I got this idea from my former office mate (or cabin-mate). However, when we shared an office I never followed his advice with creating a shelf on a workstation desk for the computer monitor(s).
After we got moved I decided to try this system out. At work I blatantly copied what Roger (my former office mate) had in place. He used a shelf from one of our hanging shelf units (all MS in Redmond has the same hanging shelf units) and raised it by using two reams of paper. On top of this I put my speakers and my 24″ Dell monitor.
At my house I put off trying this configuration even longer. It was not until yesterday when I realized that my docking station has both a VGA and a DVI output. I had only been using the DVI output to one of my Dell monitors and using the screen on my laptop as my other desktop. This was inconvenient because my laptop’s 1900×1200 resolution was difficult to see when the laptop was placed next to the monitor.
So I decided to attempt shelf at home, with both my monitors in the mix. I found a plank of wood from my garage (long story how it got there) and found some VHS movies for height raising. After a couple hours of re-arranging furniture, reorganizing all my wiring I finally had the shelf, monitors, and machine in order.
The benefits I experienced by this setup at work were immediately evident to me at home as well. This small and subtle modification has had a dramatic improvement on my posture, productivity, and usefulness of my desk.
The benefits:
- Doubles as a reading area (or an area to eat lunch) by sliding keyboard under the shelf (notice the space is left deliberately empty)
- Speakers and knick-knacks always dominated the entire desk, getting pushed around with other items on the desk. Now they do not impact anything since they are raised and untouched
- Inability to spill coffee or other liquids on the monitor or speakers (or rather, much much more difficult)
- Aesthetically more pleasing workspace (even with a ghetto shelf like the one I am using at home)
- People can see the skin applied to my laptop
Try this at your home or work and let me know if you find it beneficial. Roger and I both believe there is a market for high quality desk-shelf material like this.
