apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

At home I have mine a bit further away, because I have a really big screen. Sitting too close is pretty disorienting. I am using and old desk for it, because modern computer desks are too shallow (plus, my desk looks pretty cool!)

I also had my near-vision glasses (I have a close up set and a walking around set. Bifocals give me vertigo) focused for computer distance. You can ask your optometrist to do this if you spend a lot of time looking at a screen - ordinarily they are focused a little closer, about where you would hold a book or hand work. It makes a really big difference!

I've been known to sit way too close to my monitor...and now I have to wear glasses all the time. Its mainly at work where I sit too close, because I have an old CRT monitor that takes up my whole desk, so I don't really have much of a choice (I work in non-profit so we have old equipment).

Same situation here as above posts. I too sat too close for too long resulting in eyestrain, headaches, and now bifocals at 30. As Kaviare stated, if you are getting a set of reading or "computer glasses" have your optometrist set them for your monitors distance. I had mine made for a full arms length (with fingers extended) so I always know my optimum viewing distance. Cheaper to move a monitor a few inches, then get new glasses when you get a new desk or change jobs.

We rarely get neck strain when reading a book. Our necks curve down gently, not pinching the nerves branching out from the spinal cord. Most table top monitors are just too high! Especially if you wear multi focal glasses and strain to look thru the bottom of the lense (like my wife and I).

To avoid pinching nerves and getting pains all the way down to my fingers, I often sit on a drafting chair, way up in the clouds, especially when I work on my fixed hight mac.

My kids' elementary schools had holes cut in the desks, to lower and tilt back the monitors to children can see them and stay healthy.

The white Mac keyboard shown in the photo is really beautiful, but not ergonomic at all. I began using it when I purchased my Mac, but I had to change it for another, much uglier, but at least my hands and fingers weren't aching so much.

I just started using a 24" iMac here at work, and it's about an arm's length away. When I was working on a 20" screen, I found I was stooping to get closer every now and then.

marujita: I've found that the latest Mac keyboards are actually easier on my hands than the older models, due to the lower keys.

I just realized my monitor here at work was much closer than my 2 monitors at home. I just got a new PC and it has my old 17" NEC LED for secodary stuff and a 21.5" HD monitor, running at 1920x1080, which is its native rez, however, the text is too small for me to easily read for text based stuff, I use the 17" for that as it runs at 1040x768, which is perfect.

However, the stock multimedia keyboard Dell offers kind of sucks, have to hit the keys hard to get it to recognize my input and I may end up switching it out and go for the bluetooth version of their older MM keyboards, which use standard keys, not these flat keys that seem popular right now.

What I wished was still available w/ Vista Home Premium 64 is the ability to adjust the text within one's display settings like XP can so when using widescreen monitors, you can at least READ the text of programs and such, which is partly why those monitors are so handy for creative stuff such as digital photography, video etc where a good clean and clear monitor is necessary.

BTW, both monitors at home are roughly an arms length away and may be a tad too high, especially the 21.5 since it's not adjustable up or down sadly and have no place to mount it on an arm right now and I DO tend to slouch when at the PC to begin with...

At work, 2.5 feet away. It was closer, but I was hurting my neck with progressive glasses, so I discovered, that, being a flat pannel, I could push it deep into the corner of my cubicle desk. Works great from this position.

At home, I have a shallow desk, probably 2 feet deep, but with an iMac it is about 18 inches from me.

I agree that the iMac keyboard is great. So much better than the one I use at work, and the old one on my eMac.