Does anyone know how to use a laptop computer, when you can’t configure it as a desktop or semi-desktop, without injuring yourself?
Due to recent flooding, my brother and I are staying at a nearby hotel.
My brother has a desk here, but I don’t. All the tables are either way too high or way too low, and only the high one has suitable power. So I can’t use the usb hub, and can only use 2 of the mouse, external keyboard, expansion disk, and backup disk at a time. Usually swapping between the mouse to work and the two disks to back up.
I have a lap desk, which has some space for the mouse.
I am getting terrible typing-hand and leg cramps, and I am not getting my work done.
Or ask them to just supply you something in your room. I imagine (if they are decent) they would be happy to help. They might have a USB extension cord, but I wouldn’t bet on that.
No business center that I’m aware of. The dining room and exercise room have painscreens, so I’m not sure about finding a common room without one.
The lap desk itself has a sharp lip around the edge. I keep it inside two shirts, but even so, I often end up pressing my hand or wrist against that @#$% lip.
The lap desk doesn’t have a separate surface for the mouse, so if it’s at an angle, it’s hard to keep the mouse from sliding while I use the keyboard. E.g. typing something into a search menu, mouse sliding, ending up with some other option besides what I’ve typed.
I am also having a lot of trouble trying to ocr texts. k2pdfopt’s implementation of tesseract keeps screwing up. Elucidate’s works tolerably well, but it filters everything through Quartz, which doesn’t work well with k2pdfopt. Installing Tesseract and running from the command line hasn’t worked, and if it did work, it would require me to copy and rename files to avoid typing whole\ titles\ like\ this\ and\ hoping\ not\ to\ screw\ anything\ up.
I’m not sure if it’ll be any better, but you could try a prone position on the bed, with the lap desk/laptop at the head or foot. That should, at least, take care of the leg cramps.
If the mouse is too close to the laptop, you should be able to find something else (book? magazine?) to use as a flat surface for the mouse.
If the power setup doesn’t allow this, can you afford the expense of an extension cable (or, better, a power bar with long enough cable) so that you can use the hub?
ETA: for the lip, could you use a pillow upon which to rest your wrists? This should work even if you don’t choose a prone position.
A prone position would mean worse neck and arm cramps.
I need the mouse near the keyboard so I can switch back and forth between mouse and keyboard.
I would need a proper desk to be able to set up the usb hub, and everything connected to it. With my lap desk, I can stick the disks behind the computer, so the migrainelights don’t hit me. With a proper desk, I can stick the disks under my laptop stand for the same purpose. But with the lap desk and usb hub, I’m worried I’d knock them out from behind the computer.
I think a pillow would get in the way of the mouse.
Well, milk crates would solve a lack of milk crates, but not an excess of them.
I also need the screen close enough to read. So I need the laptop either in my lap or on a dask or table I can get up against. I have fm/cfs so a standing desk is a non-starter, though it may be the only way to use the one table.
I’m not sure if this is an option for you, but I’ve long been obsessed with the idea of creating a desk where I can sit on the floor and type. A coffee table is almost the right height. I feel like cinderblocks and a board, or milk crates as @Popo_Bawa suggested could make this a temporary reality.
I hope that this situation was resolved comfortably, but since I only just now came upon this post, I wondered if asking your brother to shove over to the table and let you use the desk mightn’t have been the answer. Certainly he knows better than we do what challenges you face in arranging a halfway-comfortable working situation. Does he face similar or worse issues? Or is he just extra-speedy at calling Shotgun and then never yielding the front seat?
He has a desktop, so he doesn’t have as many alternatives. He helped look for a lap desk. I eventually found a somewhat better one at Barnes and Noble.
Excellent. I have a lap desk somewhere that I too obtained from B&N; it’s pretty good. My trouble is that I’m pretty tall, and it’s hell on my neck to use my laptop on my actual lap, even using a lap desk, when I’m in anything like a seated position.
As I age, I start to really covet something like this foolishness here:
Of course, that’s five grand from Wal*mart and a complete nonstarter, but it sure looks like I’d feel like I was comfortably ensconced in my cockpit on the launching pad at Cape Canaveral. And honestly, I bet I could make a version myself with lumber and basic hardware. I just remember the days in the 90s when I had this perfect combination of a certain laptop, hammock, and lap desk angle that let me be soooo productive. I’ve been chasing it ever since I foolishly scrapped that particular swingset when I moved back in 1998.
Edit: I just noticed that Wal*mart desk ad shows a G3 iMac from twenty years ago. Is the desk itself that old, or is that just a particularly perfect design for the kind of computer that would go with it? They look made for each other!
I haven’t yet. Buddy of mine who’s an online editor has a ridiculously ergonomic trackball (the kind with the oversized ball mounted sideways, with thumb buttons on the top) and he still uses a wrist supporting glove that makes him look like a virtual skateboarder, but I used a trackball mounted on the right side of my laptop keyboard for a few years in the 90s without incident. However, in recent years I’ve switched from trackball to touchpad, since my computer usage is much more keyboard-intensive than mouse-heavy.
But if I actually did prefer mice, I’d build my workstation to have a reasonably level mousepad, or figure some solution to keep my mouse from falling when I let go of it.
I know this is probably a late response, but when I had a laptop, I used a large drawing board like artists use for my surface. I had to duct tape my peripherals like a portable hard drive to the surface so they wouldn’t slide around.
Well, I can’t set that up at the hotel, and I don’t think I’d be able to use such a setup-- first, because I need my mouse, and second, because I need to tilt the left sides of keyboards, etc. up, to avoid wrist damage, I can’t tilt the back sides up, I get nasty hand and wrist pain.
