Travel Work Setup Better Than Home Setup

This one seems interesting. It seems more. This seems to be someone who’s more about, you know, sort of having a set which I can keep with them at all times, rather than, you know, someone who sets like a previous setup where it’s like, you know, maybe they’re operating on, you know, from hotel rooms or, you know, from rented Airbnbs. This one seems to be about. Seems to be about.

I haven’t watched the full thing. This one seems to be more about like having a setup which you can take with you on planes, maybe to coffee shops, you know, maybe while you’re traveling. Maybe if you’re digital Nomad, maybe this would be the perfect setup for you. Let’s watch it and see. Basically have to work all the time.

And that’s why I need a way to be able to work productively on the go as well. Unfortunately, I’m also a, and now have a 5 monitor setup at home. So working on the go with just one monitor from my MacBook is definitely out of the question. That’s why over the years I’ve built a portable desk setup from different parts that allows me to work on the go almost as comfortably as at home. And that’s exactly what I’m going to show you in this video.

And to keep things clear, I’ve divided everything into three categories. Category number one, stuff I always have with me, even if I’m only going away for a single night. First on this list we have my MacBook Pro. Because of course, working without a laptop on the go is a bit difficult. In my case, it’s the MacBook Pro with the M3 Max, 36 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD, which is a bit small.

But disk drive space is just very, very expensive at Apple. So I solved that in a different way, which I’m going to talk about later in this. He’s talking about disk drive space, man. Like, RAM prices at the moment are insane. Apple seems to be, you know, the last holdout of the, I’m going to say, reasonable RAM prices.

It’s not reasonable. They’ve just always been expensive, I guess now compared to RAM prices, you know, for PCs or compared to like RAM prices that the other sellers are offering. Apple just seems reasonable in comparison. But yeah, RAM prices are insane. So I’m seeing his 36 gigabytes of RAM and I’m like, oh, yeah, that’s, that’s a sweet spot, right?

I’ve got 8 gigabytes of RAM on this. I’m recording this on a Mac Mini and it has 8 gigabits, 8 gigabytes of RAM, which is shockingly small. And my MacBook Air also has 8 gigabytes of RAM. I’m severely RAM limited. So I see it’s 36 gigs and I’m like, oh man, that’s a sweet spot.

I will be buying a new Apple product at some point within the next couple of years, which I’m gonna. I’m gonna go, just go hard on the ram, man. That’s. That, that’s my goal. That’s my dream.

This hard drive space. Who cares? Hard drive space, Just give me the RAM. Okay?

I bought my MacBook in spring this year, and so far I’m super happy with it and even use it as my daily driver at home as well. So it’s not like I have a tower at home. And then on the go, I just use my MacBook. I actually use this MacBook for everything because the M3 Max is actually really, really powerful and has handled everything I’ve thrown at it so far without any issues. Actually, my old gaming PC that I used before that, which I now only use for gaming, struggled a bit with complex 3D animations and stuff like that.

Next we have the device that probably most of you are actually watching this video on right at this moment, according to statistics at least. I’m talking about my phone, of course, and in my case, that’s the iPhone 13. I’ve had the iPhone 13 for almost three years now, and it’s actually the first cell phone that I’m completely happy with before, I always had the urge to upgrade after one to at max two years because I was unhappy with something. But the iPhone 13 I now have for almost three years, and it just works like on day one, and I really use it for everything. You would typically use a cell for, be it making calls, writing messages, but nowadays also often as a camera for my social media content.

Because there are many situations where it’s simply quicker and more practical to just pull my cell phone out instead of setting up my big camera. And to be honest, I don’t think that this bothers anyone on social media. Actually. Most people, I think, probably don’t even realize because the image quality of the iPhone is actually insanely good for a smartphone. Now I think he’s just talking about like, you know, very general things.

Headphones, phone, you know. So let’s just. I’m just gonna scoot past this stuff. Let’s try and find interesting stuff. Give me the everyday carry, you know, time throughout the day now to Solve this problem.

I also almost always carry this power bank from Anker with me. And with this I actually have plenty energy if I’m out and about and always charge my phone at night with a cable I can easily get throughout a whole week without having to recharge the actual power bank. Now kind of feel like powers. It’s gonna sound weird. I feel like power is a solved issue.

I, you know, everything seems to be like USBC now. So I feel like if you just have like one USBC cable with you as well as like a, a plug socket, sorry, a plug adapter that connects a USBC which can do somewhere around like say 100 watts maybe if you have an Apple product, I think like the MacBook Airs and stuff, they can, they can charge it for around 60 watts. Yeah, if you’re like a 60 watt to 100 watt adapter and the USB C cable, you’re pretty much set. I mean you can even get battery banks now for pretty cheap. But like under, under like $40, you can get like a very good USBC power bank which can power your laptop for a couple of hours if it’s a low power one.

So yeah, I kind of feel like power is a solved issue now. So I’m just going to skip ahead. Let’s get to. I already mentioned that if I have to work on the go, then I really want to have a proper setup where I don’t have any problems with having a longer work session. And actually there are two things that used to really piss me off about working on the go.

The first one is most chairs are just incredibly uncomfortable if you sit on them for a really long time. Now this problem is actually a bit hard to solve because unfortunately I can’t just take my ergonomic desk chair with me when I’m going on holidays, for example. But the second problem is, is actually solvable because previously my neck always hurt terribly at some point because if you just put the laptop on the table, you sit completely hunched because you always have to look down. And this problem I actually solved with a 3D printed laptop stand so that I now have a properly ergonomic posture in front of the computer when I’m out on the go as well. But one monitor in the MacBook obviously isn’t enough.

So I need at least a second one even when I’m out on the go. And for this I use this one from Ersopa, which I got in a sale on Amazon a while ago. The huge advantage of this monitor is that it is relatively small And I can easily take it anywhere. And it only needs a single USB C cable. And it will get power and the image connection via this one single cable.

And then I have the whole thing on another stand, which is actually an iPad stand, but I just put my monitor in there to have it almost the same height as my MacBook monitor. And because two screens are also not enough, I usually also have my iPad with me as a thick third screen. And the practical thing, I don’t just have another monitor, but I actually also have an iPad, which I can use as an iPad. Well, and if the laptop is on a stand all the time, then of course, it would be incredibly impractical to use the keyboard and touchpad directly on the MacBook, which is why I actually use exactly the same devices as at home as a keyboard. That’s my beloved Akko Black and Gold, which is a mechanical keyboard, which is small, cute, and handy, but still has arrow keys.

That was important to me. And it still has the great haptic feeling of a mechanical keyboard. And the size is plenty enough at home, and it’s also plenty enough when I’m on the go. And as a mouse, I use the MX Master 3s. I have actually tried out a lot of mice over the past 15 years or something, and this one is by far the best.

I really find it incredibly practical, especially for use directly with macOS, because macOS is especially well known for its multitouch gestures on the trackpad, which are very, very intuitive. Like, for example, this window changing mode when you swipe up with four fingers or switching between different spaces and stuff like that. And you can mimic this behavior extremely well with the MX Master 3S. The software from Logi is really extremely good. A lot of the things can actually be accomplished using this action button directly on the mouse.

If I press it once, I also get that window changing mode, for example, or if I press the action button and swipe left and right, I can again switch between spaces. And it’s all super intuitive and very, very well solved. Category number three. I also want to produce content when I want to. Just a couple of notes on that.

Super interesting. A couple of things I liked. I loved his 3D printed laptop stand. That’s very smart. I actually used to.

I was traveling around Morocco years ago, it’s like 10 years ago now, and I found this online. Someone had this, like this cardboard laptop stand. So it was a laptop stand which you kind of like. Just, you know, you print it out onto a piece of paper and you trace that design onto Pieces of cardboard and you kind of just made this stand. It kind of works similar to what he has there.

Just slotted together in multiple places and it was quite rigid. Great design. I’ll try and find. If anyone’s interested, just leave a comment down below. If you’re interested, I’ll try and dig it up.

That was a great little invention. Yeah, I’d love to use again his 3D printed version. Way more, way cleaner. Yeah, very smart. I like how this sort of, you know, falls down into these two little pieces.

I like having the external monitor however, I personally just find it very like if I’m at coffee shop, I find it very inconvenient to sort of bring out a whole extra monitor, even if it’s just one cable that connects it. You know, one cable normally powers and connects these, these monitors to your laptop, which is awesome. But just having one cable there plus a whole other, you know, large monitor, probably going to want around at least 15 inch. I think I have a 16 inch Arzopa monitor as well. Portable monitor and it just, just a little bit too big to carry around for sort of day to day use.

However, if I’m going on a longer trip and you know, again, I’m in a hotel room, an Airbnb, I’m kind of trying to, you know, create like a work setup away from home. It is very handy to have the extra monitor there. I know some people can’t, they just can’t do work on a single monitor. So can be handy especially if you’re doing things like video editing. One tip I would have, if you’re on Apple, you can get 4K portable monitors for not that much more expensive than 2560 by 1440 2K monitors.

2K monitors on Apple, especially in small sizes, generally it’s just you have to scale them down in order to get them to look good. So you just don’t have that much space. So I’d Recommend Getting a 4k one which you can then scale down to 2k in Apple settings and it will look really good and you know, your icons won’t be tiny and the text won’t be tiny. Everything will be crystal clear. And it’s 4K which Apple’s not perfect with.

But 4K looks fine on Apple silicon. So yeah, that’s my recommendation if you’re going to do external monitor. Also he’s using the Logitech’s MX Ergo mouse, which I used to have one of Those at the MX3. I gave it to my girlfriend because yeah, it just it just. I moved to trackball mice and so I just didn’t need it.

So I gave it to her. And she loves it. She uses it every day for work. They are great mice. They’re still super comfortable.

Like if, if you’ve never used a trackball, you just, you know, you want basically the most comfortable regular mouse, I would say it’s the Logitech MX4, I think is the latest one. They’re basically the best mice. They just, they fit your hand perfectly. And those extra buttons, you have to set them up just right. But it can be super handy.

I never used to use mine because it got stuck. It would constantly get stuck on the old MX3. I think that was actually like a manufacturing defect. Hopefully they’ve solved it with the new MX4 or the MX5. I think it’s MX4.

Hopefully they’ve Logitech have solved that issue. If so, yeah, great mice, highly recommended. Yeah. They also have the MX anywhere, which is basically like a. It’s a slightly different shape.

I’ve never used one, but I’ve seen them and they’re about half the price or something like 60, 70 of the price of the MX4, MX3. They. They look very good too. They have. Another great thing about the Logitech MX mice is the scroll wheels.

And the Logitech MX anywhere has the same scroll wheel as its larger brothers. And yeah, you can. They just, they. They’re very smooth and you can, you can sort of switch modes. So it has like a smooth scroll mode and it has like a ratcheted mode.

You can switch between. Switch between them. So, you know, if you have long documents having a smooth scroll, it’s beautiful. You just kind of scroll on it. But if you like the scroll wheel, try a Trackball, especially the Kensington Slim Blade, man.

And it has this twist to scroll function, man. Best scroll I’ve ever experienced. Like, I would recommend it’s $100 mouse. I would recommend buying it just based on that scroll. Nothing I’ve used compared to it.

It’s fantastic. So if you like smooth scrolling, try the Kensington Slim Blade. You won’t regret it.

Perfect.