Ask Slashdot: What Recliner For a Software Developer?

Taxilian writes We've talked about office chairs before, but I'm one of those coders who tends to relax by doing more coding. Particularly when I'm short on time for a project, I like to move my work to where I am still around my wife and children so that I can still interact with them and be with my family, but still hit my deadlines. I have used various recliners and found that programming in them (at least in evenings) can be quite comfortable, but haven't felt like I really found the 'ideal chair' for relaxing and working on my Macbook.

I have found references to failed chairs (like La-Z-Boy Explorer, the so-called "E-cliner") that were intended for tech and failed, but are there any existing and useful options? I'd really like something that provides some sort of lap desk (to keep the heat from the laptop away from me) and reasonable power arrangements while still being comfortable and not looking ridiculous in a normal family room.

Comments

Eames lounge

[Noxal]

Pick up an Eames lounge chair and ottoman. Yes it's expensive. Yes it's worth it. You'll thank me later.

Re:First World Problems

[Jahf]

To "First World Problems" ... for enough people for it to matter, this isn't a first world problem any more than coding is a first world job (and these days it isn't). As someone with hereditary back issues since my teens that, after 25 years of pain and bad surgeries with severe complications, I am now on disability. I wouldn't have made it 25 years without an extreme ergonomic solution that I paid for out-of-pocket because until recently employers didn't recognize that even "ergo chairs" aren't enough.

For the original question ... you're probably not as bad off as I was. But if you're getting close you have a few solutions depending on how much you can spend (or get expensed). If you're not looking for this level of solution, hopefully the article attracted someone who did.

* Not a recliner, but for helping your back similar to how an exercise ball does but with more support for long coding, I have used a "SwingSeat" at my desk for a decade or more (http://www.swingseat.com/). This was good enough to get me by until the last round of surgery (which was actually a success) made it too hard to sit upright all day.

* A "Zero G" chair, like the ones by Human Touch (I use a Human Touch Perfect Chair), a bit pricey but not awful. Combined with a laptop table that can raise and angle the laptop you can actually do the vast majority of your work from a completely reclined position.

* For a desk, rather than reclining all the time, I assembled a custom desk from Anthro using their Console line that has a tray that can raise and pivot from sitting to reclining (which actually needs to be raised higher than sitting) to standing (great for those of you who don't have partial leg paralysis, good for me on rare occasions). The desk is HUGE but dang, it does everything. It is the Console with full pole extensions bringing it to almost 6' with monitors on a shelf 8" higher than the shelf that hosts the keyboard tray. Which means the monitors can raise up to standing position as well. I can, if I use a trackpad to avoid mouse problems, use this in combination with the Perfect Chair as a rigged solution similar to the next one.

* I couldn't afford this, or at least I could have before I needed it, but can't now. But if you can, the desks from ErgoQuest are perfect. And some of them are inexpensive enough to be not tooooo awful on the budget (if I had the money I spent on the SwingSeat, Anthro Console and Perfect Chair I could afford an ErgoQuest). You can -sometimes- find these on Ebay but not usually from someone willing to ship and often not for significantly less than having the right one built to your specs.

Re:Automotive bucket seat

[gmarsh]

I've done this - I had a Toyota Cressida chair in my house, with a SLA battery and trickle charger hooked up to run the power seat bits.

However, I'll warn that it's hard to construct such a thing without making it look ghetto. Eventually, spousal acceptance factor led to the demise of the chair.

Re:First World Problems

[swilly]

The definition of First, Second, and Third World are not based on wealth, but on ideology. Second World countries are those that are industrialized and socialist (though in practice it referred only to communist governments).

You don't hear much about them because back in the early 90's there was this series of events that resulted in the collapse of most of the Second World. The independence of the Baltic states and the Ukraine, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. You may have heard of some of these, as they were a big deal at the time.

The major Second World country to survive these events is China, but North Korea would also be considered a Second World nation. I've heard of a proposal that we repurpose the term Second World to refer to developing nations, which works well since it's the natural term for nations moving from Third to First World status, but this hasn't been adopted yet (probably because developing countries don't want to be associated with the old Soviet Union).