Yay Ergonomics! If you sit down all day (not good for your back or legs), use a mouse and keyboard all day (not good for your wrists, at least for the more susceptible to repetitive strain injury), and need lots of monitor space, here is the setup for you.
I bought a new WorkRite Egonomics sit-to-stand desk that automatically doubles in height with the press of a button so that I can work sitting down or standing up (the price was surprisingly reasonable, on par with other quality desks that used hand cranks to adjust the height). (If you are in the St. Louis area I recommend buying this or other ergonomic office products from distributor Advanced Ergonomic Concepts; I was impressed by their speed and by attention to detail).
(click images for larger images)
My monitors are all Elo Touchsystems touchscreen monitors. I have two 19″ and two 24″ monitors. I have so far been impressed with their quality. I can’t wait until Windows 7 comes out because it will be designed for touchscreens. Until then I need to keep my mouse for certain tasks (like resizing windows).
So far, my wrists are feeling better after changing to touchscreens. The new desk will definitely help on busy trading days when I do not have time to take a break.
The only thing missing from this picture? Dragon Naturally Speaking 10, allowing me to control my computer with my voice and dictate. Unfortunately, the idiots at Nuance do not believe it is worth their time to adapt their program to Windows Vista 64-bit, even though it would benefit from the 64-bit architecture (or at least from the larger amounts of RAM that a 64-bit operating system can use; 32-bit Vista is limited to 3.5 GB).
[Edit later on 1/14/09 – I was able to install Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 on Vista 64 using this workaround. Thank you Chad.]
Thanks for linking back to my story and I’m glad the instructions worked out for you.
Regards,
Larry ‘NapoleonAG’ Henry Jr.
Email/IM: NapoleonAG.TSS@Gmail.com
Website: http://www.TechSideStories.com
Oh come on if you’re going to go through so much effort to describe it all the least you could do was take a picture of it all.
I did take pictures; I am not sure why they are not displaying
Okay, the pictures are fixed.
How much did it cost you? If you don’t want to post here please email it to me, I plan on getting the same setup, I’d like to have a baseline price for comparison shopping purposes. Thanks.
tbohen – I’ll send you an email.
Did you get a special price on those ELO displays? I have been looking at them just recently and for 4 of them at those resolutions It would be very expensive.
What did you pay for the 2 types of displays? where did you get them from?
Acer has a new 23 inch touch screen available which is really cheap, but I am concerned at how sensitive the touch screen part is, as all the reviews just say how cool it is, rather than how well it works. How sensitive is your screens for selecting small menus or buttons, etc … ?
The Acer 23 inch display on amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Acer-T230H-bmidh-23-Inch-Display/dp/B002TLTEAA
Why did you get two different monitor holders?
ShortBus – I had two different monitor holders because I first was only going to get three monitors and then I decided to upgrade to four (side by side). The stand on the left is a three-monitor stand.
As for the displays, yes they are expensive, but at the time I got them my right hand was basically unusable due to pain. Touchscreens are becoming cheaper because of Windows 7, so I wouldn’t recommend the monitors I got. I think they were about $1400 each for the larger ones and $700 each for the smaller ones. The monitor you link to isn’t available yet.