I want a decent office chair.

[seebs]

I want an office chair.

I want it to not suck.

Help me.

Typical issues I've had:

* Many chairs don't adjust high enough. I have longish legs. I want to not have my knees up in my face.
* Many chairs don't stay adjusted; they tend to gradually sink back down over time.
* Many chairs eventually acquire problems where, say, they tilt forwards a bit, or backwards, and the springs don't work.

I like soft breathable things; I hate leather on chairs.

Where should I be looking? Ideally, where should I be looking for something solidly UNDER a thousand dollars, since aerons are totally out of my range?

[Garnet]

Go to your local large Office Max or Staples. They generally have a bunch of office chairs from different manufacterers that you can try out. I was browsing in a Staples yesterday and found a chair I wanted very much bad.

[seebs]

I don't think we have Staples here, but we have Office Max and Office Depot.

I've mostly tried to get cheap chairs, and ended up unhappy. Maybe I should get one of the expensive ones and just be sad about the money instead of being sad about the chair. Eww, though. Man those things get pricey fast.

[Garnet]

Given what you do for a living, your office chair is one of your tools. Buy a good one that will last a long time. You end up spending less in the end.

[seebs]

Yeah, probably.

I just balk madly at spending >$150 or so for "a chair". But I probably ought to. But they don't LOOK like they should be expensive to make!

[Garnet]

MT and I got a couple of identical chairs 8 years ago. One, we bought. The other I got for free when my company shut down an office in Florida. (No, I didn't steal it, I was given permission to take it.) At the time, the cost for the chairs was around $100. We still have them both and they are in good condition. In fact, I've taken mine into work because the chairs they had there were hurting my back.

Both chairs have been through 3 cross-country moves and they're still in good shape and comfortable.

Spend the money. :D

[Ensign Steve]

I got mine at Staples on sale for $99. I have had it for many years, and it still keeps it's height. It is leather, though.

[seebs]

I got a microfiber "executive chair" that seemed comfy. Not my absolute ideal chair, but this one is sucking pretty bad right now, so I figured I'd try it.

I'll see how things work out. $150 is relatively low compared to Expensive Chairs, and my chair right now is annoying enough ("permanent 7 degree or so forward tilt") that I'm willing to experiment.

[seebs]

The answer is that, while the chair is pretty nice -- way nicer than previous chair -- the temptation to get an awesome desk because OMG LOOK HOW BIG THAT KEYBOARD TRAY IS and OMG ITS 40% OFF can be a bit of a risk.

So here we are at 10:30, a bit over seven hours after I wrote that last post, and I've got three out of four computers plugged back in, and a very awesome new desk setup, and I finally actually got to sit on the chair.

It'll do. Last one was sorta leathery (maybe real, maybe fake, who knows), so it was sweaty, so I got one of those seat cushion things, and it just ended up being complicated. This one seems to be better about it. It may also wear out after a couple of years of use, but I guess I can live; at that price, it's not too bad.

Of course, now I ache all over from taking apart and moving furniture.

[Ensign Steve]

Wait. You went shopping for a chair and you came home with a new desk?! :stunned: You're a man after my own heart, seebs.

[seebs]

Wait. You went shopping for a chair and you came home with a new desk?! :stunned: You're a man after my own heart, seebs.

Well, the thing is... I have always been a bit annoyed because my old desk's keyboard tray was sort of narrow.

And so I'm at the office store, looking at the chairs. And right across from them: A big beautiful desk with built-in hutch (and I love the extra surface area) and a HUGE keyboard tray. I mean, fucking huge. Like probably close to 3' wide, and over a foot front to back. Big enough for me to put my keyboard, my mouse, and the programmed keypad I use for WoW on it, and have space left over. Big enough I could put the drawing tablet on it next to the keyboard and mouse.

And it's on sale, at $108, down from $179.

So I got it. And here's the thing: It's the same color fake-wood as my old desk. Made by the same company. ... And the same height. Within 1/16" inch.

So my old desk had a sort of towery thing and then a big flat area. And the new one has wings. And there is no filing cabinet in the new one. So I took the old desk apart (well, I had to do that already), and shuffled things around until I could slide its tower thing under the new desk. So now that wing of the new desk is extra-supported, I have my filing cabinet and a bit of extra flat surface (the new desk had no place I could keep the laptop), and all sorts of other stuff is way cooler than it used to be.

Once I get the cleaning phase done (hah!) I'll post pix.

Best of all... The other half of the old desk, sans keyboard tray, can be put so it's sort of resting on the end of one of my other desks, instead of on that tower -- and with careful shuffling, I was able to get it so that its back support is BEHIND the radiator, which is a space that I absolutely couldn't use otherwise. So I gained several more square feet of surface area, and believe me, with my junk problem, "several feet of surface area" is a close second to sex in my hierarchy of needs.

[JoeP]

Apart from the mention of cleaning, I approve of this thread. Shopping for a chair and getting a desk is cool.

I have nothing like a keyboard tray. Not really compatible with laptops. However, I'm very happy with my chair, although I could not help you with brands or stores ... unlikely to be economical to fly over here.

[viscousmemories]

solidly UNDER a thousand dollars
Damn, I was going to recommend Relax The Back (http://www.relaxtheback.com/catalog/productdetail.cfm?group_id=6390513). I go there once in a while just to sit and I never want to leave.

[inland wave]

I would suggest going to a used office furniture store. I was not happy with choices from the mainstream office supply stores. I found a wonderful executive office chair coved with a tweed material. Very comfy and easy to keep clean for the price of $60.00. That is correct $60.00. I spend a lot of my time in chairs these days so I went with what I felt would work for me. As a matter of fact everyone at home loves the chair.

[seebs]

vm, thanks for the tip; if/when (probably when) this one starts acting up, I'll keep those people in mind.

So, this desk has a wonderful little nook that is about 1/4" wider than the small portable DVD player I like to watch while I work sometimes (to keep the distractions down -- if that doesn't make sense, just assume it's an ADD issue). Unfortunately, the power adapter is about 3/4" long, and comes out one side, and the volume knob is on the other side.

I have solved this. A hole drilled at the right height in one side of the nook allows me to move the player snugly up against the wall, so I can reach the volume knob.

Next up: I need to get a drapey fabric thing to go behind the monitor so I stop seeing all the tangled cables back there.

[seebs]

http://www.seebs.net/tmp/newdesk_2008.png

The central swoopy bit is the new desk. The thing on the left with the drawers and the laptop sitting on it is the old desk. Note the beautiful blue fabric behind the monitor; that replaces (visually) about two dozen dangling cables.

Of note: The right glass panel contains a DVD player; this is possible because I drilled a hole in the side of the cabinet to let a cable through. The left one holds the Wii (which is connected to the monitor; that's why there's a "sensor bar" on top of the monitor). The two black boxes are a nearly-matched pair of quad-core Linux boxes I use for work. The mini above the monitor is for consulting stuff. The footswitch on the floor is for the lamp behind the laptop; saves me trouble.

The vest on the chair to the right is hand-painted with the best imitation I could do in 1989 of the rose from the cover of American Beauty. It's on the chair so my cat will sit there happily while I'm busy. (She likes to sit on things that smell like me. She's like a dog, only smart.)

There are some very awesome efficiencies to this; for instance, the mixing console on the right (so I can have music and desktop sounds from more than one computer at once) has a cable coming out of its back about a half inch over from the support strut under the shelf. A lot of stuff fits extremely well here. When I get the other three desks cleaned off, I'll probably post pictures of 'em.

And yes, that's R&R. Gotta get my all-important IIDB gossip!

[Master Taran]

Sweet! Here's the one Garnet bought Me 8 years ago.

http://i241.photobucket.com/albums/ff271/Taranes/Ribs001.jpg

[seebs]

That's nice. I had a couple of old desks with hutches I had to abandon in Old Place, but...

... OMG. I just realized, what you have there is the other desk in my room, only mine hasn't got the hutch. The previous owners left it; we have the standy thing your printer is on, and a thing coming out from it, and then another thing coming out from that (and screwed to it by under-panel screws) with a sort of semi-circle shelfy thing.

When I got it, it was L-shaped, but it is now T-shaped due to quirks of the room layout.

[Ensign Steve]

Wow, that new setup looks awesome, seebs! Excellent job, and good call on the new desk. I can't believe how seamlessly you've integrated the old one! :stunned:

[seebs]

I believe they're the same brand of office furniture, although I got one at Office Max and the other (I think) at Office Depot.

But same brand, same height... works well. :) I am soooo happy.

Since that pic, I have moved the desk lamp to the middle of the desk, and added a second pair of computer speakers; I now get a slightly better overall sound from the nearly-matched pairs, and I could (if I hated my roommates more) have the music a LOT louder without it getting all buzzy.

There's a door between my room and my roommate's closet, though, so until we soundproof it I have to keep the main volume on my mixer pretty far down. :(

BTW, new desk did have one serious weakness: No hole in the main support strut to run cables. I fixed it; I don't think a missing inch and a half hole in the middle of that huge hunk of wood will be a structural problem.

[JoeP]

Coolness!

I have a large acreage of desk top, but none of the gadgetary shelves and units above. I make do with stacks of filing tray units.

[Uthgar the Brazen]

Real wood paneling. Sigh...

So, Garnet & MT, how do you feel about a grumpy fatass (plus cat) moving in?

[Garnet]

Grumpy fatass is a good description of me. Grumpy is a good description of MT. Another grumpy fatass wouldn't even be noticed. :D

The cat, on the other hand, would be a problem.

Ahhh....AHHHHHHH....CHOOOOOOO!

[Uthgar the Brazen]

:sadcheer:

[seebs]

In a fit of irony, the new chair seems to be contributing to circulatory problems. (They're switching my blood pressure meds anyway, but I suspect the chair may have been contributing.)

[Dingfod]

Drat.

[Garnet]

That sucks!

[seebs]

So, I went to a slightly overpriced store (more pricey than online, but it is CRAZY TALK to buy an ergonomic chair without sitting in it), and picked up a Humanscale Freedom. I'm liking it, I think. I always previously hated headrests in chairs, but this one makes it work. The arm rests are actually adjustable enough that I don't hate them. The chair itself has two adjustments; height of the back part, and height of the chair. All the stuff like tilt adjustments is Magic. It works; it feels precisely right to lean back in it, for instance. I don't know about the back quite yet, but I think it's actually right -- my back is just a bit sore from drivings and such.

But it feels SOOOO nice compared to my other chair. Mostly because I can lean back and the chair doesn't tip, or fight me, or anything like that; it just leans back and becomes perfectly comfortable. This is the most comfy leaning-back experience I have had in any chair that was not an actual recliner.

It's not quite as ideal when I'm sitting up, I think, but I am still messing with the adjustments; I am not quite sure what I want for seat depth, for instance.

[JoeP]

Sounds great!

[ceptimus]

You guys are too tidy.

But I agree that having shelf storage space above the desk for storing junk useful items is a good idea.