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Do you use a couch/sofa as a workspace?

Will Curran

Will Curran

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 23, 2004
204
0
Phoenix AZ
More than a desk? Or Do you use a bed? Well, I'm talking about if you have a laptop but if you have a desktop..well..I'm impressed. Well, just thought I'd get some opinions flowing because I'm planing on moving my room into our attic, and my mom's an interior designer so she'll get me what I want =/.. I was wondering because I like desks, but I thought with my wanting a powerbook 17" I didn't know if a couch would be better than a desk. Speak out!

Feel free to talk about podium like things, and other couch liking accessories.
 
depends. I have a powerbook and sometimes I perfer to sit at a desk (like I am now) if I am editing in FCP or photoshop or whatever and such. I also tend to lay on my couch or bed if im typing up a report or anything.... but i'd say 70% of my time at home, my the powerbook is on desk.

I would say get both a desk and a couch if you have the room. :)
 
right now i'm in my favorite easy chair up in my room. i use that and my bed for my computing needs, except when gaming (posture/heat/ergonomics) and cd burning/installing (levelness, heat, eerie vibrations). no couch in my room though, but when i'm in the living room (for about 45min at a time :() i use the couch.
 
Duff-Man says....mostly I compute while sitted at my desk, be it at work or home. But once in a while I take the latop over to the sofa and sit back but I can';t do that for too long as I don't really find it that comfortable.....oh yeah!
 
yeah i use my powerbook all the time on my bed, couch, all over the house really, but the most use that it gets is at the desk really, its just more convenient for me i guess, and im not totally used to doing a lot of typing on it with it in my lap laying down, i have to work on that
 
I do use both places (desk and couch) but i´m trying a special table/support for my 17" for when i´m at the couch. I design furniture for a living
and this came to me once at the "as is" section at IKEA:

Buy only the wheeled base of a Jules chair .
Fix a 16" x20" piece of 3/4" plywood just off center of the base (make sure it's fancy: :eek:rganic shapes nice colors)
that's it.

I'm am writing on one prototype of this design right now.
it turns, is height adjustable and helps to avoid the heat...!
35 dollars and 1 hour

my 2 cents
 
When in my recliner or on the sofa, I use one of those lap-tables things. It's a sort of pillow filled with bean-bag filling, and it has a flat, hard table top on the top. That way, the "table" is on my legs and conforms to however I'm sitting (it can be tilted easily because the bean-bag filling is so easily adjusted), but the PB gets a hard, flat surface. The table has a loop sewn on, so when not in use I just hang it on the wall.
 
Desk. A long wide one... imagine a door turned on its side.

Room for (glances around) 2 x monitors, coffee, stereo, papers (e.g. roughs & design briefs), CDs, full keyboard & mouse with wrist rests, phone, lamp, printer, etc.

A good office chair is one of the best 'computer' equipment purchases I ever made. Hydraulic, fully adjustable, chunky seat... that sort of thing.
 
I guess it depends on your persuasion.

I generally write essays and reports, and always, always, always work on my bed. Plenty of room around for books, journals, documents etc, and it's soft and comfortable.

Can see it hardly being ideal for CAD, or video editing though ;)
 
at work we use benches you can stand at or use high chairs, thats really good cause i move around changing stocks ect a lot, at home i have just a ikea table and crap chair, i should get a better one cause i spend so much time in front of it. BUT this could be good... especially after beer, curry and related foodstuffs (mmmm kebabs)

http://www.funnyjunk.com/p/pctoilet-jpg.html
 

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90% at desks.
I use desks at the university (no choice.. :p)
At home i mostly use the desk, because:
1. I'm often using a second screen and an ext. keyboard
2. I don't a have Airport base station. (i don't want to have cables allover the place.

But if the weather is nice I'm often sitting in the garden and do work on my laptop.
 
I have sofas in my living room which have very wide arm rests which my iBook fits on perfectly. I did all my surfing and chatting on there... until... i got my G5.. which unfortunatel I cant put on my sofa :D

When it came down to it, when I was doing school work, the laptop on a really hard surface (i.e. a Desk) with all my school papers around me was the only real option.

If you get a desk... then you have the option to use it or not. Best of both worlds.
 
If I'm just surfing and emailing, it doesn't really matter where: sofa, bed, chair, papa-san, whatever. Even with iTunes going for background noise, the TiBook doesn't get hot enough to bother me...in some situations the heat's actually soothing.

But if I'm doing something requiring some degree of actual work, like Photoshop stuff with my graphics tablet, ripping CDs (I type everything out as I'm too anal to trust the CDDb), or doing more extensive writing, I prefer to put the TiBook on something more steady and roomy than my lap.

I'd initally bought a Corras rolling side table from Ikea for this, but then I found an old dictionary table on castors, which works really nicely in the bedroom as it puts the TiBook at exactly the height where I can sit on the bed and work. The Corras table is currently being used as a printer stand, but I'm thinking of another one for when I don't feel like working in the bedroom, or when I need somewhere to put the Ti while printing something.
 
Blue Velvet said:
Desk. A long wide one... imagine a door turned on its side.

Room for (glances around) 2 x monitors, coffee, stereo, papers (e.g. roughs & design briefs), CDs, full keyboard & mouse with wrist rests, phone, lamp, printer, etc.
Click to expand...

What kind of door are we talking about here? Your standard door door or a draw bridge of some sort!?

I use my laptop on my desk at home. It shares the space with my PC which is rarely used these days.

When I’m travelling i use my laptop on my lap, naturally. Wouldn't want to be hauling a big desk around with me. :rolleyes:

"Are you checking in any baggage today, sir?" "Well ..."
 
I'm a college student, so I don't have many options or much space. That said, I do most of my work at a desk. Definitely, definitely, definitely get a desk. I find I'm more like to be studious and serious at my desk. When I want to surf the internet or catch up on email, I'm more likely to spread out on my bed with my iBook. But it's difficult to get any extended typing done like that--at least it is for me.

If you can get a sofa and a desk, go for it. But if you have to choose between the two, I'd recommend a desk. Your bed can double as a sofa in a lot of ways--you can lay down, stretch out, or prop yourself up with pillows. It's the best of both worlds, that way.
 
for some odd reason i've spent more time using my pb in the bath than anywhere else.

the g5 sits on a desk, naturally, but the pb goes from the sofa to the bed to the bath etc.

oh the joys of wireless routers!
 
Hmmmm.... How to answer....

I have on my iBook 600 installed VNC and Remote Desktop Connection.

From there I can remote into work and talk to my windows machines, or work with the two windows machines I have in the house. If I need to get some work done on my PowerMac, I can VNC into it.

This being said, I probably spend 60% of my computing time on my iBook either on the recliner, on the couch, or in bed ( check email and stocks in the AM while listening to CNBC ).

The things I cannot do over the network ( such as games, or editing with FCP ) I do at the workstations..

OOHHHH Life is so hard!!!!

I would buy another ( cheap ) laptop if the iBook died, even though it is rarely used for little more than a dumb terminal.

Max.
 
sitting on the ground with my back against the couch bottom with my iBook on the coffee table works for me. i hate working on my desk, i seems to crowded and cramp
 
i use a desk to get things done. like school work, or playing around with photoshop or such. but if im just surfing around and chatting i enjoy the couch! (like right now!!!) i cant concentrate on the couch enough to get work done. plus i like using a mouse for photoshop which kinda requires a desk to use.
 
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