My Work From Home Desk Setup

Ever since my job moved to full time from home earlier this year, I have tried to figure how I can best organize my work space in order to improve my working efficiency. Below are seven changes I made to my work from home desk environment:

(i) Dual Laptops:

I've written previously about my choice to buy re-purposed Lenovo Thinkpad laptops as my primary work machines https://financialsombrero.com/macbook-vs-thinkpad-1 

In summary, I chose a Lenovo refurbished business laptop for under $400 dollars instead of a newer Macbook Pro system. I was then able to donate this particular Lenovo laptop to someone who really needed a fully functioning, powerful lightweight workhorse laptop in order to monitor their finances. My latest tool acquisition is a Lenovo Yoga260. It's a 12.5 inch Intel i7 with 16 gigs of ram and a newly installed SSD hard drive. 

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-yoga/Yoga-260/p/22TP2TXY260

This combination of extra ram and SSD speed creates a inexpensive ($400 US) dollar laptop that is hard to beat in relation to newer laptops. I liked this laptop so much that I purchased a second duplicate used Lenovo Yoga 260, added the same modifications to create a mirrored business computer set. 

(ii) Lenovo Onelink+ Hub

Both of these laptops came with a refurbished Lenovo OneLink Plus hub. 

https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/acc100252

With the One Link+ hub, all of the peripherals stay plugged to the identical computer mouse and keyboards. If I want to move downstairs I only need to unplug the OneLink Plus cable to disconnect my laptop from the mouse/keyboard/external drives/audio jack, thumb drives, etc. 

Here's the idea with owning dual laptops- having two identical laptops at a time when I am working from home reduces the risk of downtime. If I ever have a problem with any laptop cables or components, I can easily and quickly swap out parts from one laptop to another much faster than ordering and receiving parts online. Also, attempting to locate a computer parts store with an open door and inventory is real challenge right now. 

All in, I only needed around $700 dollars to buy these Lenovo systems and install the upgrades I wanted, still much less than the $1,400 newer Macbook Pro. 

(iii) Macbook Pro Addition:

The next addition of hardware will be a unibody 2012 MacBook Pro 13 inch laptop to run MacOS for specific audio and video apps, these used systems are also selling for around a few hundred dollars. I'm looking forward to finding a broken used macbook pro unibody laptop, and spending some time upgrading and fixing one of these so that I can own my first MacOS machine, as I have only owned Hackingtosh/Linux/and other fringe OS systems outside of the Wintel platform. If you are interested in building up Macbook Pro, I recommend Luke's youtube channel on Mac hardware upgrades, he makes the process look really easy. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xXeHMI6sJ8

(iv) Triple or Dual Monitors:

In order look at code on one screen, and email and other apps on secondary screen I decided that I could benefit from owning two identical 27 inch monitors. I bought new HP 27f monitors from Bestbuy online for just over $220 dollars each. These lower end 4k monitors are not designed for content creation, but are perfect for the type of work I do: coding, data analysis, spreadsheets, and so forth. Once I had setup dual monitors, I realized I might even add a third  monitor. Two for one laptop, and a third monitor for the second laptop. Redundancy is also a key- If one of these monitors fails, I still have another backup.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-27f-27-ips-led-fhd-freesync-monitor-natural-silver/6219205.p?skuId=6219205

(v) External Hardware Backup:

I needed to create a simple local back up system to mirror the online backups I had already setup with Microsoft OneDrive. Physical backup always make sense, ask any programmer to tell you about the time their laptop died and they forgot to backup important locally saved source code. 

I had previously upgraded another desktop PC from a 1 TB disk drive to a SSD drive. The old drive was no longer needed, so I purchased a very inexpensive hard drive enclosure that connects to a USB 3.0 port. The enclosure was under $10 dollars US, and I have 1 TB of backup disk storage at my disposal. Here is a similar enclosure for reference:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32800807672.html

(vi) Laptop Cradle:

With the Onelink Plus hub, I can leave my Lenovo laptops closed and flat on my desk. However I found that the laptops took up too much space laying flat on the desk. To solve this annoyance, I found a well made metal laptop cradle from Jarlink that allows me to keep the laptops stored vertically on my desk. I've been using laptops as my primary work machines for years, I can't believe I never picked up a laptop cradle before this year. I highly recommend this simple piece of hardware if you want to clean up your desk. 

https://maxedbuy.com/en/detail/221690-jarlink-vertical-laptop-stand.html?msclkid=51b3fbc39bd91ce9f6cca53594d353f4

(vii) Google Voice for Phone Calls & Text

Why utilize your cell phone from your home office when there is a completely free way to talk on the phone while sitting at your computer? It's a good question, and this year I made the move to use my Google Voice (browser based) telephone. Setting up the phone was quick and easy. Now, I now longer use my cell phone throughout the day. The audio quality has been very good, and I a no longer paying to talk on the cell phone when I am sitting at my computer for any US phone call or text- seems like something I should have done years ago. 

Here's the wikipedia reference for Google Voice:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Voice