Sunday, April 02, 2023

How the "Travel Rig" Worked Out

TL;DR: About as good as one could expect it to.

Long version:

A lot of things go into working on a desktop instead of a laptop while traveling, No matter how good your rig is, desk/chair ergonomics are unlikely to match up to well to one's everyday home office setup. If you're used to dual 19" or larger monitors, that's going to be a problem to carry around. Etc.

The little "tablet stand" I bought is a winner. Since my Chromebook can be folded completely in half to effectively be a table (it's a touch-screen model), putting it on the stand raises the screen and stops the built-in keyboard/trackpad from taking up real estate and pushing the screens further from my eyes.

The little "full-size" keyboard ... meh. While the QWERTY part is reasonably close to "full-size, it's also those annoying little "chiclet" keys. And while I don't really miss the number pad, I hadn't realized how much I depend on page up/down keys. Not sure what I'm going to do about that in the future. It isn't terrible, but it's a least a mild inconvenience that's annoying and probably added 15 minutes to my work over three days.

I still like the idea of using tiny projectors to give me larger monitor size on a wall behind whatever desk/table I end up at, but I'm not sure that's practical.

I think the REAL solution is to do a lot less work when traveling. But I don't like that idea much. From a work perspective, I'll be glad to be back at my normal desk tomorrow.

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