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Comment by mcny | Hacker News Reader

Were you previously using just the laptop mic? I can’t imagine being on a group teams/skype for business call without a USB headset with a dedicated hardware mute button.

Someone will inevitably blurt my name and I have to frantically unmute myself and then mute myself again.

Unless you’re senior leadership and they never mute themselves.

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I use over-ear headphones, intentionally without a microphone for multiple reasons: it is confusing for me to have both hardware and software mute, and more often than not I find myself in a situation where I think I am unmuted, but I'm not. Since I only have a software mute now, it's easier for me. I have a shortcut for it and it works perfectly fine. The second issue is my breath; I somehow tend to breathe into the microphone when it's near my mouth, which causes an annoying sound. Additionally, I prefer ultra-lightweight headsets, microphones add a bit of extra weight. As you can see, I believe I'm one of those instances where a high-quality standalone microphone actually makes sense, I suppose.

My T430 laptop has dedicated mute buttons for the speakers and microphone.

I usually use a $8 pair of earbuds from a gas station with a 3.5mm cord (which seems superior to USB for audio, relying on the integrated sound card instead of hot-plugged third-party drivers) and use the dangling microphone from the earbud.

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