Share your HOME WORKING workstation environment - pics

[Melman Giraffe]

DanL said:

Watchman said:

Me too... but overall I've saved enough to justify it. Thing is, having invested the time, money and "thinking" to customise my home environment, I definitely don't want to go back into the office.

Fortunately, the company is not in a rush to have people back, recently claiming we'll likely remain at home until a vaccine is widely available, proven to work, and we've all had it.

So, to improve video conferences, I've a new camera on the way.

We’re talking about June 2021 as the time when we hope people will be returning to the office, but we’ll revisit depending on how things are panning out. It was due to be in the new year, in more optimistic times!

There is a plan to open in a limited way in January, for people who want to go back in to the office. Will be interesting to see what the take up is there!

If you can remote in and dont need to physically be in the office then there is no point going back. I will be honest it took me 3 months to get used to working from home but now it feels very natural and i love it. I have a decent set up and a VOIP phone so i can speed dial all my colleagues and they can get in touch with me by dialing my extension so its exactly the same as if i was in the office

Edited by Melman Giraffe on Wednesday 7th October 16:19

[Big_Dan]

Anyone recommend some speakers?

I currently use the speakers and mic built in to my Surface

I have an Echo Show 5 thing to play background music, but it's pretty average

I'm not sure whether to get some traditional PC speakers, or some kind of soundbar thing that will also act as a conference phone for Teams

Open to suggestions!

[xeny]

Big_Dan said:

I'm not sure whether to get some traditional PC speakers, or some kind of soundbar thing that will also act as a conference phone for Teams

I think it comes down to do you want a proper stereo setup with separation between the two sources, or are you happy with a single source playing both channels close together?

Have you tried bluetooth pairing the Surface with the Echo? I'd expect that is at least better than the built in speakers.

I've just gone down the small "proper" speakers route with a pair of Roth Oli RA1s and the inevitable Nobsound Amp, but haven't had time to hook them up yet.

That should free up a set of Edifier E10s, which I"m happy with sound wise, but they are a bit too tall, and they'll get passed through the household.

[TameRacingDriver]

Big_Dan said:

Anyone recommend some speakers?

I currently use the speakers and mic built in to my Surface

I have an Echo Show 5 thing to play background music, but it's pretty average

I'm not sure whether to get some traditional PC speakers, or some kind of soundbar thing that will also act as a conference phone for Teams

Open to suggestions!

I suggest some nice bookshelf speakers, such as my Dali Zensor 1s



I re-used these speakers following a house move - they were too small for the living room, but are perfect for the office! I also re-used the NAD D3020 that I used to drive them, again, perfect for an office, desktop sized.

This was good, but there was, and still is room for improvement so I replaced the crappy speaker cable with some much thicker, expensive looking stuff I had lying around in my bag of cables, experimented with desk / speaker positioning, and finally added an AudioQuest Dragonfly Red DAC to the system; the NAD does have a DAC but this one sounds noticeably better, and I got it cheap.

You may not want a system like this, but let me tell you, no soundbar is getting close to the sound I get from this. I easily enjoy it just as much as my main downstairs system, which was a fair bit more expensive overall. The imaging in particular is absolutely incredible, it’s like you have a band playing on your desk though its quite happy to fade into the background if needs must.

However, there is always room for improvement so I may end up getting a small subwoofer just to fill in the 40-60Hz range and add some real depth to the sound, although honestly, I could easily live with it as is.

Now I just need to tidy / decorate the room and actually put my mark on it, currently its a drab colour and no pictures or decoration (other than some cactii). It looks like I’ll be WFH for another 6 months so I’m going to press ahead and get it done.

[Glade]

Melman Giraffe said:

My new improved set up

Two 34" 21:9 screens? Looks wiiiiiide

[Carbon Sasquatch]

TameRacingDriver said:

Big_Dan said:

Anyone recommend some speakers?

I currently use the speakers and mic built in to my Surface

I have an Echo Show 5 thing to play background music, but it's pretty average

I'm not sure whether to get some traditional PC speakers, or some kind of soundbar thing that will also act as a conference phone for Teams

Open to suggestions!

I suggest some nice bookshelf speakers, such as my Dali Zensor 1s

It all depends on how much space you have..... I have a 5.1.4 setup in my office back on page 46
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

However, for Teams/Zoom I just use the laptop built in speakers - it's just conversation so quality not really relevant.

Also 'background' music usually doesn't need that good a quality - if constrained for space, I'd probably get another HomePod, I'm in the Apple eco system, so not for everyone, but the sound from those is really very good.

[Melman Giraffe]

Glade said:

Two 34" 21:9 screens? Looks wiiiiiide

Yep it's decent

[ZesPak]

Carbon Sasquatch said:

Also 'background' music usually doesn't need that good a quality - if constrained for space, I'd probably get another HomePod, I'm in the Apple eco system, so not for everyone, but the sound from those is really very good.

How do you connect a HomePod to a laptop/pc?

[Eddh]

JDB96 said:

Atanasoff said:

Same for screens and laptops. If most employees can save 10 minutes in efficiency per day the roi is less than 9mths in most cases.

Any chance you could drop my employer a line

Still got a HP Elitebook that’s probably a good 10 years old. Shiny new Win10 laptops are coming “soon” apparently...

It’s at the point now where I visibly wince before attempting something really taxing, like renaming a file or changing the font in a cell in Excel to italic

I suspect I know where you work, if your old laptop breaks somehow they'll issue you a new windows 10 one

[Peanut Gallery]

Random question, does anyone know what can be done with the high pitch hum from the monitors? They've always done it, however the noise is starting to grind a bit! I'm thinking possibly something like a power cleaner?

Talking of monitor envy, I was the first in my office to request a second monitor. Not a month after I had that, most others had put their request in.

[Carbon Sasquatch]

ZesPak said:

Carbon Sasquatch said:

Also 'background' music usually doesn't need that good a quality - if constrained for space, I'd probably get another HomePod, I'm in the Apple eco system, so not for everyone, but the sound from those is really very good.

How do you connect a HomePod to a laptop/pc?

I'm not sure I'd bother, just talk to it, but they support AirPlay so can play audio from a Mac or iOS device.

[ZesPak]

Carbon Sasquatch said:

I'm not sure I'd bother, just talk to it, but they support AirPlay so can play audio from a Mac or iOS device.

As far as I can tell it has no AUX or Bluetooth input, so suggesting it to someone asking for a PC speaker (for his Surface) seems quite odd... that's why I asked.
They offer good sound quality though, but still expensive unless you're really into the Apple ecosystem.

Edited by ZesPak on Thursday 8th October 11:49

[TameRacingDriver]

An upcoming option is the new Google Nest speaker.

I saw a very technical article on it about how much effort they have put into this one to make it sound good.

$99 so not exactly breaking the bank either.

https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2020/10/05/review-g...

[ZesPak]

The Google Home was average at best and the Google Max was a behemoth. I've got an Okyo with Google Assistant for 100 which is really good for the small space we use it for. Friend of my got some HK speaker which was under 200 which was great tbh.

[Carbon Sasquatch]

ZesPak said:

As far as I can tell it has no AUX or Bluetooth input, so suggesting it to someone asking for a PC speaker (for his Surface) seems quite odd... that's why I asked.
They offer good sound quality though, but still expensive unless you're really into the Apple ecosystem.

Edited by ZesPak on Thursday 8th October 11:49

Strange - I thought I suggested keeping the 2 things separate as they are now. The HomePod was a suggestion for replacing the Echo and I acknowledged you'd need to be into the Apple Eco System

Thanks for pointing it out though

[bodhi]

I've gone for some Sony XM3 headphones used a Bluetooth headset in conjunction with the mic on my webcam for conference calls, with an old Sony Midi System from the early 90's for music.

Best of both worlds imo.

[TameRacingDriver]

ZesPak said:

The Google Home was average at best and the Google Max was a behemoth. I've got an Okyo with Google Assistant for 100 which is really good for the small space we use it for. Friend of my got some HK speaker which was under 200 which was great tbh.

I've got the Google Home and it's ste yes, but this is a new one, apparently much much better, and is not a behemoth either.

bodhi said:

I've gone for some Sony XM3 headphones used a Bluetooth headset in conjunction with the mic on my webcam for conference calls, with an old Sony Midi System from the early 90's for music.

Best of both worlds imo.

Tried using my B&W Bluetooth headphones but I couldn't get past the fact I couldn't hear myself talking

[rodericb]

Peanut Gallery said:

Random question, does anyone know what can be done with the high pitch hum from the monitors? They've always done it, however the noise is starting to grind a bit! I'm thinking possibly something like a power cleaner?

It might be a faulty capacitor. You might notice it gets stronger if you show an all white screen and go away on an all black screen.

[gobuddygo]

This is my setup I've been working from home in IT for years.

When we bought this house over 5 years ago had a friend of a friend who worked in a furniture factory make me the the desk for the cost of a few beers, its the perfect height for me and made to fit exactly in the alcove, 900mm deep and 120mm wide, it weights a ton.

Works monitor stands on my works laptop on the left, don't worry about damage its a massive Thinkpad on a docking station, right hand side is personal monitor and PC, when pressed this is also used for work.

[p1stonhead]

gobuddygo said:

This is my setup I've been working from home in IT for years.

When we bought this house over 5 years ago had a friend of a friend who worked in a furniture factory make me the the desk for the cost of a few beers, its the perfect height for me and made to fit exactly in the alcove, 900mm deep and 120mm wide, it weights a ton.

Works monitor stands on my works laptop on the left, don't worry about damage its a massive Thinkpad on a docking station, right hand side is personal monitor and PC, when pressed this is also used for work.

Why not just one monitor for both computers and an hdmi switch or the like to swap between?