Home Office setup

 Hi all,

As many of you probably do, I spend a good deal of time in my spare bedroom/home office now.  For me, probably 20 hours a week.  Certainly more if you count the time I spend setting up for my class and doing personal business as well.  In preparation for that, I bought a viewsonic touchscreen board, wacom tablet, and have saved up some machines as well.  Here's what I actually use, and how it works for me in a home tutoring environment (math mostly, but also physics, chemistry, global studies, english).

Viewsonic touchscreen board - works ok, but I haven't been using it as much as I thought I would.  It's easier and more accurate to use a good mouse (MX master 2s, logitech) or my wacom tablet (the cheapest one) to write math problems on the jamboard.  I do tap on it from time to time, and since I got a good deal on it it's fine, but you can definitely do without it and just use a cheap hdmi tv instead.

Tablets - I now have a samsung and an ipad with an apple pencil.  The ipad doesn't always sync right away with the google jamboard (my theory is that apple and google are fighting so they purposely do this) so I got the samsung.  I would have gone one size smaller on the samsung, in retrospect.  It gets heavy when i walk around the classroom with it.  The ipad was the right size, but the syncing issues made it difficult.  I would write and then it would take a few seconds to show up on the student's screen.  I should test periodically to see if that improves, or get the smaller samsung.  The apple pencil, since it has power, is a better pencil since you can rest your hand on the screen and not have it register/argue with the pencil tip.  My lenovo pencil is good on my laptop too (yoga) but I want the full keyboard on that so I rarely use it in that way unless everything else isn't working (unlikely but it has happened).

Herman Miller - still looking for a cheap enough used one to try it out.  I have heard good reviews, but even the used ones are like $500 so I don't know if I can justify the expenditure.  

Standing desk(s) - I bought one, and still haven't fully assembled it.  I also got one for free on craigslist or Facebook marketplace, definitely worth the hour drive.  I find that I don't necessarily stand up, but I have the ability to keep the screen exactly the right height for me, which is a big deal.  I like the hydraulic one, I don't adjust the height much and it's probably quicker this way than the electric.  Mine just sit on the desk and allow me to stand.

Computers - because I'm me, I have 4.  I find I can only use 2ish at a time, so 3 and 4 are kind of wasted, but I keep an old mac to run the ti-84 emulator software and an old linux mint laptop just to keep my head in that OS.  All told, there's a new-ish windows machine (lenovo yoga 13"), a huawei - they called it the macbook killer - 13" which is fine, and runs windows and ubuntu.  Weirdly, the time on windows is always wrong but the time in linux is right.  This is what projects to the viewsonic smart board.  The 2nd oldest laptop is the lenovo yoga running mint.  I upgraded it to the newest version and it lost wifi, so that one's out of commission at the moment.  (well, it can't be plugged in in my office since I don't have ethernet up there yet).  The mac is ancient, over 10 years old, so I only use it for the calculator and remembering how macs work from time to time.