It’s 2024 and one of the things I did over Christmas (other than welcoming my daughter Sophie into the world!) was to fix some of the bugbears that I’ve been meaning to resolve with my home office since I moved in over 3 and a half years ago. Lobste.rs had a thread on Battlestations, so I thought I’d share some photos and details of my home office.

New Build Networking - CAT 6 and Fibre Optics

We bought our house off plan, and one of the first things I asked the developer to do was add CAT 6 runs from the central “comms” cupboard (where our fibre terminates) to the rooms that my wife and I intended on using as offices. This was met with a flat “no”, so I’ve been using Powerline Network Adaptors for the past few years to get something more stable than wifi, but could only achieve about 300mpbs from our 1 Gigabit fibre connection, and, well, what sort of hopeless nerd would I be if I settled for that?

After spending 3 years procrastinating planning, I decided to do more than run CAT 6 and ran two additional cables: DisplayPort and USB-C. The run is about 15m in length and has multiple bends, so the only real option for both of these is to use expensive Active Fibre Optic cables. I eventually settled on a 15m FIBBR USB C cable for about £130 from Amazon, and a Lindy 20m Fibre Optic Hybrid Mini DisplayPort 1.4 cable that I got for £150 from ebay (a discount of ~£350 over RRP). A single Thunderbolt cable probably would have been more future proof, and that was my original plan, however the hardware still seems temperamental at best, and Corning’s Thunderbolt 3 cable is more expensive than both the cables I used combined, so I opted for the safe and cheap(er) choice – there’s nothing stopping me from running new cables in the future.

This let me move my big, loud, and very warm gaming PC (with an AMD 7800X3D and a Radeon RX 7900 XTX) out of my office and into the comms cupboard, but still use it just as though it was next to me with the help of a USB dock. Since our TV is mounted to the wall directly behind the cupboard, it also meant that I could run cables from my PC to the TV and get back to some big screen gaming!

The Battelstation

My desk is a 2.25 metre long worktop, cut to fit the space, sitting on top of a pair of ALEX drawers from IKEA. After going through a few cheap IKEA desk chairs and struggling with back pain, I bought a Herman Miller Mirra 2, and after a bit of adjustment, haven’t had an issue since. A lot of money for a chair, but well spent.

The monitor, a 49" Samsung CRG9, is wall mounted and although I was initially hesitant about having such a wide monitor, I’m quite happy with how it performs. A single big display is more-or-less a necessity since I’m using a Mac for work these days, but it’s great for gaming too.

My webcam is a Sony a6300 mirrorless camera, usually paired with a Sigma 16mm F1.4 DC DN “Contemporary” lens. I’ve been using it via a £10 HDMI-to-USB capture device since the initial covid lockdowns, and still get plenty of compliments for my webcam quality, so clearly it’s doing a good job.

All of my keyboards and mice are Logitech. My most used keyboard is the MX Mechanical, although I sometimes prefer the Chiclet-style keys on the MX Keys, which was my keyboard of choice when hybrid working. As for mice, I use whatever the latest version of the MX Master is until I wear it out, and currently use an MX Master 3S. I find the rubber on these tends to go before anything mechanical does, but they’re still the most comfortable mice I’ve ever used.

I had a pair of Audioengine A2s speakers on my desk for many years, however when the left one developed a loud rattle at certain frequencies, they were relegated to garage speakers and replaced with a pair of Ruark Audio MR1 Mk2 speakers that I think look great, sound fantastic, and unlike the A2s, support Bluetooth, so make it easy to listen to music from my phone while I’m relaxing.

Relaxing

I have a fairly big (by some standards) collection of Folio Society books, including a couple of limited editions (the complete works of Philip K. Dick being my favourite). When Tux (our cat) lets me use his chair, I even read some of them. I’m currently reading Roadside Picnic. ■