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60-70% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck(depending on what you consider paycheck to paycheck, e.g. $1000 in the bank gets you 60%, $100 gets you 70%). Doesn't matter how much that $20 bulb saves you if you've only got $1 in your pocket. Move into an Apartment and you'll still find incandescent bulbs everywhere, especially if it's a cheap apartment.

Actually $0.99 buys you a led bulb at https://m2.ikea.com/us/en/p/ry...

Clever remark. More of the same critical thinking. Incandescents emit light and heat, and many homes are increasingly heated by electricity, emission free. Why ban incadescents, using a fraction of power compared to heating, with the rest heating your home and thus reducing your heating bills? Letâ(TM)s follow the money to understand obamas buying cartels of Philips and Co types. Profit for incandescents few cents per bulb. But scared with global warming guilt, you are happily paying $20 per short-lived LED bulb instead to 50 cents per incandescent bulb, satisfied that the planet Earth would not overheat tomorrow. Meanwhile Philips and Co are going laughing all the way to their bank.

Stick it to the man and get $0.99 led bulbs at ikea https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat...

Ikea Ladda FTW!

Maybe its because I don't generally drink and eat at the same time, I don't wash my food down....so, ANY roast turkey I've ever had, tastes mostly like dried cardboard to me.

Fried in peanut oil, it's one of the most moist and delicious things you can put in your month. (as terrible as that sounds)

But if you don't want to deal with 4+ gallons (hey, it's a US holiday, so imperial measurements, baby!) of expensive, hot, highly flammable cooking oil, try an electric roaster instead. Yeah, those things you see stacked to the ceiling in Walmart the second after they toss out all the pumpkins and plastic skeletons. Inject the turkey with this stuff, rub it with peanut oil, sprinkle on some poultry seasoning, and toss in the electric roaster. Use one of these thermometers, so you don't let the heat out of the roaster constantly checking the turkey.

The skin will look ghastly, but the meat will be every bit as succulent and delicious as if you'd fried the bird. If this still doesn't convince you turkey is a fricken awesome meal, I suppose you could always celebrate Thanksgiving with a cold Soylent meal replacement shake.

Depends of the furniture. There is a service already of transport and assembly, that especially for kitchens is useful.
This is the one for UK
This is the one for France
This is for Italy
Installing a kitchen is difficult, you have to be at least in three and have some woodworking tooks available if you have to fit and adjust some things, as always happen.
Not to mention the safety hazard problems you have to install a gas or electric stove if you don't have the right tools to check that the pipes are gas tight and the ground connection is working, and if a wiriing or a gas pipe has to be added doing a good work need expertise.
Putting toegher a bed or a bookshelf is of course easier, but sometimes require to be in tw to work...

Depends of the furniture. There is a service already of transport and assembly, that especially for kitchens is useful.
This is the one for UK
This is the one for France
This is for Italy
Installing a kitchen is difficult, you have to be at least in three and have some woodworking tooks available if you have to fit and adjust some things, as always happen.
Not to mention the safety hazard problems you have to install a gas or electric stove if you don't have the right tools to check that the pipes are gas tight and the ground connection is working, and if a wiriing or a gas pipe has to be added doing a good work need expertise.
Putting toegher a bed or a bookshelf is of course easier, but sometimes require to be in tw to work...

Depends of the furniture. There is a service already of transport and assembly, that especially for kitchens is useful.
This is the one for UK
This is the one for France
This is for Italy
Installing a kitchen is difficult, you have to be at least in three and have some woodworking tooks available if you have to fit and adjust some things, as always happen.
Not to mention the safety hazard problems you have to install a gas or electric stove if you don't have the right tools to check that the pipes are gas tight and the ground connection is working, and if a wiriing or a gas pipe has to be added doing a good work need expertise.
Putting toegher a bed or a bookshelf is of course easier, but sometimes require to be in tw to work...

Maybe their bicycles and accessories are harder to assemble than their furniture?

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/cata...

* $500 electric desks are out there, you just have to look for them. IKEA has one now -> http://www.ikea.com/us/en/cata...
* Mixing standing and sitting is good. Moving around is better.
* Your legs will not appreciate standing to begin with.
* Standing will not magically fix poor posture: talk with your chiropractor or better yet take up Yoga.
* Standing will not magically fix an ergonomically unsound workspace setup:
** Make sure that your monitors are the correct height - mid-screen at or slightly below eye level - keeping the head, neck and eyes in a neutral position.
** Note that the appropriate monitor height will change when standing.
** When typing and mousing your shoulders should be relaxed not hunched, wrists should be straight or angled slightly down but never bent back.
* Give your eye muscles a break by regularly looking away from the screen and gazing into the distance.

I've been trying to get my current employer into using them after having a great time with adjustable standing desks at my last employer. I sat roughly 2 hours a day, but I was regularly up-and-down (about as frequent as people who take breaks regular).
What I don't see here is how well it works for impromptu meetings. You can get a lot more people around modern multi-monitor rigs than before, and there's no thinking about it: suddenly you're presenting to 5 peers in a meeting planned only seconds ago, and everyone is comfortable & can see the screen.

BTW, Ikea has an electronically-adjusted standing desk for $489: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/cata...

I got the Ikea Bekant http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S99022526/; it's great, solidly built, and less than $500US. I used a felt pen on the legs to mark my optimum sitting and standing heights so that I don't have to take five minutes fine-tuning the height every time I change heights (which would have guaranteed that I would never change the height!).

Sometimes I change multiple times a week, sometimes multiple times a day. It's great.

Remember, a refrigerator alone is about 2200 watts running

This one is rated 246kWh/year, and would be considered big for european standards.

http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/cata...

waiting for a good price point

This looks good enough for me:
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/cata...

Put your monitor on one or two of these $10 ikea lack tables.

You could mitigate the damage by taking small walking breaks while in work. Go to the gym couple times of week. Use a standing desk at home: the Ikea Björkudden is a relatively cheap option at $99.

Why do you say that? I play with KB+M from my couch perfectly fine, on a PC hooked up to a projector and 5.1 sound.

Takes a USB hub on my coffee table, and one of these things on a pillow beside me for a proper (ie, elbow supporting) mouse surface.

Even though CFL's contain mercury, they result in a net reduction in environmental mercury emissions due to their much lower power consumption, since tatistically, half of your power comes from coal, which emits mercury as it is burned. Furthermore, $120 for LED bulbs is ridiculously unrealistic in 2013. I've seen them recently at IKEA for under $10 (albeit in low wattage flavors). Home Depot gets $13, before rebates. $78 gets you a six-pack of them.

http://www2.epa.gov/cfl/what-are-connections-between-mercury-and-cfls
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40222476/
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Cree-60W-Equivalent-Soft-White-2700K-A19-Dimmable-LED-Light-Bulb-BA19-08027OMF-12DE26-2U100/204592770#

I've seen claims on them that they are broken down by sun light.

Regardless I throw my soft plastic in the recycle bin for soft plastic and before we had one of those I used the "rest garbage" bin instead because back then it wasn't recycled anyway so regardless of which bin you used it would get burned.

Plastic bags hold better and hence they are better for me.

What I normally use as a grocery bag is a 4 SEK IKEA Frakta Medium bag though, often lately I haven't brought it and taken those small fruit bags but that's pretty stupid, but if I don't have anything else and don't want to pay for a larger stronger plastic bag that's what I do.

A regular plastic bag is like 1.5 SEK, the Ikea Frakta Medium is 4 SEK as said. Paper bag is likely at least 2 SEK.

The Frakta holds way better and is about the size of the paper bags.

http://www.ikea.com/sg/en/catalog/products/30161992/
$0.9 in the US.

Well, I have an odd setup in my living room. I'm stuck in a crappy apartment that has baseboard heaters on both "long walls" of the living room, preventing furniture from being pushed up flush against the wall. With the couch on one side, it's not a big deal. On the other side, however, I didn't want to have a 4" gap behind my wall unit, mainly because the living room isn't big enough to waste space like that. I ended up wall-mounting these guys just above the baseboard heater, which looks pretty nice. TV wall-mounted directly above. I punched a hole in the back of the middle cabinet and cut a bit of the top part away near the middle for cable runs. A cheapo cable-cover runs from that cut-away part up to the TV, hiding both the cut and the cables. There's a power outlet and coax directly behind the middle cabinet as well, so that's where I put my cable modem and my wireless router. Of course, I didn't want my desktop just sitting on the floor, cables running up to the cabinet, so I just stuck it in there with the cable modem and router. But let me tell you, 600W is a bit too much for a "wooden" (have you ever cut through a piece of IKEA furniture? It's fucking amazing!) cabinet with literally no airflow. So I tried adding some really ghetto airflow solution, but that still wasn't enough to keep things running at moderate load. Eventually, I just took the door off the middle cabinet. And the side off my PC case. Now it's loud as fuck, but it doesn't overheat anymore. And it looks really ugly, or, well, nerdy at least. In hindsight, it would've been better off if I had just left it outside the cabinet, but I refuse to back down now. I'll move the 600W desktop somewhere else, somewhere where it can actually get some fresh air. The Gateway craptop I bought should be "good enough" for what I need (Netflix, youtube, web browsing, and the occasional game of Civ5), without the jet engine / convection oven that I hope to finally evict tomorrow night.

TL;DR - This is the strangest post I've ever made to slashdot. But seriously, take a circular saw to a 1" thick piece of IKEA "wood". It's a honeycomb structure made of cardboard. There isn't even any fiberboard/particleboard in it. It's just paper.

You mean liiiike through their website?

Go set your IKEA products out in the elements for a while and see if they even last 6 months.

I imagine the ones that are designed for outdoor use would manage quite nicely, thank you.

LACK at IKEA

Roughly all of my furniture with the exception of the chair I'm sitting in now came from Ikea.

Let me be the chairman then, as I just picked a chair (TORKEL) from Ikea. Luckily enough I was able to purchase a demo unit for €30.

Nice product, comfortable and ergonomic.

This was something like 5-6 big boxes worth of parts, and involved some assembly that was a real challenge to do by myself.

That is besides the point. The IKEA-construction meme revolves around having parts left over and lack of understanding of the intended assembly process.
That is markedly different from construction being difficult when done alone.

Furthermore, I just looked at the type of bed you mentioned and the second page of the assembly instructions actually very intuitively makes clear that assembly should be done with two people:
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/assembly_instructions/brimnes-bed-frame-with-storage__AA-473492-10_pub.pdf
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/assembly_instructions/mandal-bed-frame-with-storage__AA-261173-9_pub.PDF

You might want to check whether the instructions you have contain a similar indication.

This was something like 5-6 big boxes worth of parts, and involved some assembly that was a real challenge to do by myself.

That is besides the point. The IKEA-construction meme revolves around having parts left over and lack of understanding of the intended assembly process.
That is markedly different from construction being difficult when done alone.

Furthermore, I just looked at the type of bed you mentioned and the second page of the assembly instructions actually very intuitively makes clear that assembly should be done with two people:
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/assembly_instructions/brimnes-bed-frame-with-storage__AA-473492-10_pub.pdf
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/assembly_instructions/mandal-bed-frame-with-storage__AA-261173-9_pub.PDF

You might want to check whether the instructions you have contain a similar indication.

Also: http://www.ikea.com/

Okay, so let's say you spend $2000 building yourself a quality set of home tools - quite reasonable for a good drill, a couple good saws, a router, and a decent assortment of hand tools, and that's probably just the basics of what you'd need. Now let's say you make 12 pieces of furniture with them. You're still spending an average of ~$167 per piece of furniture on the cost of your woodworking tools.

That right there blows your DIY budget - because I guarantee you that you can buy a better-looking piece of furniture for $167 than you can construct as an amateur for the $300 the wood + amortized tool costs will get you. Since you seem to like picking on Ikea, call me when you can construct a pine bookcase (solid pine - the back piece is the only non-solid wood in use, according to the Product Info) for less than $155 - with the finish & build quality at least as good as that bookcase, or significantly better. Hell, the tools *alone* cost more than that, unless you're committing to making 15-20 pieces of furniture for your house - then figure in your time for labor, cost of materials - you couldn't produce a bookshelf that looks like that for that cost, period.

If you want to do it because you enjoy it, then have at it - it's a fun hobby, and over time, your build & finish quality will certainly improve as you get more practice with the techniques. But please, let's stop pretending that any fool with a circular saw and some scrap wood can build "quality" furniture for less than what it would cost to get same-or-better furniture pre-built from Ikea or any other store. If you're doing it at home with the recipe you provided initially, it will be an amateurish piece of work, and *still* cost far more than a bland-but-finished solid pine bookcase from Ikea.

I'm approaching a year at my standing desk. Here are the benefits I've noticed:

- I've got more energy
- I'm more productive, I don't seem to have that power down after lunch any more
- Less loitering around my desk as people can't seem to stand for very long
- Great conversation topic, people are extremely interested in the idea
- The most surprising aspect of this has been that sitting has actually become a relaxing break. It feels great to take a load off and I feel much less lazy about going home and watching a show or two since I've been up all day.

After some research I ended up using an Ikea Fredrik desk and it's worked quite well. http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/60111123/ I also picked up one of those anti-fatigue mats at Home Depot. It was too painful without it.

Other developers here at the office are now planning to transition as well too. I'd encourage anybody to give it a shot. If you can make it past the first week or two of leg and foot pain you should be fine. It's not that bad and the benefits are worth it.

I hear they are about to pass a law to ban this kind of fracking too.

Interesting... I wonder if this one has the same internal dimensions... would be a lot more convenient with the casters already on it.

Could probably manage a switch and maybe a 3U/4U shallow depth server on it?

IKEA also makes a modular shelf system called IVAR in two depths, 30cm and 50cm. The width is unsuitable for rackmount equipment, but the depth is perfect in the 50cm option.

Heck, the Ikea LACK side tables are perfect for holding rack mount equipment. The come in a variety of colors, and are cheap ($10 each), so you can pick up spares. A few minutes with a drill and a couple of dowels, maybe some casters, and you have a home-made rack!

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40104270/

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40152586/
Seems like a lot of artists should get some legal PO Box in the UK and a good UK lawyer. From patent trolling to art trolling?
As for the US Unix is Linux case, if only they had thought about UK law and followed the libel tourism trade :)
"When you go to the bookshop and look in the UNIX section, there's books on 'How to Programme UNIX' but when you go to the Linux section and look for 'How to Programme Linux' you're not gonna find it, because it doesn't exist""

My solution is to use a whole bunch of solutions:
- Instead of cable ties, we mostly strips of double-sided velcro. It's faster to reconfigure. (Hint: Buy "Velcro Plant Ties" instead of cable ties... it's the exact same stuff but much cheaper.)
- Also use cable ties and twist-ties liberally.
- CableDrop (or similar) when you want to hold a cable in position but be able to move/remove it frequently.
- AnthroCart cable management accessories. They are optimized to work with their line of desks, but some of the accessories are just generally useful for group cables.
- Medium-length runs of multiple cables can be grouped together using a split tube (e.g. this). Ikea used to sell some dirt-cheap split-tube for cable management, but I can't find it anymore (they do have these, though).
- For some runs, braided sleeving (or even just solid PVC tubing from any hardware store) can be useful. You can unplug all the cables from both ends, and move it as a unit to a new span.

So I guess my advice is to have a mixture of solutions on-hand. For any given task, use the one that feels right!

I can't tell who's fail it is.

TFA doesn't provide any evidence of a failure - read TFA carefully - its someone who has seen the ad on Groupon presenting their own calculations as to its viability (which may be exaggerated e.g. - £5 each for photo frames in quantities of 300+? Has the guy never heard of China? Even retail, one-off at IKEA you can get them for under £3.)

As several other posters point out, he doesn't include the value of unredeemed coupons.

Nor does he take into account how much extra money the photographer could make by doing a hard sell on extra prints, nicer frames, albums, posters, coffee mugs, mouse mats, or by selling makeover and costume hire services.

Plenty of photo studios offer free or very cheap "glamour photography" sessions where they make their money selling prints and extras (there have been a few whinges on consumer shows from punters who "win" sessions and then discover that they have to pay for prints and that the "makeover" is theatrical slap that has to be washed off before they go out in daylight least they frighten small children).

I actually bought that exact chair as mentioned in the article, with the additional $200 chrome upgrade, about 4 years ago, it was awesome for the first few years, and then I had a huge problem with lower back pain. I went to the doc, tried stretching, muscle relaxers, massages, sleeping differently, it turns out it was the chair, after switching to a $39 Ikea chair http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70133761 my back pain finally went away after a few weeks and has been awesome since. I tried switching back to the Aeron a year ago for a month, but my back started hurting again soon after. The point of my story is just because a chair is expensive or has many adjustments does not mean its the best for you, and you may very well find a very comfortable chair for a lot less.

If it will help, I'll give you the $39 for the Aeron so you won't be tempted any more.

I actually bought that exact chair as mentioned in the article, with the additional $200 chrome upgrade, about 4 years ago, it was awesome for the first few years, and then I had a huge problem with lower back pain. I went to the doc, tried stretching, muscle relaxers, massages, sleeping differently, it turns out it was the chair, after switching to a $39 Ikea chair http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70133761 my back pain finally went away after a few weeks and has been awesome since. I tried switching back to the Aeron a year ago for a month, but my back started hurting again soon after. The point of my story is just because a chair is expensive or has many adjustments does not mean its the best for you, and you may very well find a very comfortable chair for a lot less.

You can buy one at Ikea for twenty bucks, and they will give another one to Unicef.

http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/about_ikea/our_responsibility/ikea_social_initiative/sunnan_lamp_campaign.html

Wish I could mod you up. I've got a couple of these lamps, and they're bright enough to read by at night. The only inconvenience is remembering to put them by a window during the day so that they recharge.

You can buy one at Ikea for twenty bucks, and they will give another one to Unicef.

http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/about_ikea/our_responsibility/ikea_social_initiative/sunnan_lamp_campaign.html

I thought Scandinavia was the center of minimalism. Why not try to make the same article about Scandinavian websites. Is it interesting at all or is this just as dumb as the article?

Here are some examples:
Scandinavian Airlines
Norwegian government's public sector portal
Dansih news
IKEA (Of course) (Choose your language) (Also, doesn't the Japanese version look more crowded, although it is exactly the same?)
The Finnish Nokia

I'm also typing on a Galant, but with a wood surface instead of glass, and an extension on the short side of the L (and T legs, of course). It has enough space for dual 20" monitors, 2 mousepads, 2 laptops, and speakers to wrap around me, with extra space to spare. Furthermore, it's deep enough that I can sit comfortably in my chair with my legs stretched out on the towers below the desk without my legs hanging past the end of the table. Oh, and because there's no stupid drawers, there's tons of legroom and space for computers below it.

Most people that see it say it's freakishly large, but I was actually thinking about putting another extension on the other side...

I'm quite partial to Galant. I'm typing on one right now. You can get them cheaper if you don't go with the glass top. It's pretty sexy. Steel and glass. It's the perfect height for me, and it's primary properties are being big and flat. It doesn't have any annoying drawers or other "features".

One downside: my wife is convinced that the next time we have to move it, we're going to drop it and she's going to somehow be hacked to pieces by the shards.

Yes, the best reasonably priced desks weren't discontinued...they just have a much more boring name now, Fredrik: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/series/10216/

These little boxes are ideal for organising charger cables. You put the cable through the slot in the side and tie a knot in it to stop it falling out. You can then plug in your phone or whatever and put it in the box or next to it.

Ikea have a whole section of their catalogue dedicated to Cable Managment. I have one of their horizontal SIGNUM cable management thingos attached to the under side of my desk.

I didn't have such good luck with their stuff. I bought their vertical cabling system called SIGHUP

NO CARRIER

Ikea have a whole section of their catalogue dedicated to Cable Managment. I have one of their horizontal SIGNUM cable management thingos attached to the under side of my desk. I've used cable ties to keep everything neatly in place. My workstation runs off a single power strip and has wireless network. It also has castor wheels, so on a nice day I roll it outside and work on the back lawn.

Get a cable tray (or wire tray) from your local office store (I got mine at Office Max, but they had them at Office Depot, and electronics stores like Frys) - mount this either on the edge of your desk that would be facing a wall, or underneath the desk itself. Any extra wire, just run it back and forth in the cable tray. If you have a wooden desk, IKEA makes a wire manager called a SIGNUM - that makes this easier. I use braided sleeving to bundle wires from all my peripherals, so instead of having 4 or 5 cables running over the top of my desk, I have one that goes down the middle of the desk and then forks to all my peripherals. Using a hole saw and cutting a hole, then use a grommet to run your wires through is also a good alternative and doesn't require all your wires to run to the edge of your desk. There's lots of cool stuff on CableOrganizer.com but you can usually find a cable tray and some sleeving locally.

A second article linked from that lifehacker post pointed to this item http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/50035115 at ikea that looks really useful. You attach it to the underside of your desk at the back, and it acts as a tray for the wires which at least keeps them off the floor. That plus cable ties is probably the most straightforward thing to do.

You can find those in IKEA as well... http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20097954