood; each has a very different feel.

Some fountain pens and a notebook. This allows me to quickly write down notes before jumping into my editor. This makes a big difference.

If I may piggyback on this, I would recommend the "Uni Jetstream 4&1 4 Color 0.5 mm Ballpoint Multi Pen + 0.5 mm Pencil". It costs only $10 and is available everywhere. It's one of those pens that has 4 buttons to change colors but this one also has a 0.5 mm pencil built in and a tiny eraser in the cap. Having the option to add color to my notes easily made them a lot easier to read, especially for code.

Currently I use two Jinhao X159s, which cost about $3 on aliexpress. Pretty decent writers. Cheap does not necessarily mean bad.

Each one of these has been said, USB switcher, Screen switcher, and foot pedals. I have this combined, a USB + DisplayPort switcher, with a food pedal to change between the two connected laptops. It's great when it works, which it did in my previous HDMI+1080p screen setup. But as I moved to 4K, I had these issues:

- The noname HDMI cables I had was not the right version, bought 3 new ones.

- The old Apple dongle doesn't support 60hz, luckily I had a newer one which did, worked well on my newer Macbook Pro, but..

- ..Macbook Pro 2016 doesn't support 60hz through the dongles with HDMI, so I've got to move to DisplayPort.

- Now my NEW Macbook Pro doesn't work at all with DP. Macbook issue, as my other 3 Macbooks (on the same macOS) works fine.

So now I am using the KVM switcher for everything except the screen, which I have to manually change the input for, until I can reinstall macOS to see if that solves it (I have spent hours with Apple support).

Overall if you use multiple laptops the KVM is awesome, and the foot pedal is doubly so!

I’m looking for exactly something like this. What KVM switcher do you use? Does it support USB-C?

They are both noname but works fine (ignoring the other issues which are separate issues).

The first one I used was this https://www.lazada.co.th/products/2x1-usb-2-hdmi-kvm-hdmi-4k... worked well with the restrictions.

The one I currently use is this one https://www.lazada.co.th/products/i2897492493-s10589620581.h...

I highly recommend buying one with an extended switch (or even a wireless one), even if you don't want to use it as a food pedal, being able to place it anywhere is optimal since otherwise you need all cables and the switch within arms reach, and this makes takes space and looks messy (as was the case with the first one I used).

Probably the most special thing on my desk is a HHKB keyboard. Other than the layout I think the killer features for the latest version is that it connects to four different devices using bluetooth (it can also connect to another using USB). You switch between devices with a keyboard shortcut (CTRL+FN+1-4 for bluetooth and CTRL+FN+0 for USB).

I can type on calls without my mic picking it up, it has a custom layout saved on device so I don't need to do any configuration for any device I connect it to and it works fine on Windows, MacOS and iOS devices.

I use a JP version but with US keys on it and a US key layout which gives me a bunch of extra keys to configure. If anyone is wondering, there is a spare key on the home row to the right of the ' key which I use as backspace/del.

It wasn't cheap, but if it broke I would replace it with the same model in a heartbeat. I do have a spare but it's the standard US layout with the big spacebar.

I was a big HHKB fan, I actually still have the first model produced with the three cables for sun, mac, PC.

If anyone is interested, I would check out not only the new HHBKB, but mechanical keyboards also, the ones you build or have someone build. The amount of programming and customization you can do on them is insane.

I moved from HHKB to a 40%, for two reasons: 1) the mouse is incredibly close to the keyboard. It is close with the HHKB, but you can save even more time with a 40%. 2) You can literally reach every single key without moving your hands at all.

I now have three or four of them, one permanently at each computer and at my work desk.

I never understood programmers who use stripped-down mechanical keyboard. I use my arrow keys, home, end, and pagedown key all the time; having to use a fn key to access those would really slow me down. Do you just tend to use the mouse more, or are you on some kind of vim-keys-everywhere kind of thing

Mine has arrow keys because it's a JP layout, but I tend to only use them to skip forward or back in video, not when I'm typing. But yeah, I'm a vim-keys-everywhere type I guess, I use the mouse as little as possible.

I use home, end, page up/down etc but I use them without having to move my hands from the home row. This is the major advantage, I can reach every key on the keyboard without moving my hands.

I used a HHKB for almost 10 years, and the lack of arrow keys was probably an issue for a week. After that week, the motion of pressing fn and whatever keys then represented arrows was just effortless.

I'd still be using that keyboard now if the switches felt better. After ten years of heavy use as a programmer, they've either become stiffer, or I've become less tolerant (probably both) of the keys.

I'm on a simple Drop ALT now with key switches that remind me of the original Topre keys of the HHKB, but much smoother. I can't recall what they are exactly. No complaints after three years of use.

I don't really use it - yet - but I have been quite interested in the concept of pedals. Some people use them to mute/unmute calls, turn caps lock on and off and even to switch between Vim modes, which is quite nice.

For me, I hope it would also help me quiet my legs a little bit and keep me in an upright posture, avoiding me crossing my legs for instance.

When I had a normal chair I had a 3 pedal set under my desk. It was awesome.

Especially handy in gaming to have keys mapped to thinks like Heal

Definitely a vertical mouse (it's not well known in my country/outside the dev industry). I've been having occasional wrist pain for a long time (I have a mild case of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome) and the vertical mouse was not only a game changer but very easy to adapt to.

I have a xence labs quickkeys which is a macro button pad with an OLED screen for button labels. You can have like five pages of shortcuts with 40 separate functions programmable PER APPLICATION.

I don't have to remember obscure keyboard shortcuts, the functions switch automatically as I change apps and the scroll wheel (the main reason I bought it) is so nice. I can't use a mouse at all without pain so I use a pen tablet for the most part, this has brought back the smooth scrolling, zooming and other things you'd use a mouse wheel for back into my life.

Since I make music as a hobby, some of these are not gonna be incredibly useful for most:

- Behringer XR18 digital mixer, mounted under my desk

- DIY wooden stand for a small MIDI controller keyboard & an integrated XLR socket for a conference microphone (used for meetings)

- the MIDI controller is connected directly to the XR18 so I have convenient faders and knobs for mic volume, mute, master volume and other stuff connected to the mixer (piano, edrums etc)

- DIY shelf to have my displays & speakers at a comfortable height and distance

- dishpan under the desk for the occasional footbath

Not at all uncommon but still highly recommended: vertical mouse (cheap one), split keyboard (r-go), docking station (old thinkpad ultra dock)

Things I still want but never got around to:

- my desk lamp (cheap wifi bulb) is cold/warm white fadeable but I want that to happen automatically throughout the day based on sunset

- a better drawing tablet so I can ditch my whiteboard (current one sucks)

I'm not too fond of seeing or using big headphones or even smaller earphones (wired/wired) during video calls. I believe even Apple haven't found a design that is more natural with their AirPods. I also don't yet trust wireless for audio.

I have a much cheaper version of those costly wired earphone studio monitor that musicians used on stage/studio -- the one where the wire goes around the ear and hidden behind. I sometimes combine that with a wired Lavalier Mic. Both of which are tucked and hidden under my table for quick and easy access. I have very clear audio and people on the other end have told me that I'm very clear too. Very discrete while audio being clear on both ends. I want to set up something similar but less messy for travels.

However, in most common day-to-day meetings (teams, quick calls), I default to an XLR pointed from above the display.

> costly wired earphone studio monitor

You're talking about IEMs (in-ear monitors)

Thanks. Now I realized I didn't even know the correct terminology.

I was going to joke and say a cup holder (one company actually made a legitimate cup holder that fit in a 5.25" bay back in the '90s or so), but when researching for this comment, I discovered there are actual modern cup holder products that either clamp or magnetically attach to desks or other surfaces now.

I remember long ago a file "cupholder.exe" for windows, which when executed would open the CD ROM tray

In high school, we had computers with Windows and individual logins. When people weren't looking, I would copy over a file I made to their startup folder that would wait a random amount of time before opening the CD tray. It was great.

Mobile dev here; I had an issue with organizing the vast quantity of mobile devices I have been given for testing.

* Significant QoL gain: take a trip to the dollar store to buy three short CD racks; if you lay them on their sides next to each other, you can mount your laptops and mobile devices vertically!

Much nicer than stacking your devices screen to screen, and you can keep them charged and connect them as-needed.

* Ergo Anti-pattern: I built a 35 inch deep desktop out of 2x4's, perched it on top of ikea motorized risers, all above a "LifeSpan" brand desk treadmill scrounged from Craigslist because I thought Torvalds's setup was cool (circa mid-quarantine).

This year I built a wooden frame with hatch doors above the treadmill and keep my goofy gaming chair forever parked on top of them.

I'd love pics of this. Here's to your good health, mate.

Open up those hatch doors, but keep the goofy gaming chair on the treadmill and you might invent a new sport!

Poly Headset for video conferences! Quite happy with them. I also use my iPhone as the camera for my setup.

I work at my great great grandparents kitchen table, an heirloom that has a gatefold tabletop concealing a large pocket space just underneath the surface.

It has in it a power distribution board, access point, switch, various wall warts for things on the desk, and a mini pc. All housed in a beech veneer dining table.

I had to raise it off the floor a couple of inches to get my legs under it — folks back then really must have been smaller — and I would 100% convert a vintage dining table into a computer desk if I needed to, in the future. It’s so much more meaningful to have a dedicated place to work in the house with all the techno crap hidden out of of sight. I eschew my laptop and really enjoy having this one special place for computer stuff.

A custom desk surface with a pocket cut into it to hold a glass mousepad (Skypad 3.0), so the top of the mousepad is flush with the desk surface. This means items on the desk such as the keyboard can be repositioned freely without hitting the side of the mousepad.

The desk surface is a single sheet of 4'x2' plywood, with solid wood edging strips glued to it. The pocket was cut with a hand router, positioned using wooden fences clamped to the plywood. The surface finish of the inside of the pocket is kind of rough, but it's not visible through the mousepad. The whole thing is varnished, and screwed to a steel desk frame I got for free from a local school that was disposing of old furniture.

Magnetic usb c adapters: adds universally compatible magsafe+data transfer to all devices for $10-20. Very convenient.

Kdeconnect, scrcpy (software): notifications, reply to messages, automute on calls... what MS and apple copied.

Keyboard with QMK or kmonad(software) or other software: e.g. caps works as both ctrl and caps. Easier umlauts. Multimedia keys, shortcuts etc on compact keyboards.

Screenbar: convenient lighting.

Droidcam, camo (software) or hdmi capture cards: again sherlocked, but the original software gives you much more control.

Wacom tablet or sidecar-like: since apple and samsung sherlocked the idea, the original apps dried out a bit. Use a tablet as a wacom contiq. Preferably wired.

Audio interface: use professional mic, headphones with your pc. Also eguitar.

I have a Roccat Vulcan 120 RGB keyboard which has a sweet volume knob on it. Don't use the software that comes with it though. I use Project Aurora[1] to control the lights on the keys. I'm able to program color/fx/animation per key per program that has focus. It's useful if you have new software or a game you're not used to. For example, you can highlight all the relevant keys to help you memorize them.

But mainly I use it to play an audio waveform of any music that's playing. And highlight caps lock whenever it's on.

[1]: https://www.project-aurora.com/

Mouse:

A metal padded mouse with a “speed” mouse pad. It is so sensitive and easy to move that I can’t go back to a regular one anymore. Also it has rests for a thumb an a pinky. Shaped like this:

  _/—\_

I believe that mine is A4Tech T70 or a very similar. The software allows for linear movement which I also like much more than default acceleration-based.

I clipped the cord to the edge of the table, so it lies like S on the mouse pad and doesn’t scratch itself nor makes a sound.

Display:

Also I have a monitor arm - it frees so much space on the table and allows for easy monitor movement when I need to clear the table and draw on paper.

I have an "unorthodox" audio-oriented "KVM" setup that looks like this:

  {PC; Work laptop; …} → HDMI switcher → HDMI digital sound extractor → {S/PDIF DAC → Speakers; Monitor}

The HDMI switcher is actually just for A/V; I use Barrier for the keyboard and the mouse (well actually not mouse, but a trackball).

Though now that I think of it, I wonder if I could cobble something together with CEC to pass keyboard and mouse inputs through HDMI. In theory, that should be possible by attaching a ESP32 or something like that to the CEC pin on the monitor side…?

MX Master 3 mouse. Stopped the hand/wrist pain caused by other mice and can use on any surface.

HDMI switch. Switch monitor between machines.

USB switch. Switch peripherals between machines.

Used to use an arduino with a rangefinder and led matrix to notify when coworkers would be behind me. Always had headphones on and usually would get hit with a jump scare from them tapping me or waving hands in front of my face. Also, had a coworker who routinely interrupted throughout the day just to gab and at times I wouldn't take my headphones off. A bit of a cold shoulder but they were excessive with the interruptions

What do you mean by ring? Because at home in the late 1990's, I remember we had some kind of 3d ring mouse that worked with ultrasonic motion trackers clamped to the monitor. It was either this (the Kantek Spectrum Ring Mouse) or something almost identical:

https://www.microsoft.com/buxtoncollection/detail.aspx?id=19

From what I remember, it didn't work too well. Or it wasn't worth the gorilla arm. I was only using it for clerical work and maybe some gaming.

I use a trackball rather than a mouse. That improves my experience a great deal more than people expect.

I also use a homebrew macro keyboard. It's a 16 key keyboard with nice, clicky keys and two analog knobs. It's very convenient.

A speakerphone box for meetings. Good audio both ways, while much more comfortable than having a headset on all day when the meeting schedule gets out of hand, and has a hardware mute button and indicator.

I have an Atmel-ICE for embedded systems development, however I was too cheap to buy their cable and case (over 200$ vs 80$ for the raw board). Turns out the board has the SWD header installed backward, and their cable assembly silently reverses it back. So I had to build a similarly weird thing to fix it.

Also a Hemmi slide rule. It mostly just sits there to make me think about what accuracy is actually relevant in calculations -- e.g. with what I know about the system, is the answer really 0.6012, or is it really about 0.6 and that's all I know?

I got a ModMic USB after being pretty unhappy with the samples of mic quality that I heard from headsets. I have received a number of positive comments on my microphone quality after switching.

It also gave me back a hardware mute button, which I missed from prior USB headsets.

I have a preference for just USB wired hardware. A number of laptops and sound card addons have some whack spatial audio stuff they do in their chipsets that you have to go trawling through forums to find out how to disable. Since the USB devices bring their own hardware, they get past this a bit.

- Dygma Raise split keyboard (https://dygma.com/) with IJKL + a layer key mapped to arrow keys, similar to some other folks on here have set up. Massively improved my posture. - MuteMe physical mute button (https://muteme.com/). No longer need to have to dig through windows to find the Zoom window to un-mute when I want to speak, but I have to look at another window.

I don't have it connected at the moment, but I built this rotary dial accessory for my Mac [0] so I could make FaceTime calls in an old-school fashion. The signification impact it had on my workflow? It forced me to take it slow, I guess. :)

Petmoj is Swedish slang for a rotary dial.

[0]: https://dahlstrand.net/2016/01/24/petmoj.html

An ancient 8 channel Mackie sound mixer to the left and slightly north of my keyboard. Other than inputs from the main computer, it pulls in audio from a bunch of other stuff/computers in the room, has a handy 1/4" headphone jack with volume control, and lets me instantly mute/mix any way I want without fiddling with keyboards or mice.

Output is to the CD inputs on a Sony mini audio system I bought on my way through Singapore in 1989.

I have the same mixer but it doesn't work how I like. I can't get the phones to output unless I have the main turned up, so I can't go headphones only unless I turn off the speakers independently. Is that how yours works? Right now I have the headphones on main, and the speakers on aux, so I can set their volumes completely independently from the mixer, but the problem is the aux only outputs the left channel to the speakers.

I'd love to send the main to the speakers and headphones on the headphones, but then I have to control the speakers on the mains independently.

How do you have your outputs wired?

It's an 802-VLZ3.

All inputs have MUTE ALT 3-4 selected. ALT 3-4 is selected for Control Room Source. Assign to Main Mix is selected. Ctl Room/Submix level is at the Unity detent. Main Out L/R send the final mix to the amplifier inputs. Headphones in Phones.

This keeps the headphones working independent of the Main Mix level setting.

Did I have to stare at page 26 of the manual for about an hour to figure this out? Well, yes. :-(

https://images.thomann.de/pics/prod/209011_manual.pdf

Ah thanks for the details. I have a different model that sadly doesn't have the Assign to Main Mix button. :(

I use a usb polycom deskphone I trashpicked(bluetooth sucks, and I don't want another potential stop to the "oops, sorry" cycle when I join a video call), and a usb to ps2 for the microsoft ergonomic keyboard I've used since I was little. Also, I recently acquired a perixx vertical mouse that felt like holding a cheap taco so I filled it with pennies wrapped in gorilla tape. No problems so far

I don't have these pedals [1] (yet), but considering how much I'm struggling with osteoarthritis at the ripe old age of 49, I do think they might offer some relief during my longer vim stints.

[1] https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/01/review-usb-foot-pedals-fs3_...

Idk if it really counts as an accessory, but I used to use Synergy when I had to use a company Macbook. I have the macbook on one side of the desk connected to one monitor, and my PC on the other side connected to the other. I found docker performance to be way better on my PC than on the 8gb RAM M1 Macbook pro I was given, so I tended to do everything I could on the PC and then push code using the macbook

I was recommended Synergy and found https://github.com/debauchee/barrier

Ended up not exploring Synergy any further because Barrier worked awesome

Here's something i've tried but it didn't work out:

- Using an Onyx Boox Max Lumi 13.3 eInk display as external laptop monitor to work outside.

Too much ghosting.

did you put it directly into sunlight or was the screen itself put in shadow? (makes a huge difference afaik)

Angled USB adaptors. I keep my laptop in an edge holder to free up work space. The angle adaptors keep the two USB cables from protruding too much.

Jabra Speak 510 or 710 portable speaker with microphone, USB and bluetooth connection.

If you work in a dedicated room and don't need the isolation that headphones provide.

More comfortable than any headphones, excelent voice in and out, buttons with lights for volume and mute control, wired for good quality and latency, can also work wireless for phone. Works with Linux, no drivers needed for any functionality.

Adjustable keyboard tray, negative-tilt split tenkeyless keyboard, vertical mouse. The height and angle of your arms and wrists is critical to reduce carpal tunnel syndrome.

https://ergo.human.cornell.edu/DEA6510/dea6512k/ergo12tips.h...

I spend all day on meetings and love my Mütesync button: https://mutesync.com/

Pretty basic but it's cheap and easy, works with Hangouts and Zoom, etc. The ability to know if I'm muted and rapidly mute/unmute without needing to focus the Zoom window is clutch.

Cheap Wacom tablet for virtual white boarding. Zoom annotations are a great way to quickly draw things in a shared space during a call.

A 2-1 HDMI connector so you can hook up 2 computers to 1 monitor without having to wait while switching from one computer to the other

How do you switch then, is there a toggle? Mind sharing the link?

As an example, this bi-directional HDMI switch allows you to either connect 2 devices to 1 monitor, or 1 device to 2 monitors and switch with a button on top. https://cdn.nedis.com/images/products_high_res/VSWI3482AT_P6...

for me having a separate Anker usb charging block (5 port, 40W) is great to minimize the things connected to my work macbook (mouse charger, airpods charger, wireless charging pad …etc) and a good laptop/mouse mat (Razer Gigantus) has been a great purchase too (provides a nice mouse surface and little more comfortable than a cold desk)

I have a small screen for raspberry pi on a teleprompter with a Sony A6000 behind it for video conferencing. Kicks the crap out of every webcam. The teleprompter lets me look right at you while in a meeting

I use my iPad as a second screen on my macbook air with Duet [0]

Had the software for a few years now and it’s used very frequently. I don’t know if using the app hardwired requires a subscription though as mine was a one-off purchase via App Store.

[0] https://www.duetdisplay.com/

Iirc modern-ish MacOS versions (and iPadOS/iOS) allow this feature out of the box? I'm pretty sure I used it once or twice when I had my old smaller macbook from work.

Right. It's called Sidecar [0].

[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210380

I dunno. My ancient, wired Logitech trackball maybe?

I also have an m.2 SSD on a USB3 dongle which I've used as a Raspberry Pi boot drive.

I am using a Librem Key, USB security token based entirely on free software, to ensure my coreboot is not tampered with.

Can you talk a little more about your setup? How does it ensure your coreboot is not tampered with?

It relies on Heads (https://github.com/osresearch/heads), tamper-evident boot software that loads from within coreboot and uses the TPM chip and the user’s own GPG keys to detect tampering within the BIOS. Here are some explanations: https://puri.sm/posts/pureboot-101-first-boot-first-update-a..., https://docs.puri.sm/Librem_Key/Getting_Started/User_Manual....

Thank you so much! I'll check these out.

I work from home as a Data Scientist and I am a standup comedian on the side. I have a standing desk with dual monitors. KVM Switch has been a game changer for my productivity. When I have some downtime in my job, I can immediately switch to my personal laptop to work on my personal projects and comedy.

You're on the HN stage. I could do with a laugh!

Instead of a desk chair I use one of the pottery barn wells leather swivel chairs. Perfect for sitting cross legged, with a blanket, straight upright, and good for napping.

One ridiculous thing I have is an old griffin usb volume knob that glows/throbs. It’s really amusing for some reason.

A "Logitech G213 Prodigy Gaming Keyboard with RGB". Bought on a whim on sale. Not unhappy with the keyboard itself, but its killer app is being able to tell at a glance, by backlit keys, if my work laptop has accidentally un-hibernated after I've finished work (I work from home).

I have a small Bluetooth media control. Volume, play / pause, and track controls work even if I've not got the music app up, or if I need to pause something to hop on a call. Not having to find my music app because my wife calls me from the other room is really handy.

I just bought a laptop stand/riser. AU$69 from Officeworks here in Australia, just a basic hinge/arm with a plate on the top. First day using it today as I like to sit in the garden with the laptop vs. in the office with the monitor.

Game changer for posture. I'm looking directly ahead!

For me it would have to be the DELTAHUB Carpio 2.0 Ergonomic Wrist Rest.

Contrary to other wrist rests, this one is tied to your wrist using a magnetic clasp.

I'm aging, or perhaps I just gamed too much using cheap peripherals. Either way, my wrist hurt a lot when using the PC and this helped me a lot.

A foot rest/rocker. Specifically this one: https://www.humanscale.com/products/ergonomic-foot-rests/FR3...

I've got a Yamaha RX-V863 running to some very nice custom built monitors I put together for the stereo channels, and just some yamaha 5.1 component speakers for the rest of my home office. Nothing sucks more than having to listen to crap music while you're working.

I had a giant Yamaha receiver under my desk for about 15 years, but not long ago I lost all sound out of the right channel. I couldn't bring myself to buy a new one so I have this tiny Fosi Audio amp on my desk now. Works fine, takes up a lot less space, powers the same passive speakers.

3DConnexion SpaceMouse series [1] 6DOF mice for CAD, Photoshop, and pretty much every 2D/3D editing workflow

[1] https://3dconnexion.com/us/spacemouse/#compare

Came here to add this. Use for Solidworks not so much the other 2d apps. Really speeds up my workflow.

I have a cheap drawing tablet I purchased for about $20. It works wonders for whiteboarding and diagramming things for my remote coworkers. Especially when used in conjunction with tools like Google Jamboard, it's almost as good as an in-person whiteboard.

Keyboard with a left handed number pad and a thumb trackball to the right. The keyboard is a bloody light strike optical gaming keyboard. The trackball has macros set to open a new tab, close a tab, and to use the ball to scroll when you hold down the right mouse button.

Macropad mapped primarily for my email client.

    Row 1: Delete, Archive, Mark Unread and Advance 
    Row 2: Undo, Next, Previous

It’s simple and I know the shortcuts for all of this, but it’s honestly drastically reduced the time spent triaging my email.

I’ve got a wired button to turn on and off my PC without having to bend to reach the power button in front of the PC case. Cost me like $15 from ebay, and also has a reset button, and two usb ports which come very handy in case I want to attach an usb stick.

I quite love the four-way KVM switch I use on my desk. One trackball, one mechanical keyboard, hooked up to four laptops (or occasionally a raspberry pi or two.) Couple keystrokes to switch computers, so I can bounce back and forth easily.

Split keyboard is a game changer

Wacom Bamboo tablet instead of the mouse. Less strain on wrists. Much more comfortable than the mouse and faster with pointing when used to it after some time.

A ZoomSwitch which lets me switch my wired headset between my PC and telephone with 1 button press.

I used to have a job which involved a ton of calls - both telephone and virtual meetings. This device let me easily switch my one headset between the two.

Headphone cable extender is a must for me ever since the first time I stood on a cable and broke off the 3.5mm plug on a pair.

Plus, I get enough distance to wander around the room. I'll eventually upgrade to bluetooth.

I've got USB-powered desk fans at home and the office. I've tried a fair number, and typically get ones that have a couple of different speed settings and good bearing that are mostly silent.

Presonus STUDIO 26c Audio Interface [1]

[1] https://www.presonus.com/products/studio-26c

I have a RTL2832U v3 software defined radio that plugs into a USB port.

https://www.rtl-sdr.com/tag/v3/

Cool! What do you use it for?

I have the (now discontinued) Logitech G13 gameboard. I mainly use it for gaming, but it's also useful for creating hardware-macros and have these be linked to the application in focus.

Hey mp36 can I ask you about offline Wikipedia kobo? How do you split the zim files to fit?

Eh I try 7zip if anybody is looking same as me. Also when extending partition size, may have to delete contents, then resize, then put contents back otherwise didn't work for me. Something to do with the extending partition past a certain size.

Actually no u have to delete partition then make new one

https://web.archive.org/web/20170809101047/http://wiki.kiwix...

Hey thanks for replying! I've ended up with an even more fundamental issue:kobo cant read my zim file, it's there on the device but it's all blank pages..

Can I ask what firmware version you're on? It seems I'm not the only one with trouble with zim files on newer models maybe.

AFAIK Kobo dropped ZIM support with firmware v4.x, so you gotta downgrade if you can.

I have a small heater sitting under the desk. Its power line connects to a WiFi smart plug. I can turn the heater on and off on my phone, without me going under the desk to turn it on or off.

I have the same thing. However, my office is in my garage and it's quite cold in the winter. I have my smart plug set to start it up at 4:00 AM to warm it up for me.

I got an used PCoIP card and compatible thin-client, and now I only move a dual-screen stand with said thin-client wherever I work in the house, while my workstation sits cool in the basement.

Wall-mounted monitor rails, mounted horizontally. Normally I work with two 24" monitors side-by-side, but I can slide them apart if the kids need to use a monitor while I'm working.

Luna Display for wirelessly extending screen to ipad and teleprompter.

Long USB-C extension and a cheap-ish anker hub has proven surprisingly useful. Less glitches on wireless audio/mouse thanks to reduced distance and yubikey is in easy reach

I used to make music so I purchased studio monitors and a mic. I haven't put on a headset in years and I can't imagine how it would feel to wear one for 8+ hours a day.

USB 24-bit 48khz sound device (MBox1) outputting S/PDIF to a proper hifi preamp+amp.

integrated laptop/phone DACs driving headphones sound like garbage now

A 3d mouse for modeling, and a second ten key on the left side of my 3d mouse so I can enter dimensions while my hand is still on the regular mouse.

Not connected to my computer but I have an electric infrared heater next to my chair that I use to keep warm when it's exceptionally cold.

Audio Interface which I plug XLR mics into. I use a shotgun mic (Deity S-MIC 2S) so dont have a stupid boom in your face like most podcasters.

Don't forget that most audio interfaces also let you hook up a good pair of studio monitors for output. (And there are compatible subwoofers as well, if you really want more bass.)

Mine also has a headphone jack and independent analog volume controls for speakers and headphones. It's amazingly nice to not worry about the operating system switching audio devices properly on headphone connect/disconnect.

I hide the boom pretty well out of sight but it nags at me. I looked into shotgun mics but there seemed to be a lot of advice to avoid using indoors because of comb filtering. Have you noticed that?

Honestly I haven't analyzed detail of what it sounds like, its mostly for online calls. My mic is shorter than most shotguns, I think the longer ones might have more issues.

USB foot pedals and midi controllers, use them every day for development and productivity tasks.

They're just input - do whatever you want with them.

SCSI, SFP+ cards, FireWire audio IO interface, BD-writer (wanted to try XDCAM, but too expensive), USB Floppy disk drive :)

A compact radio.

HP E273d monitor with an HP S101

Supports both a desktop USB-B and a USB-C laptop with PD, with auto switch

Has built-in camera

I use a 3d mouse when I do CAD work... Its pretty nice, but takes a bit to get used to.

A surfmouse. I use a standing desk, and shift my body to control the mouse.

Is this a real thing? I can't tell if it's a satire

Yes,I have one. It isn't easy to use, but it is real and it works.

::: MIC ::: too often I heard people in Zoom / Teams / Meet sounded so bad, at times I couldn't hear what they're saying.

Cheap gaming microphones, like my HyperX Solocast, is massive change from those. It's probably the best bang for the buck of all other accessories that I bought so far.

::: NOISE-CANCELLING USB MIC DONGLE ::: sometimes my work environment can be very noisy and nothing I can do about it. In those cases I plug my mic into Asus Noise Canceling adapter - and instantly all the noises are gone: https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Noise-Canceling-Artificial-Intel...

At $35, it's an absolute steal.

Unfortunately it only accepts 3.5 mm jack as input - so no joy for the USB mics.

::: EARPHONE ::: when I'm mobile or need to use my Asus Noise Canceling dongle above - I use Apple Earpods.

It's light, it's very comfortable inside my ear for prolonged periods, it sounds amazing, even better than some of my expensive wireless headphones, and it include mic as well, a good quality one too.

At $16, it's a steal: https://www.amazon.com/Apple-EarPods-3-5mm-Headphone-Plug/dp...

::: WEBCAM ::: at first I was like the others, and use Logitech's webcam.

Soon I found out that even its most expensive one suffer from stupid AF (autofocus) problem - it kept making my face out of focus at random times, it's so embarrassing.

So after checking many reviews; I bought Nexigo N60 - and I still can't believe a webcam this cheap actually produces better picture than my previous more expensive webcam, wow. And no more stupid AF. And it works straight away in Linux.

It also claim to have noise-canceling mic, but I haven't tested it yet.

https://www.amazon.com/Microphone-NexiGo-Computer-110-degree...

::: PORTRAIT MONITOR ::: I bought a cheap HP E190i monitor - which can be turned into a portrait monitor.

Suddenly editing documents, Terminal/SSH, etc become much, much more comfortable.

::: Ultrawide Screen Monitor ::: it's a game changer - bought LG ultrawide monitor, and it's so comfortable.

I can put 2 portrait document side-by-side, and quickly compare them, or reference from each other, etc.

Not to mention editing those wide spreadsheets is becoming so much more bearable now.

It's also so much nicer watching movie and playing games using it.

::: GAS-SPRING MONITOR MOUNT::: use it to mount the ultrawide monitor above ; and it's even more comfortably positioned + frees up so much desk space.

::: VACUUM-COOLER ::: my brand-new laptop used to suddenly slowed down to a crawl at times, not only puzzling but of course also, very, frustrating.

Turned out it's unable to expel heat efficiently. Damn this thin laptops.

So I plugged a vacuum cooler on its exhaust port - and instantly it no longer throttled the CPU at random times, yay.

It's now able to consistently run at its peak frequency.

When gaming though it still overheats. I've bought a Carbonaut pad, from Thermal Grizzly. It's supposed to conduct heat about 5 times better than a thermal paste, so hopefully it'll help.

two important things:

- i'm a stickler for input devices. I have a split keyboard and a Wacom tablet in the middle with a little pen stand that's always close by. I keep daypages in beta.tldraw.com, which has excellent pen and touch support. It's super handy.

- a good field mic for video conference calls. I use a Zoom H1 with a fuzzy pop shield and a little stand to minimize microphonics. I'm perceived as quite feminine and it's sometimes hard to speak up, so it's amazing how much more respect I get on conference calls when I have the confidence of excellent sound quality to back me up.

If I could add something to my setup, I'd like to hook up a small trackball that somehow only emits mouse scroll events. That would really help move around PDFs and webpages.

I built one of those custom mechanical keyboards with some "fancy linear switches", but I am not a fan of the mechanical keyboard enthusiast community because it is so sanctimonious, elitist, and close minded.

I feel like this sort of broad-brush can be applied to almost all communities larger than a trivial size. Guns, cars, collectibles.

There are pockets of elitism where people are comfortable in their insular group and use it as a status symbol. But there are plenty of welcoming subgroups; it's just that they may take a little digging.

For keyboards, RGBKB, customMK, and Zenclack have been some of my favorite little Discord communities.

Agreed. I also like the BastardKB community, and happily own one of the keyboards: https://bastardkb.com/.

Lap desk for my laptop. It's really the way to go.

Which one did you get?

The black one with a pen holder!

Space mouse for cad. It's pretty wonderful.

digital volume control knob via usb-c. Simply controls the volume of my PC. I Got it from aliexpress

multi monitors, two mice/trackball.

Two mice at the same time? Do you use one with your feet? Do have one for each hand? Tell us more!

Maybe one is a decoy for the cat

Cats aren't so easily fooled...

Mine likes to sit behind my monitor and bat under it at my hand using the mouse.

one for each hand, it takes getting used to and i have hunch it changes you, neurologically

Guessing you have two cursors as well?

I moved the opposite way and got rid of my mouse for my desktop computer, so everything (except 3D work that is done with a drawing tablet) is done with the keyboard. Web browsing was the hardest to start doing without a mouse...

if you can run 2 drivers you will have 2.

this wont work with win, you have one cursor two controls.

im sure this has to do with mouse_msg being the same thing[handle] across the two meese.

Not the original answer, but I also have a couple of mice (elasto) - one for each hand, and then between my split keyboard I have a trackpad.

As much as possible I avoid the mice but when needed it's good to have the option of changing between hands.

Not OP, but I use 2 mice. I use a KVM, but have one dedicated monitor for my work computer so it's always visible (and 2 shared amongst other machines). So I have 1 mouse on the KVM, and one on my work computer so I usually don't have to switch out of my non-work session to deal with something that pops up on the work machine. Also have a programmable usb 10-key with some canned responses. And, no, I can't remote into the work machine from the personal machines (regulated industry).

kensington expert mouse trackball Cloud Nine Ergonomic illuminated keyboard with Cherry mechanical keys

Left handed mouse. Saved me from RSI.

May I ask what brand and model? I'm left handed and a symmetric mouse it pretty much the best I can hope for in terms of a mouse.

Mine is from a company called Perixx. It’s pretty cheap and works well.

Thanks, that's amazing, I can even get it in Denmark at the regular price.

A kinesis Advantage 2 keyboard

"Tryone" Gooseneck tablet holder to hold my Linux-running x86 2-in-1 tablet. I get like 2 people a week asking me what the fuck this is and how they can get one ASAP. Unbeatable ergonomics at any place; your screen where you want it. Paired with a Lenovo Thinkpad Trackpoint BT keyboard, and sometimes a mouse.

Gas-spring monitor mounts are well known by now. I semi-recently hacked together a wall mount gas spring arm & am surprised how much more flexibility & space going from desk mount (first clamp then through-hole) arm to wall-mount gave me; better range of motion, zero desk-space is amazing.

I used to dearly love my Griffin PowerMate jog-wheel for volume control. I really wanted to create a morse-code system for it & got quite far but stopped 50% of the way through. But still, jog-wheels are lovely devices. I'm on split keyboards now but I love so much the old Logitech MX keyboards that I had that also had big job-wheels & media-buttons; having on-tap control over devices was so nice.

AtomCube RX1 (now RX7) has a pretty nice battery-powered videography light that also works great as my key light. I hope one day to figure out how to reverse engineer the bluetooth control protocol for it, but haven't started digging in to how to intercept/reverse engineer the Android app. I also really dig the very cheap the Aputure AL-M9 deck-of-card sized light that works great with my camera; just so versatile a light & imminently affordable.

Fiber optic displayport/hdmi cable. I used to use a 50ft 1080p hdmi cable & some active USB extension cables to put my computer in the hallway or bathroom, connected to a separate terminal, so I could have a no-noise environment. Now, my AIO coolermaster watercooled computer is quite quiet. But there are some very cheap fiber optic cables of up-to literally hundreds-of-feet of length for incredibly cheap prices. The no-name brands seem to work fine. Now I can play games on my roof just fine, thanks to these absurd cheap luxury devices. I've tested up to my gaming monitor's 1440p170 and they work great.

A $20 HDMI<->USB "MS2130" converter for plugging in my cameras as webcams. Present as standard usb-video devices. Alas the frelling monsters making Android phones still don't include the kernel module to support these; how very badly I want to be able to use my phone to control & connect to my cameras, but nooo. Tick the kernel module box on for usb-video, you jerks!

ElecJet Ultra is the most interesting battery pack I have. It's only 10k mAh- <40WHr- which is low capacity. But it charges at 100W across a huge part of the charging curve. This makes it an idea travel unit: wherever I am, I can accept wall power at 100W. That's 3x the rate my laptop accepts. I have some ZMI 20k (mAh) Pro packs that I adore as my mainstay everyday travel units, lots of juice, very compact, nice usb-hub features, but they only charge at 45W, or a ~2hr+ charge time. Being able to get a fully charged pack in ~30 minutes is incredibly useful if I'm on the go & trying to keep a couple devices charged. That said, I often have two ZMI Pro packs, and my multi-output charger will do 90W into both packs, and thus the ElecJet often stays at home. It's still a rare noteable gem of a device to me.

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