Traditionally I’ve used an office chair for my computer use. But I’ve recently found out that I can push my comfy chair in front of the PC, put my trackball on the armrest, keyboard in my lap, put the footrest up and the back back, open up a website and by increasing the font size a few times I can surf the internet from my back. It’s taking a little while to get used to typing in my lap but I’m getting the hang of it.
And my TV is just 2 feet to my left which has the PS2 and DVD player hooked up to it. I’m in technoheaven.
So far I’ve resisted using the empty bottles by my feet thanks to the power of pause on my DVR. I’m not quite that lazy.
Yet.
I need to set the picture for you to fully appreciate my lazy innovation: in my living room, my computer is against one wall, and the TV is on the wall to the right, 90 degrees away. I sit on a swivel chair in front of my computer. And for various reasons, I have my computer’s TV out line hooked into my VCR, so one of my VCR channels shows what’s on my monitor. Got it?
OK, so one day I clicked on a link, and as it was taking a while to load (it was probably a SDMB thread), I rotated to the right to watch TV. As I was using my remote to flip channels, I decided I wanted to see if my page was loaded yet. Instead of moving my head…no, actually, just my eyeballs, very slightly to the left, I opted to exert a tiny bit of pressure with my thumb so as to change the channel to my monitor’s channel so I could see on my TV what my computer was doing.
Someone in chat once mentioned that they wanted to listen to one of their CDs, but it was in the car, so they just downloaded it instead, but I still think my story’s better. Incidentally, the page still hadn’t loaded, so I had to go through it all again later.
I have realized that I am no longer willing to exert the energy needed to move the mouse pointer to the back button on my web browser. Instead I have a button on my mouse that does this for me.
Hey, I’m running crap that lets me do just about everything with my mouse. I have a Logitech MX1000. The tilt-wheel is set to go forward and backwards so I don;'t have to move the mouse up to the relevant browser buttons. The side buttons are set to mimic control, shift, and space. Control and Shift are for multi-selecting files or items so I don’t have to move my other arm to the relevant keys. The space is just for gaming. I also have mouse gestures installed in Firefox, so I can open new windows and tabs by right-dragging the appropriate gesture over a link, thus saving me the time of right-clicking and selecting from the context menu.
I have shortcut keys to my most used applications. (Notepad for taking notes, my E-Mail client, my POP3 mail checker, etc.)
And sometimes, if I can’t be bothered getting up off the couch/out of bed, I’ll use my PDA’s WiFi connection to browse the web if I just need to check something quickly.
I also have a tall leather office swivel chair. I’m sitting in it right now, slightly reclined, with my feet on my computer desk’s bottom shelf. And if I need to check the TV for anything, I’ll use my PVR card’s remote to pop open my TV browser and see what’s on. You know, so I don’t have to turn around to actually see the TV or grab the digital box’s remote.
Music is no problem. I have some very nice speakers, and both WinAmp and my iPod connected.
I’m on the couch, in my pyjamas (yes, it’s 4pm on a Saturday, why do you ask?) with the laptop on my lap, reading the boards (yay wireless!), and the tv is on so all I have to do is move my eyes a little to the right to see the screen.
Sure, I have to use a remote (about a foot away at the moment) to change channels, but still, it’s pretty sweet.
My desktop is an a whole other room. It’s really old, but even so, I haven’t actually used it in over a year.
Same here. My mouse and keyboard have lazified me; I scroll with the wheel button, go back and forward with the side buttons, and with a button press on my keyboard I close tabs/windows, open Google Translate, print, save, and open Word/Excel/Powerpoint and the calculator.
