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Before reading ahead, please remember 2 things

  • Being a remote employee, this is my permanent setup. When pandemic is over, I would still be working from home.
  • I have been doing things around my setup for almost 2 years now. I didn’t buy all these things at once and it’s still far from over.

Whenever we start investing in things/gadjets, after a point (the law of) diminishing returns hits (used to refer to a point at which the level of profits or benefits gained is less than the amount of money or energy invested). For a few things on my desk I have reached at that point. I will be talking “Needs an upgrade” or “I don’t see any value in upgrading it to something else” terms for all my items.

Let’s start with the main thing!

Desk

It was a neck spasm that triggered my impulse buy for a standing desk. After 2 days of youtube dive and a bit of research, I ended up deciding on getting a frame from Amazon.in and getting a custom table top made. The reason was

  1. Quality
  2. Size preference

I don’t always stand and work but I know when I want to and I really like the ability to do it. Being able to change positions (sit<->stand) is amazing. I would very much like to sand paper the table top and repolish it because the job done in shop is awful. Other than that, I like the desk and see no future upgrade needed anytime soon.

Chair

I was using a

till 2 months ago. It lasted me 2 years and have been quite decent. I have my complaints with it (a major issue being its cylinder too small and thus chair is never high enough to give me an ergonomic position on 29" high desk at minimun) but overall it’s a comfortale chair. A few weeks ago one of it’s wheels came off and it was not the caster in problem but the base itself. I reached out to greensoul and they were super slow in response. I have been thinking about a good ergonomic office chair (I often used my flatmate’s Steelcase Leap v2) and once again the impulse buy hits. I found a really great deal on this chair.

I got this chair recently and I had mixed feelings about it for the first few days. I realized very ergonomics stuff are not very comfortable right away. As I write this blog, I am in love with it and it’s amazing. This chair is expensive but gosh does it look good. I love the design and it’s weight mechanism.

Upgrade needed? I wouldn’t know where to go from this

Monitor Arm

I love Humanscale brand. This monitor arm is amazing and it gives me all the customization I will ever need. It gives the side monitor a floating look and it saves me from using those horrible extra space taking monitor stands. It’s amazingly well build.

(No upgrade needed, infact I could do just fine with a relatively cheaper option)

Laptop

This laptop is.. okay! Power wise this has never given me any problems (being 8th gen i7 with 16gb ram, thunderbolts etc). Though one thing I have noticed is it getting pretty hot (sensors used to give me 76 - 78 *c regularily). Ignoring this with a cooling pad that sits on on desk, I love the form factor and I believe 14"screen size is perfect for laptops. I also love the keyboard and built quality of this machine. This is a champ for now and No upgrade needed anytime soon (laptop refresh pending in a year from Red Hat)

Docking Station

My idea of a clean setup wouldn’t have started if this was not in my hands. Once thundercable usb c type connection and it is used as the hub to control all devices + monitor connections + charges the laptop). I love it.

No upgrade needed whatsoever

Monitor:

I have 3 monitors

About a year ago I realized 3 screen shinning all the time was too much for me and decided to change it to 2. Since then I have been using 2 (one 4k + one Full HD) and the extra monitor is being used by my flatmate. Love the 4k display (scaled to 1.25x so that I don’t have to this).

I would want to upgrade this multi monitor setup to a single ultrawide curved monitor (34-38") but this is just a wishful thinking for now and because India is nuts when it comes to monitors prices, probably not going to happen anytime soon.

Keyboard

  • Ducky One2-RGB-TKL I have it with Cherry MX Blues because clickety-clack (and I work from home so I don’t have to worry about making a firing noise in office) Love it and appreciate all the layer/macro capabilities it has (although I barely need to use them).

No upgrade needed anytime soon. If we are talking if there is an ultimate keyboard I would buy, yes! it’s called Ergo-dox (google it).

Mouse

It’s alright.. I guess! It’s super low latency, smooth gliding pads and pretty comfortable in hand. Now, do I need this? maybe not! but hey, it’s fancy looking and I can be spoiled brat sometimes!

Desk Pad

I keep changing these and currently using:

Laptop cooling pad

It’s not that I like it, but it was a necessary (as I mentioned my laptop was melting). It’s a very generic cheap cooling pad (which doesn’t has weird crazy gamey design.. that’s all I was looking for while buying)

What else do we have

Audio output and input devices

Things that make noise

love xm3s, they are amazing when it comes to noise cancellation and sound. Their microphone sucks.. like really sucks. 598cs are comfortable (meant to be studio headphones) but their cable is a bit wanky and replacement is expensive (well, expensive because I don’t need it right now)

No upgrade needed here

things that sink noise

Good enough mic that does the job for meetings. No upgraded needed for my meetings need when video conferencing tools become the bottle neck.

Webcam

ALL THINGS USB-C & AS MANY THINGS WIRELESS AS POSSIBLE!

I am sure I am missing a few things but who cares, right? here a picture that was taken at 3am night! so if this doesn’t look very clean, cut me some slack. Trust me when I say all things are RGB here like a total douche and I can make then any color I want :) but I perefer this warm light. :)