The article he cites on the dangers of prolonged sitting is about research on prolonged sitting. That is indeed bad for you. However, so is prolonged standing. You are best off, and you can save $22, by keeping your normal desk and GETTING UP every 20 minutes or so and moving around. This avoids the problems with prolonged sitting, without incurring the serious risks of prolonged standing. See: http://ergo.human.corn…
Getting up to move around every 20 minutes will quickly turn a 5-person office into a mess. Now imagine a space shared by 50 or 100 people. This is completely unrealistic.
I guess you must mean that it would disturb the other four people in the office if one of them got up every few minutes. But it seems as though that is down to office design, not how often one person happens to stand up. I worked in a 100-person office for about a year and a half. The floor had nice-sized desk cubicles. The whole time, I strictly maintained a schedule, getting up exactly every half hour to go on a two-minute walk. It never disturbed anybody as far as I know; I didn't make any noise, I made sre my chair wasn't squeaky, and I walked carefully without stomping.
I really feel as though, if you're in a situation where on person getting up disturbs the workflow of multiple other people, then you have an office design problem. It wouldn't even matter if people got up fifteen times a day or three - if they're disturbing others unnecessarily, then you need your office fixed to remove this disturbance.
In particular, please note that the approach of blaming the disturbances on the people getting up seems like a path to terrible management. If my bosses came to me to suggest that they'd rather I tried to stand up less often, I'd be a bit taken aback, and I'd probably reconsider where I chose to work.