That laptop served me well but it was a compromise between several factors. I think that at the time there were only an handful of 15" laptops without a numberpad and probably it's still like that. I eventually had to give up on that to get other features.
I'm sure there are plenty of better options if money is no object but it was mainly for light gaming, personal projects, video editing etc.
I have a "car desk", which is just a little expandable contraption you hang on the steering wheel, then you can place your laptop on it. I wouldn't call it ergonomic per se (the right external keyboard could probably fix that), but using it for about one hour per week, it works well and doesn't cause any issues I'm aware of. The driver seat is not a place where I previously could get any work done, so the bar is a bit low.
I remember one of those on Amazon with like a thousand reviews that were all meme reviews about using it whilst driving. Cant find the exact one, but it was one of those many Amazon products full of joke reviews.
The ergonomy of most laptops (and keyboards in general) is poor. The modern laptop that is most ergonomic is the "2 in 1" design, which can be folded and used as a tablet.
For a programmer, an ergonomic keyboard with a trackball, connected to a 2-in-1 portable in tablet mode, might be easiest to assemble from common components for working during travel.
I had a similar situation to the GP in that I only ever used my laptop in a car for an hour or two a week. In my case it was whilst one of my offspring was doing some sports related thing that I had to drive them to.
Most of the time I'd just take a book to read but sometimes I'd like to tinker with some programming thing in that time.
More often than not there was a nice cafe to sit in, or a nice bench somewhere in the sun, or a viewing gallery that meant I could watch rather than staring at my laptop. But not all venues were the same.
Some had nowhere to watch or nowhere to sit in the warm or dry, and nowhere suitable within a short drive, and so I'd default to sitting in the car experimenting with seat angles/etc to get into a position that wasn't awful.
Not owning my own car meant I was often driving something different each time which added to the fun. (RIP UK Zipcar.)
The keyboard however, is over the steering wheel, and while the arm placement is _similar_ to holding the wheel, it's a bit awkward, typing on a keyboard and operating a steering wheel are just quite different movements.
I _think_ it'd be ergonomic if I had some kind of keyboard and mouse/trackpad solution elevated on my lap, but the steering wheel gets in the way of a standard lap desk pillow thing. It'd have to be split.
For my one hour per week I haven't bothered yet. But I do think I could come up with something that'd have similar strain to just driving the car. Which, yeah, is probably not as ergonomic as a good desk setup to begin with.
Glad she didn't go shopping.
Work with what the industry offers.
Surely the other missing thing is that it only runs a proprietary OS that nobody except Chinese companies develop apps for?
That's what I want, except it has the wrong stylus tech and the keyboard lacks a Trackpoint....
If my math is right it seems the cost in material for the printed part is around $5 which seems ridiculously cheap for a custom-designed and adapted solution like this. Nice!
I wish the author had spent a few words extra to motivate why it needs to be in PETG filament for "heat resistance", is the regular PLA limit of ~55 degrees Celsius not okay for a desktop accessory? I guess if it's in direct sunlight that might be exceeded, or perhaps if the laptop runs very hot?
Not the author, but PLA has a glass transition temperature of around 60 degrees, which in layman's terms is when it starts to melt. However, depending on the quality of the printing process, layers start separating/the print is pliable significantly lower, at around 35-40 degrees. This means that in countries where you get 30+ degree summers, PLA is not really suitable for anything which experiences any kind of stress. I would hazard a guess that the standing laptop can cause quite a bit of stress when the train starts/stops.
Compared to PLA, PETG has higher temperature resistance (by about 20°C), isn't quite as susceptible to stress, doesn't cost more and isn't any harder to print on modern printers.
Some people in the 3d printing community have totally ditched PLA and use PETG as a baseline because of that.
What I never saw in the wild but which was neat was the Powerbook Duo dock that pulled in the laptop like a front loading VCR tape, peak Sculley-period pointless complexity. It totally enclosed the laptop in a closed configuration, the idea being that you would put a monitor on top of the dock.
Certainly with some of the older Thinkpads (going back 10+ years or more) it was only possible to connect two external monitors via one of these docks. (Then USB-A monitor adapters started to appear...)
The laptops had connections at the bottom that clicked into the docks/stands, which you could connect external screens/peripherals.
I like this way better. Despite the docks feeling cool as hell.
both is good
I'd still like it to be much cheaper and simpler though. My own tinker days are over; I kind of want to depend on what is cheap and reliable; or at the least very reliable. I honestly can not warrant time investment when things don't work or break down in yet-another-component of my already way too many components heavy living conditions here. 3D printing should be so simple that one never has to think about it. Or print a surrogate 3D printer, to have as a backup device. But what about the materials? I guess plastics dominate.
As you're saying, modern printers are simply click and forget. I haven't had any maintenance or fix to do on my P1S in 2 years.
Looking into getting an additional 3D printer so that I can have 9+ filaments loaded and not need to swap spools around....
I wish Prusa could work up a way to make a machine to directly compeat at the low-end, but as they have noted in blog posts --- they can't even source the bare components of the low-end printers even in very large quantities for what the now entry-level printers from China are selling for.
Just in the last year or so you can get a $600 printer with a heated print chamber and heated material box that keeps the material from absorbing moisture. This takes them to an extra level of "just working".
There's a small learning curve, and things like lifted prints occasionally happen, but in this post that is literally one sentence describing the problem and another sentence describing the solution. There's good community support.
Plastics not only dominate, metallic 3d printing is not close to being ready for home consumer use, it's $50k for an entry level machine and it still arguably requires a basic machine shop for finishing to be very useful.
But there is still a wall many people hit with 3d printing. When it comes time to design something and not merely print an available file, it's hard to know where to start if you don't already have hands-on experience using CAD or at least an introduction to carpentry or something similar. But this is true of most tools, be it woodworking tools, or visual studio. It takes experience to go from an idea in your head to a series of parts that will assemble together. There will be times, especially in the early days of tweaking dimensions and reprinting things.
In summary, if you want to design things yourself and count this as tinkering that you don't want to do, it's probably not going to be an enjoyable hobby. If you just want to print things like curtain rings and brackets to hold your screwdrivers on an ikea pegboard, it's virtually tinker-free these days.
Cool stuff, you might already be using this but this roundedcube function has drastically improved the quality of my prints: https://gist.github.com/groovenectar/92174cb1c98c1089347e
I've been trying to learn how to model using Fusion 360. It's not clicking for me. Probably lack of practice. Wondering if OpenSCAD would be a better solution. Goal is to be able to design useful things for 3d printing..
Its heat resistance is also not that far behind ABS.
ABS is harder to print well. Warping and layer adhesion problems could make it perform worse than PETG unless everything was tuned properly.
The heat resistance isn't far behind, but that still means it's behind.
Yes, it's hard to print well, but it's the best-performing material when you need light, durable material. That's the tradeoff.
It is not the "best performing material". There are several options which exceed its properties even further, but are increasingly expensive and harder to print.
Engineering is about being good enough. PETG is good enough in this case, and also cheap and easy.
Using PETG was a good choice. There's a spectrum of 3D printing materials. Not sure why you've chosen to die on the ABS hill. ABS isn't even in favor relative to ASA, FYI.
PETG is easier to print and deal with. ABS puts out some bad fumes that require actively exhausting the printer outside if you're trying to print in the house.
ABS is harder to print. Getting good layer adhesion is hard. It's more prone to warping. You want a heated chamber, ideally.
PETG is a fine choice for this. Going to ABS wouldn't change anything.
Also FYI, most people prefer ASA over ABS for printing because it's a similar material with better properties almost across the board.
I haven't conceived the exact mechanism for it, but it would be fun to try and do it for the Framework laptop.
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkbook/thinkbook-p...
Previous one had I believe like a companion display occupying ~1/3 of the keyboard side which looked pretty neat. I wish frame.work had an option like that -- seems way more feasible than Lenovo's contraption with motors and flexible screen, though not sure if it would be possible given the space budget.
I guess one approach is weight distribution. Make the screen as light as possible and shift as much weight forward (near the space bar) as possible. I'm just not sure if it would be enough. You could also go with outriggers (like a crane or boat), but that's ugly and doesn't help with the lap situation, which is where you need help the most.
https://www.ntietz.com/blog/my-portable-ergonomic-setup/
Specifically this image: https://www.ntietz.com/processed_images/keyboard-3.e1480955e...
I can't find the info in any of the blog posts and can't get anything useful by zooming in on any of the images.
This LG model is popular: https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-28mq780-b-dualup-monitor
Benq announced a new 3:2 monitor today: https://www.benq.com/en-us/monitor/programming/rd280u.html
marak830•2w ago
More fuel to help convince my wife the printer isn't a waste of money xD