New keyboard tray

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Back in 2010 or so I was trying a bunch of different approaches to putting my keyboard and mouse close to my lap for better ergonomics. I looked at all the height-adjustable keyboard trays and was really annoyed by all of the ones on the market. Either they were flimsy or they were way overpriced and hard to adjust well, and usually not able to actually accommodate my various input devices due to having built-in molded wrist rests and so on, and of course the ones always provided by workplaces were the worst. So I bought an Ikea DAVE laptop table (since discontinued, but here’s an Amazon affiliate link) and that became my usual go-to for a bit of office furniture, and I bought a few of them, all red. I still have two of them (one being from the office when I worked at Sony), and have continued to use them (one as a generic putting-stuff-on table).

A few years ago I got annoyed at the unwieldiness of the actual desktop on it and replaced it with a chunk of wood, and later melamine, shelving1, which made it a bit more manageable, and also had the benefit of being able to put it into a standing configuration pretty easily (tilting my monitor back so I can look down at it). But I was getting progressively more annoyed with the stand itself, getting in the way of my legs and not having a way to put my feet flat on the ground and so on. Plus, it made it very easy for me to keep putting off vacuuming under my desk.

So, a few days ago I finally ordered a new keyboard tray from Mount-It (I bought it direct from the manufacturer but here’s the obligatory Amazon affiliate link). Today it arrived and I installed it and I have thoughts about it. It’s mostly positive, but there’s definitely some places it could be improved as well.

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