My New Modern Workplace - Happy New Year!

Happy New Year all! A new workplace is a great way to start the new year. As some of you may know, I’ve moved to a new apartment in 2016. My new apartment has a quite large living room but no extra room for a workplace. I work full time at Avanade and I like to work from home every now and then. I’m also aiming on finishing my Bachelor studies in Q1 2019, so all this requires a good workplace.

Requirements

• The workplace needs to fit into my modern living room style.
• The workplace needs to be comfortable and adjustable.
• The workplace needs to have enough screen real estate and enough power outlets.

Based on these requirements I’ve started to look for a Standing Desk. This gives me the flexibility to stand and to stretch my legs. Studies tell me that sitting is the new smoking, so I wanted to invest a bit more in a Standing Desk. In my search I’ve found some local dealers selling ‘basic’ Standing Desks with a white table top and a metallic frame. This is fine in a workplace, but it doesn’t fit in my living room. Most non-standard Standing Desks are only available in the US or Canada. The only standing desk that was reviewed by major review sites was available from IKEA. But the IKEA desk is quite standard and doesn’t seem very reliable.

Jarvis Standing Desk

A couple of months later I found out that Jaswig in Belgium started shipping the Jarvis Standing Desks with bamboo tops. This was exactly what I wanted! A modern frame which is rock solid, a good looking table top and number 1 pick by The Wirecutter. I’ve started a conversation with Henri from Jaswig and a couple of days later, the Standing Desk arrived. It was well packed and took me a couple of hours to install. The instruction manual was understandable. I was amazed by the quality of all the parts - especially the bamboo table top. At first I was a bit skeptical on the extra contour (the curve) that the table top has. I was thinking that a rectangle table top was better, but now I’m convinced that his is a great benefit over a rectangle top. Look at this!

Accessories

The Jarvis WireTamers are recommended. They are made of thick plastic and coated with the same color as the frame. Downside is that there are no pre-drilled holes for the WireTamer, so I had to drill that hole by myself with a screwdriver in the table top. I placed a multi outlet in the WireTamer and drilled a hole in the wall so it will end up in my wall cabinet. The Jarvis Tabletop comes with two standard grommet holes, which can be filled with something like the Bachmann ELEVATOR. The Elevator is available with multiple inputs as you can see below. I bought the one with two power outlets as I didn’t want to have outlets that will be obsolete soon. They are available on Amazon. Jaswig also sells monitor arms which matches the color of the Jarvis frame. They sell different versions of the monitor arm - even with a notebook stand. The stand works great and I’m happy with the built in cable management.

Monitor

A good workplace contains a screen which is adjustable. This can be a notebook on a notebook stand or a nice monitor. I like to work with larger screens, so I wanted to have something which is 27+ inch. My work notebook, a Dell Precision 5510, contains a beautiful 4K screen. Because I wanted to have one large screen, I went with the AOC U3277FWQ which has an MVA panel and can be mounted on the Jarvis Monitor Arm. After checking the monitor on dead pixels, I tried to unscrew the monitor from it’s old stand. 1 screw done, 2nd screw was a bit stuck, 3rd screw done, 4th screw also stuck. AARGH! I used the correct screw head but unfortunately two of the screws were stuck. So I contacted Coolblue - the store were I bought the monitor. I was hoping they could provide me with some help as I would imagine they would have experience with this. They offered me to swap the monitor for a new one! I wasn’t expecting that, but I’m sure they know how to make customers smile. Because I was convinced the screws were too tight due to the screw gun used by AOC, there was a big chance that this could happen with a device from the same batch. So I asked Coolblue to swap the device for another model. After reading several reviews, I went with the LG 27UD69. The price of this monitor was a bit higher but the quality of the IPS panel is fantastic! The downside of using a beautiful notebook screen is that most MVA and VA panels - like the AOC - require some ‘adjustment time’. :) So after all I’m happy with this swap, despite the smaller screen size. The LG screen is made of much more high quality materials.

The result

My new workplace in 2018! Let me know if you like it in the comment section!