Ergonomics of standing with laptop rain stand

[instinctive]

My counter height is ideal for flat forearms standing, but it puts the laptop screen very low for my neck. So I thought I'd try it with the stand.

My shoulders are relaxed, and it feels better on the neck. I don't know any research on this raised forearm angle. Opinions?

[tp4tissue]

This is very bad..

The reason is.. when you're using a laptop, ur hands are very close together.

Now in addition to that,  you're standing, which means that your elbows are also Low.


The neutral angle of the wrist increases as your elbows are lower, and decreases as your elbows are raise. (relative to your trunk)


Therefore,  without a raised elbow,  you need significantly more tenting to comfortably align your wrists.



Standing is the best position for computer use.. But there are prerequisites,   it is best with an ergodox..

[instinctive]

Thanks for the reply. Are you saying that as the forearm-upper arm angle decreases, there needs to be more tenting (thumbs high, pinkies low) for a neutral wrist postion?

Does it work the other way, too? So that increasing the forearm-upper arm angle past 90 degrees is better for a flat keyboard?

[tp4tissue]

Thanks for the reply. Are you saying that as the forearm-upper arm angle decreases, there needs to be more tenting (thumbs high, pinkies low) for a neutral wrist postion?

Does it work the other way, too? So that increasing the forearm-upper arm angle past 90 degrees is better for a flat keyboard?

If you move your upper arm upwards, your elbow points out.. 

In this fashion,  the forearm naturally rotates inward.. lowering the Neutral WRIST angle difference against the Flat typing plane.. 

--- THUS requiring less tenting,   Tenting is still required, but Less.. Minimally 30* degrees


The goal is to match the wrist angle..




When your elbows are low, flush against your sides..  Your wrist is rotated outwards .. here you need HIGHER tenting angles to meet it..  Ideally 70* degrees, but that's not possible given how thick mechanical keyboards are.. so ~50-55 is the max..

[ergogirl]

That is a beautiful stand, by the way. I covet things like that, I just wish they worked for me.

It is super-difficult to be ergonomic with a laptop.  Your neck may feel better, but you may still be rocking a head-forward posture that will hurt you down the road and your shoulders may be still curving more inward than they should. For me, having the laptop screen and keyboard so close to one another doesn't work: either my neck has to bend forward, or my arms are too high.  To get that ooh-aah ergo feeling, I have my laptop boosted to a height that works for me, which is higher than keyboard level.

To combat the forward shoulder thing, I've got two keyboards and I can move them around for variety as long as I follow alignment rules.  And despite what someone said about not being able to type with two keyboards, these are playing together very nicely: an old Dell standard keyboard and a newer E-Element Z-77 mechanical are attached and typing together without any issues on an older Dell Latitude.  The keypad on the actual laptop was having some delays, but that was ergonomically sucky using one keyboard plus the laptop, so it doesn't really matter.  I'm sitting right now, but I'm going to try the double keyboard thing later when I move this experiment to my adjustable height table.