Ahh… living the dream, working from the comfort of your home with your handy laptop! You can work, stream, chat, and do everything without leaving the couch. Unfortunately, with the good, comes the bad.
Notebooks and laptops were designed to give the user the ability to input information when away from the office. Initially, their purpose was to be used for small entry tasks requiring short duration of input time. Striving to make them as portable as possible, designers have continually introduced smaller and lighter models.
This smaller size, along with the inability to independently position the screen and keyboard results in the individual compromising their typing and mousing posture or their head and neck position. Laptop keyboards are also more compact than regular computer keyboards. This presents wrist problems especially for men as even a regular sized keyboard often inhibits them due to their larger hand size and broader builds.
Short‐term, infrequent use of laptops is not problematic (so go ahead, curl up on the couch with your dog and balance the laptop on a pillow) but if a laptop is being used in one location for extended periods of time, then it is not the right tool for the job.
If a laptop needs to be used in one location regularly for any length of time, consideration should be given to attaching a separate monitor, keyboard and mouse. This will help you achieving better posture and prevent those nagging aches and pains from showing up!