OT: Monitors on pedestals - why!?

Build the monitor into the desk, or get a glass desk and glue the monitor underneath it. Now you'll be the coolest kid on the block again. I did this with a glass desk once.

Buy from the place libraries get their desks. That's the first place I saw a desk with embedded monitor (sitting down inside a hole of sorts) like that.

Course then you have to pay for the whole desk...

Tim

-- Deep Fryer: A very philosophical monk. Website @

Chopping off a monitor pedestal is akin to removing the tag from a mattress. You could face a fine, jail, or both!

Bob

Bad idea. Even with bifocals I like mine at eye level. No back or neck strain. I don't wear glasses for anything but reading (eyes are permanently locked on infinity) so the bifocals are set for the monitor (some adjustments necessary for the next set) and keyboard.

The first one I saw was in a Pizza Hut, I think. Pong, IIRC.

I bet you even have to pay for the hole in the desk.

Let me guess. You're nose is about 30mm (12") from the monitor? Mine is currently 70mm (27.5") measured. You're too close and I think you need a new perscription. At 30mm, a 22" LCD monitor will require a vertical viewing angle of 53 degrees, which is far more than can be expected from todays fashion narrow bifocal eye glasses. See below.

I've got the same problem. I found myself tilting my head back, in order to look into the lower part of the bifocals. However, my solution wasn't to butcher the LCD monitor base or buy a reclining office chair. I just ordered a pair of prescription glasses tweaked specifically for my monitor. I'm 60.0 years old. My eyes aren't totally ruined, yet. All I need is astigmatism correction and a bit of magnification. I can still pass the driving eyesight test, barely.

After a substantial waste of money dealing with two clueless optometrists, I decided to craft my own prescription. See:

The cheapest glasses are $8 plus $5 shipping, so you can probably afford to experiment. I finally settled on my normal astigmatism correction, with +1.50 diopter magnification. Once I determined the optimum combination, I ordered 4 more pairs of almost identical glasses, one each for my various working locations.

I also have a pair of bifocals specifically for reading from books or magazines sitting below the LCD monitor or using my calculator. For those, I use +1.50 diopters for the upper part and +2.0 for looking down at the books. However, I'm not totally happy with my current guesswork, and will probably try a different combination.

For driving, I also went for bifocals. No magnification for the upper part, and +1.75 for the lower part so I can see the dashboard.

If you decide to do it thyself, there are a few issues. Make sure you get the pupillary distances correct. The optometrist usually does NOT supply these numbers on the perscription. The eyeglass stores have the necessary measuring device. The pupillary distance is also different for far vision and for close in reading. For exammple, for straight ahead, my pupils are 60.5mm apart. For reading glasses, they're 59.0mm. If you're ordering bifocals, where only the straight ahead number is used. If you're ordering reading glasses, use the smaller reading number.

I also detest the all too common narrow glasses. Allegedly, this is to reduce the weight of the glasses. In reality, it's probably to save a few pennies and cut costs. If you want a wide viewing angle, instead of moving your head around all the time, get the biggest and tallest glasses you can find. These are 41mm high:

which is tolerable, but small compared to my 15 year old glasses that are 50mm high. I dunno about the Ben Franklin look, but these are

I used to work with monitors built into a desk with a glas top, what a &!** *^#* (LITERALY!) pain in the neck. Never again.

H.

All you need to do is tip the screen BACK (WHILE it is raised to the proper height).

That is pretty lame with modern FPDs.

My desk is wide, so I have a 32" HDYV nd a 24" LCD PC monitor, side by side. There is no way in hell to get this setup in an embedded desktop.

Besides, I do not want to go from the paper based society of the last century, with everyone looking DOWNWARD at a desktop, to the paperless FPD society, and then take a step backward (retardation) BACK to the old ways of ZERO ergonomic considerations! Looking DOWN at a flat desktop all day is a good way to get a hunch back.

On the other foot, if you don't want to get custom computah glasses with a wider viewing angle, you can always get a wider screen. Never mind the overpriced HDTV screens. I want something like this:

More:

Now, wait a minute. I thought "surface" computing was the hot ticket and next big thing? (see links to videos)

As laptops keep getting bigger and thinner, the trend should be towards something like this:

Doesn't everyone want a $25,000 glass table, projection display, and finger mouse? It's suppose to be the office appliance of the future. Should I unload my stock?

Drivel: In about 1985, I helped setup a video store with HP150 touch screen computahs and sales software. Fairly soon, everyone complained of back, arm, and neck pains. So, I tried it for about 4 hours and confirmed the problem. No mouse, so we switched to function keys, and lived happily ever after.

More surface drivel: Back around the same time, the movie "Tron" was featuring an evil bad guy, who had this really cool glass desk, with a monitor underneath.

One of my customers thought this was really cool and bribed me into building one. Photos, when I find them. At the time, the monitor de jure was the IBM EGA color monitor. I removed the case, extracted the guts, fabricated a mounting frame, and hung the whole mess under the table. I have photos somewhere.

I soon ran into problems. There was no room for the users legs. No matter how I positioned the monitor, his legs would smash into my welded frame.

Heat was also a problem. The glass top was supported by oak "boxes" at both sides, and an oak "modesty panel". That left only one way for the heat to escape, directly in the users face.

Finding an acceptable way to route the giant keyboard coil cord was a challenge. No wireless keyboards yet. Drilling the glass top was not an option. I initially replaced the coil cord with a flat ribbon cable, which was not much of an improvement. I later kludged a 2MHz transformer coupler, that would couple the key clock and key scan data through the glass. That worked, but didn't help the aesthetics with a

Lighting was also a mess. If I used sufficiently bright overhead lighting to be able to read a book or newspaper, it would wash out the screen, and produce a nasty reflection on the shiny glass top. If I darkened the room, it was possible to see the screen, but not be able to read any papers on the desk.

Where to put one's hands turned into a problem. This was before the invention of carpal tunnel syndrome, so there were no ergonomic aids available. The user tended to lean his hands on the edge of glass table, with predictable blood circulation issues.

Surface? Nope. Dive, dive, dive...

Thanks for all insights.

Many solutions and opinions..:-)

Just to be more precise:

- I do not want to disk-jockey glasses. I need my glasses permanently (also for far-sight), and I move a lot from the PC to the measurement / soldering setup, and go to meetings / talk to collegues etc. I have PC glasses, but find changing glasses very inconvenient in my particular MO in the job.

- I sit ~ 70 cm from the monitors (I use 2). I am not pressing my nose to them.

- I do not need the monitor beneath a glass desktop, I just need the LCD's to rest directly sitting on the desk, laptop style. I.e. no gap between bottom side and desk.I do not want to look down like I would do reading a sheet of paper.

- In this setup, my head is level (ergonomically correct?) and my eyeballs look slightly down - making my multifocals work.

(more) insights welcome!

I will have you knw that monitors are put on pedestals so that theymay be properly worshipped!

Ah - that explains it. And it is probably rude anyway to stare directly at them :-)

I stack the extra monitors against the wall, with the second layer upside down and facing the wall so I can stack printers on to of the pedestals. Little respect, and definitely not worshiped.