During colder weather I use a heated water bottle under my feet. Warms me up and keeps my fingers from getting stiff.
Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?
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Re: Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?
#92A 3d mouse for modeling, and a second ten key on the left side of my 3d mouse so I can enter dimensions while my hand is still on the regular mouse.
Re: Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?
#93Wired headphones. I’ve never had to start a meeting by trying to mess with my audio settings, or had to think about charging another battery.
I’ll add moderately high quality mic to this. If you’re spending a lot of working hours on calls, putting the resources into providing clear, intelligible voice for the people you’re working with will definitely be appreciated.
I have a Plantronics (now Polycom, or Poly?) wired headset. Makes me look like a call center worker but the audio and mic are great quality. Sometimes I’m on a call and can’t hear someone well over the bad speakers I have in my monitor. The headset always clears it up.
Re: Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?
#94I think the most significant keyboard feature is "small spacebar".
Most keyboards have a spacebar which is the size of 5 or more keys. It's more convenient if this very wide key gets replaced with Esc, Tab, Space, Backspace, Enter. (Which saves the pinky from having to reach for those keys).
For better or worse, keyboards which do follow this "no large spacebar" approach then tend to have other design improvements: e.g. the columns will be aligned, & not have the asymmetric row-stagger that normal keyboards have; or they'll be split keyboards (like ZSA's moonlander). -- Many will also opt to have fewer keys, so that layers can be leveraged to allow for a smaller keyboard.
Re: Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?
#95A compact radio.
Re: Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?
#96Lighted USB volume knob - they're inexpensive, the large aluminum knob is on a sturdy base, can be pressed down for mute. ReMarkable2 e-ink tablet -- okay, it's a standalone device, but interfaces to the computer in cool ways (like screen sharing), and it's changed my life as far as note-taking goes
> Lighted USB volume knob - they're inexpensive, the large aluminum knob is on a sturdy base, can be pressed down for mute.
Any particular recommendations with Linux support?
Re: Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?
#97VR headset, swivel chair, and 270° of screens. What's bigger than ultra-wide? I use both a Quest 2 (running Immersed on Linux) and a Valve Index (running Virtual Desktop on Windows).
Bigger, yes, but much lower resolution.
Re: Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?
#98Here’s an actual lesser known accessory: a mouse bungee. It is a small weighted disc with a spring arm that holds the mouse cord up and away from the mousepad. I don’t like the lag, connectivity, and battery issues of wireless mice, this fixes all of that! It feels _better_ than a wireless mouse, because it has no wires in the way also with zero lag.
There’s essentially no lag in a dedicated wireless receiver mouse - the additional latency is dwarfed by the baseline latency of the hardware and software. https://www.rtings.com/mouse/tests/control/latency Yes connectivity issues can be a problem in certain environments but luckily this has usually not been a problem with receivers not in close proximity to interference, including USB3. Battery wise I have had cheap…
The problem I have with wireless mice is they always die when I'm in the middle of something important or an fps game. Switched back to wired because of that.
Re: Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?
#99Not much is less known in the tech world, so I use as a dock the CalDigit TS3 Plus, connected to two external mechanical keyboards, the blue yeti mic with wired headphones, a Logitech MX vertical mouse, and a huge monitor with a simple ring light and a webcam on top. My favorite headphones throughout the pandemic were the Drop THX pandas, but they broke a month ago and I haven’t fixed them yet, so now I use the Monol…
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Re: Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?
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