Step into my Office

This is my spiffy "new" office,

Upgraded, really, from my living room corner.

And this is what it affords me:

• Dual-screen setup: portrait and landscape orientations.
• 4-way KVM switch w/ audio and USB/ps2 peripheral options
• Improved networking and power
• Full (paper) printing options
• Traditional office features

Future Upgrades:

• Triple monitor
• Upgraded compute-resource

So with this, let's get to the nitty gritty.

Dual Screen

This used to be a single-landscaped corner setup, with a 24" Asus that bumped up to a 27" BenQ.  It was fine and good for the most part, but it meant a farther viewing distance for my eyes, limited connectivity to my machines, and less-than-optimal use of screenspace (long-form reading, coding, etc.).

The living room corner.  As long as I had access to my keyboard/mouse, I was a productivity beast!

Now, after some research and planning, the second screen (AOC i2769m) resting on a CRT heavy-duty monitor arm (when conventional VESA-mount options fail, there's a ventilation duct to contend with) not only provides a landscape+portrait view of three separate machines (thanks to the robust video input options the monitors provide), but it's placed strategically so that the glare is controlled and therefore reduced.

4-way KVM switch

I do a lot of pro bono work for family and friends around tech, so I'm regularly connecting different boxes to my input devices and screens.  While I did have this Belkin beauty connected in the old office, the upgrade here is the added deskspace, expanding a simple L desk to a T-layout, which helps a lot.  The old setup never had the full four connections active -- too much paper strewn about to have spare PCs lying around -- but with the added tablespace (database pun not intended...mostly), I basically have an operating table to work at when my tech surgeon hat is on.  Woot!

Getting a stackable crate to multi-task: KVM housing, paper tray holder, and shelf support (where a docked W500 sits).

A few technical notes for my KVM-switch:

• The newer generations of this SOHO line looks super attractive: dual monitor, explicit usb hub
• Even though I have the older generation (2011 purchase), the USB ports do pump out power.  I can charge my phone off these ports!
• Overloading with both the PS/2 and USB ports don't seem to work well
• You need to watch what kind of input devices you hook up.  I have fully-functional standalone mechanical, gaming (i.e. w/ hotkeys, audio ports, usb hub, etc.), and wireless keyboards that will randomly die when connected to this switch.  KVM power-cycle was the workaround.
• I found the Logitech Unifying devices work nicely.  MK320, K400+, etc.  And because they're unifying, you can couple the K330 keyboard with an M570 trackball on a single receiver connected to only the keyboard port of the KVM switch.
• The K400+ keyboard/mouse combo works flawlessly, so long as you can get used to the smaller keyboard layout, makes IT work a dream.

Improved Networking and Power

There was a deal on an 8-port gigabit switch from Dell a while back, and the number of gigabit devices in my possession were growing, so I picked it up (in retrospect, shoulda bought more...).  Now I don't have to worry about which devices get wired to a 4-port router, and which need to be set up with a wireless NIC.

Further, with the office room (thus, the modem and router) being more central to the condo, the wifi signal is better distributed throughout the unit; reducing blackout zones.

But all is for not when there's a surge or power outage.  That's why there are two UPSes in this room, with the modem, routers, phones, non-mobile machines, plus a single monitor, connected to the power-protected outlets.  So not only am I surge-projected and can softly power everything down, but I can still reach out to people in the case of emergencies.  So yes, even in the cold of winter, this room stays fairly warm, :)

Full (Paper) Print Options

Just paper, no 3D printing (yet).

Laser

Joke of the day: both devices are facing the front, in parallel...

A couple of ol' laser workhorses came into my possession this past year (HP 5L & 6L).  Definitely not top-of-line, but provides laser-quality printouts on one end, with bulk-printing ability (without worrying about ink-levels) on the other.  Only drawbacks were the parallel-port interface, and drivers.  See Compute Resources below for solution.

All-in-One

Ample space above the printer for the vertical printer feed in the back, while the scanning is done from the lid.

Recently picked up the HP Officejet 3830.  The initial goal was to attain an auto-scanning device to scan photos; for things like slideshow creations.  Couldn't find one, at least not in a SOHO format.  Makes sense considering most of these feeders involve rollers under the covers, which means paper that should bend/crease easily, which is not the case with photo paper.  Still purchased the new printer, as not having to manually scan paper documents, for less than $40, was worthwhile.  Plus the photo print quality had improved since the previous Canon MP210.

Traditional Office Features

I write more about this elsewhere.  Also a good cross-blog linkage test...

Stationary Centre

The Compute Resources

No need to get too detailed.  These are all fitted with SSDs (easy performance boost) in one form (system drive) or another (system + data drive).  Before SSDs were economical, RAM disks (SoftPerfect's, in my case) were your best friend, provided you didn't use firefox with flash.

PC Tower (Dual Digital Video-Outs): Image Editing, Coding, Research/Reading/Browsing

Specs: Core2Quad Q6600, 7 GB RAM, HDMI, DVI outputs, 6-pin firewire

Usually fitted with my mechanical keyboard and wireless optical trackman.  Since my eyes can pick up the quality-differences between analog and digital video signals, I can work on this machine the longest before eye-strain creeps in.

Because of the extra storage capacity (via 2TB hdd), it's where I upload my analog conversions from a Sony DCR HC54 (MiniDV) video recorder.  Hey, if it ain't broke...use it for tennis/golf video analysis 'til it does!

I also installed a StarTech Card Reader that I got on the cheap.  So now I can take in SD and CF cards without occupying the front-facing ports.  The bonus with this reader, is despite its age -- rated for SD only -- it'll read up to SDXC cards, at least 64GB, without a hiccup!

Graphics Laptop (Thinkpad W500): See above, but mobile.

Specs: Core2Duo T9400, 8 GB RAM, 15.4" 1900x1200 resolution, Dual screen when docked

This is the mobile workstation, especially where video and graphics are concerned.  While memory specs are a little better, it slightly lags the Q6600 overall.  It's value comes in its mobility, though.  With this models' 15.4" screen at 1900x1200 resolution, and the legendary scissor switch keys, you sacrifice the least to attain said mobility.  The extra bonus is the well-toned arm that's used to carry this bullet-proof weight around!  Yes, I'm only kidding: do not ditch your Kevlar vest, :)

No two-finger touchpad scrolling by default, despite the claims from the driver documentation.  Workaround posted here.  The caveat with the docked dual screen is that one has to be analog, at least with my docking station, and you're mostly constrained to MS Windows if you don't want to fidget too much with Linux dual-screen customization.

Sorry, you'll just have to imagine what the rest of my breakfast looked like.

Multi-tool Laptop (Thinkpad x201): Everything else.

Specs: Core i5 m540, 8 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Dual screen when docked.

Also my mobile workstation.  More mobile, less graphics.  Smaller screenspace, same great keyboard, better battery life, and less weight, ordaining this as my travel machine.  The fast, high capacity storage will allow me to upload filled camera cards with little worry or thought.  Perfect for when I'm offline/remote.

I've tuned both laptops' fans, as I work my compute-resources pretty hard.  So I posted about that, too.

Especially this one, as it's the current testbed for anything *nix-, virtualization-, or datastore-, related.

Catch-All Server (Dell GX280): File Server, Print 'Server', Linux Testbox, Proper-Upper of Shelf

Specs: P4 (3.2 GHz), 3GB RAM, Xubuntu 16.04, SoftRAID mirror (RAID1) drive

This is the lone SSD exception, missed out on a $40 promotion for an Intel 320 160GB SATA2 SSD.  The mirrored mdadm setup was surprisingly easy thanks to this walkthrough, but I've only dealt with the happy path so far.

I had tried to make this a proper print server for the HP 6L.  Got it sharing across the network, and communicating with the other machines.  It threw up when it tried to serve 32-bit Linux drivers to 64-bit Windows clients, unfortunately.  So now I just download whatever files need laser-printing and kick off the print-job locally.  Guess it's true that "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy."

This GX280 used to be my father's zh_CN home PC, before he got upgraded.  So I have it dual-booting, in case I need to grab old files.  Made even easier with the remote-desktop setup I've configured, especially with that gigabit network backbone; but it invariably has a bit of lag.  And so that good 'ol trusty KVM switch comes in to save the day.

If ever there's spare cycles to investigate (so basically never), I'll look to profile the CPU to see where the discernible lag is coming from.  Upon browsing to a new URL, there's a bit of a stall before the web browser's responsive again; applies to both Chromium and Firefox.  System monitors implicate the CPU, as the busy culprit.  But whether it's due to the integrated graphics configuration (there were issues with the PCIe card, long story), the unavoidable CPU cost of browsers these days, or costly writes/fsyncs (the hdd starts yelling when the machine lags) that could be improved with an SSD, or a combination of the aforementioned, is still unknown.

Next Steps

The two bullets are fairly self-explanatory.  The triple monitor setup is mostly for improving financial analysis workflows (stocks and investments); but graphics, research, and coding will be helped, also.

With the second, it's the data workloads.  While I'm confident I can tune my first-gen mobile Core i5 hardware (and older) to handle my existing workloads, they simply don't have the juice to properly reflect/simulate the behaviour of a proper data server.  I tried.  I can get it to work (this will be the future-post place holder), in both SQL and noSQL flavours, but one will glean only so much.  The other option was to play online, a la trial-based cloud accounts.  While that's certainly an option, the timing needs to be right.  But with the hardware requirements for a triple-monitor setup dictating newer parts, a "new" system build (eyeing a 2012 processor for this) isn't unrealistic.  The only real concern is the space and power allowances, as this spiffy new office of mine is very much at capacity,

There are many like it, but this one is mine.