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Laptop ergonomics for mobile professionals

31.12.2008
The New Year is a great time to and . It's also as good as any to face an unpleasant fact: Your notebook is not your friend. Yes, it helps you be productive. But here's what happens when you're using a laptop on the road: You tilt your neck down to look at the screen. Meanwhile, you bend your wrists in order to type on the keyboard. And you do this for hours--in hotel rooms, airplanes, conference rooms, and other places not exactly known for proper ergonomic set-ups.

"Laptops are inherently unergonomic--unless you're 2 feet tall," is how physician Norman J. Marcus put it recently in The Wall Street Journal.

What can you do about it? Read on.

At the Office

When you're working at home or at the office, you've got a lot more control over your ergonomics. Some essential tips:

Attach an ergonomic keyboard. In the mid 90s, I was diagnosed with tendonitis caused by poor ergonomics and too much typing. An ergonomics expert recommended I switch to the , which was branded by IBM and Lexmark, an IBM spin-off. The idea is that a split keyboard minimizes strain on your hands and wrists, because you don't have to keep stretching to reach the keys in the middle of the keyboard. Trust me: This isn't marketing hooey. I faithfully used the long-discontinued keyboard with good results for years.