I went through this a few years back -- had headaches, shoulder pain, wrist pain, back pain, neck pain. And I work out, am in good health, and play a lot of tennis.
The chair is important, but I already had a nice one and couldn't get the rest of the geometry right with my existing desk & monitor.
So I got myself a fully-articulating monitor stand, a split keyboard, a pull-out keyboard tray with negative tilt and a mousepad extension.
The new setup eliminated all of the problems in a matter of a week or two. The monitor and keyboard stands came from Humanscale, and the keyboard itself is just a cheap MS Natural Keyboard. It isn't an ideal keyboard, (the mouse is still way over to the right which hurts a little).
Reading other comments I see a lot of people recommending the short keyboards to avoid reaching so far for the mouse. That is good advice -- I just have yet to find a split-key that is short. But the one failing of my ergo setup is where to put the mouse.
I would recommend never using a mouse in your daily computer use. I use a laptop with trackpad. You might be able to find a keyboard with a built-in trackpad but make sure it's centered the way a laptop's trackpad is center. This is also why I think keyboard shortcuts are very important...
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I went through this a few years back -- had headaches, shoulder pain, wrist pain, back pain, neck pain. And I work out, am in good health, and play a lot of tennis.
This article pretty much sums up what you need to do positionally: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000938.html
The chair is important, but I already had a nice one and couldn't get the rest of the geometry right with my existing desk & monitor.
So I got myself a fully-articulating monitor stand, a split keyboard, a pull-out keyboard tray with negative tilt and a mousepad extension.
The new setup eliminated all of the problems in a matter of a week or two. The monitor and keyboard stands came from Humanscale, and the keyboard itself is just a cheap MS Natural Keyboard. It isn't an ideal keyboard, (the mouse is still way over to the right which hurts a little).
Hope that helps. Good luck!
Reading other comments I see a lot of people recommending the short keyboards to avoid reaching so far for the mouse. That is good advice -- I just have yet to find a split-key that is short. But the one failing of my ergo setup is where to put the mouse.
I would recommend never using a mouse in your daily computer use. I use a laptop with trackpad. You might be able to find a keyboard with a built-in trackpad but make sure it's centered the way a laptop's trackpad is center. This is also why I think keyboard shortcuts are very important...