17: The one about tools of the trade - hardware edition

This ep is like Oprah's favourite things, but it's our favourite bits of hardware that we use All The Time.

We talk keyboards, mice and compare Chris and Em's beloved reMarkable 2 against Rah's iPad.

Number of fucks given in this episode: 8

Mentioned in this episode:
* Em's favourite bluetooth mouse: Logitech MX Anywhere 3S
* Em's favourite bluetooth keyboard: Logitech MX Keys for Mac
* Chris and Em are obsessed with their reMarkable 2 for their note taking
* Rah loves GoodNotes for note taking on iPad
* Rah also loves her Boya bluetooth lapel microphone
* Chris' favourite bluetooth keyboard: Microsoft Surface bluetooth keyboard

Related episode: Episode 9: The one about our most-used apps

Transcript

Rah: Welcome to the fuck around and find out podcast. I know I'm not laughing where your hosts, Rah, Emily and Christine, three women who have built and run our own businesses.

And we're here to shoot the shit on everything about women in business and running a business. our own business and your own business. And I'm laughing because I looked at Emily while reading out the intro. I was about to be like, do you want to try that for a third time? No, I'm leaving this one in. The podcast editor has decided that we're leaving in the

Christine: Well, it's important to show that we're human really, isn't it?

Exactly. We're not

Rah: perfect. Yep. According to popular belief. I mean, we gasp at it so much that it's hard to like, be real. Yes. But we are coming to you from the Sunrise Studio, which is a new space for us. It's very cool. Yeah, it's very fucking Air Force dorm room, so I know. It's awesome. My nerd knee is very excited.

These walls could talk. I know. I know. But yes, so, hi em. Hi, Chris.

Woo.

Christine: We're here. This is, this is a little bit different, a little bit fun.

Emily: We're here. I got my mind eventually went. We're here, we're queer.

Rah: I want to go straight to bring it on and we're sexy, we're cute, we're popular, we're boot, we're bitchin great hair, the boys all love to stare, who am I, just guess, cause wanna touch my chest.

That's

Emily: so good.

Rah: I had, note for self, we need to make a reel on that. When Bring It On came out on DVD, yes, I had it couriered from Amazon Canada. The day that it came out, so that I could have it within three days. Is that your fun fact? Yes, because my boss and I, we went, we took time off work because we worked together, we could, we skived off and went down from, we were in magazines back then, we went down to George Street Cinemas, went and saw Bring It On as an extended lunch break, and we were obsessed.

And then once it was out on DVD, ordered Courier, spent like 300 to get it here. Oh, what a time to have lived. Oh my god. Back then, before, you know, streaming, etc. So yes, that can be my fun fact for this episode. That is. Because that was fun the last time we did that. Oh my god. Yeah, so, and what's your fun fact for this episode?

Emily: Oh god. Um, I'm a giant nerd. Oh my god, really? No. Shut up. Um, yes, these guys just sat through me having a very detailed conversation about the intricacies of how the new Deadpool movie has merged into the wider Marvel universe and how it has taken away from the origins of the Deadpool movie, which was really exciting to not, like, it was better.

Anyway, I could go on forever. I'm a giant nerd. No, but it comes to comic books and movies and things like that. So I'm actually like a hardcore Harry Potter nerd. Hardcore. My child's got Harry. I have a Harry Potter tattoo. Um, very, very hardcore nerd for that one. And I also love Marvel. I'm a very huge Marvel nerd.

Rah: You're not alone in that. No, there's many, there's many. There's many of any

Emily: person to the point where I've maybe encouraged my son too much to the point he thinks he's Spider Man. Yeah, he does. Intensely. Only Spider Man. He literally can't. Sorry, that's

Rah: me making Spider Man noises. Spider Man noises? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I got it. Okay, thank you. That's my nerd.

Emily: And if anyone's playing along, would like to donate my favourite character in Marvel is the Scarlet Witch.

Rah: Oh. Who plays the Scarlet Witch? Elizabeth Olsen. Beautiful, beautiful girl.

Emily: She's a lovely angel. But also the character fascinates me because it's very I'm going to say Fifty Shades of Grey but without the sexual side to it.

It's very like Until you talk about it. She's kind of an anti hero. Like she's Yeah. She's an onion. That's lots of layers. She's often portrayed as a bad, sometimes it comes off as a bad guy, but she's also been very badly wronged in her life. Yep. And is just trying to fight for her happiness. So I don't know, I weirdly parallel to that one.

Oh, good. Don't ask me which way. You do,

Christine: Jeshua knows.

Emily: But I love her. I also love Captain America, because Chris Evans is

Rah: gorgeous. Oh, he is. Absolutely. Speaking of gorgeous, Christine. Oh, hello. Hello. Nice segue.

Christine: Uh, fun fact. Yes. I am I went to community college to learn Italian. Oh! We were going away overseas and, uh, in 2018, five billion years ago.

And, uh, yes, I decided that I wanted to be able to speak the language as much as I possibly could. So I took myself off to community college. And, um, I would really like to go and, you know, Live in Italy for a while and finish learning Italian. Bellissima! Absolutely. That's all I know. And

Rah: Fongolo. Is that actually a swear word?

I have

Christine: no idea. We've only started. I don't remember all the swear words, and I know that they're very important things to learn, and especially at community college, but I do know how to order a glass of red wine in Italy. Would you like to hear it? Yeah, go for it. I'll probably fuck it up. No, that's fine.

We're finding out. Okay.

You the accent. Thank you. Thank you. Husbands are lucky now, so I will not go thirsty. I can order red wine by the glass , I should say Vore. Because you should just ask for one at a time. Oh, of course. Um, but anyway, yes. And, uh, yeah, so, um, I would like to finish learning Italian. Mmm. And go back, because obviously, You

Rah: should sign up to Duolingo, like all the young kids can do.

Yes,

Christine: I was on Duolingo for quite some time. Um, I like, I liked being in, in with the Italian teacher. Yeah. In the class, it was good.

Rah: Immersive

Christine: learning. Absolutely, I am more of an immersive learner person. But yes, that's a little fun fact for me. Oh,

Rah: great. Love it. And today's episode is going to be full of fun facts because we're talking about our favourite hardware.

We

Christine: certainly are. Yeah, absolutely. And I think we come with, you know, some very differing, differing and opposite and aligned opinions. So many opposites, it's going to be quite hilarious. I know, well opposites

Emily: attract. Some are a lot of similar. You and I are quite

Rah: similar. Yes. Yes. Yes. And then we've got Chris the heathen over there.

A non Apple human being. Yes, that's right. Well,

Christine: I like to have a point of difference, really. And that's important. We do need a

Rah: Windows person so that we can say, Is this working on your browser? Exactly. Yep.

Emily: But weirdly, I find you're my person for that, especially with websites. I don't know how your screen You and I have the exact same laptop as well.

And yet, your

Rah: screen seems to be different to mine. Mm hmm. Depends on when I'm connected to one of my favourite pieces of hardware, which is my monitor. Which has a different screen size. But also, I do things to the browser to make it different sizes to test. Ah, okay. It's breakpoints and Very technical.

Teach me how to do that. You need some immersive learning. Speaking of, speaking of nerds. Yes. You have your own nerdity. Yes. But Em, do you want to start us off and talk about some of your favourite pieces of hardware? Okay.

Emily: Yeah, look, I'm an Apple girl, as I know you are as well. Um, I have been Mac for millions of years, and even though my dad's a hardcore PC, he actually is a software engineer, so he codes.

Um, and, but no, we're a very divided household, but I love my Apple and Mac. I, um, I have every Apple, I should probably buy shares, I have every Apple device you could probably get. Literally iPad, computer, Air Maxes, AirPods. Um, watch the whole shebang. I currently walk around with two phones as well. One's a recording phone.

Yeah, one's for the content. Doing it for the gram. Um, yeah, so Apple, Apple's my big one. Um, I am also very, very OCD about my keyboard and mouse. When I'm at home, when I'm out and about traveling, I'm just happy to use my computer keyboard, but, um, and, but I cannot use the trackpad that, I mean, that's fascinating.

It's not for lack of coordination, but I hate drag and drop with it. Like, I feel like I ended up having to do some weird origami with my fingers. So I've just gotten used to that over the years. Yeah, I'm sure I would if I just pushed through, but I've got a beautiful Logitech mouse, but I'm also with my mice.

I'm very funny. It has to be silent. I cannot handle click noises. It has to smooth and glide and not be too big in my hand. It's all very, very particular about it. So I've got a beautiful, um, yeah, and I found this beautiful, um, a Logitech girl. I love Logitech. Um, I've got a beautiful MX Anywhere S3S mouse.

It's soft click. It has advanced scroll. It's got side buttons that you can program to do stuff with. It fits beautifully in the hand. It can connect to three separate devices, which I love because if I'm also, I've got a couple of computers at home, so I do sometimes toggle between my computers and I can just hit the button and it toggles between them.

Without having to reconnect anything like it's all Bluetooth. So I just Bluetooth it to each of them. And it's got the three little things and I can just talk. So it's like your different input devices on the TV. And my also favorite part about this, it comes in pink. It matches your laptop case perfectly.

I know, it's me. So I've got the pink one. Um, and I have a MX keyboard for Mac from Logitech as well at home. Yeah. Um, my husband actually got me onto this one too, because he fell in love with the PC version of it. And it's beautiful. It's similar to an Apple keyboard. It's really soft touch and really, it's just really soft and glidy and there's no noise.

I don't like noise. I hate gaming keyboards with the big fricking clicks and stuff. I

Rah: hate them. Oh, but there's different sounds. I'm learning on TikTok. There's the creamy sounds, which sounds very rude. It does sound very rude. I just don't clack sounds. Can't do it. I'm real funny

Emily: about it. I don't like it.

I have nails. So when they get long enough and they start making noise, it fucks me off.

Rah: Oh yeah.

Emily: So I can't, I don't. You know, I don't like the noise. Um, and this keyboard is beautiful. It's the same thing. It actually connects to three different devices as well, so I can toggle between them as well, quite easily without having to do anything.

I don't like walking around with the keyboard. Cause I feel like when I'm like working elsewhere or whatever it might be, it's too much pain in the ass to take a keyboard. So I do have, I take my mouse everywhere. But I do have a separate keyboard in my office, so I don't have to take my keyboards back and forth.

Yeah, and then when I'm out, I just use my my keys, but they're my main two pieces and my third's my Remarkable. I know we've talked a lot about a Remarkable. That's the

Rah: main reason we're having this episode is so that you two can bang out about your Remarkable. Oh, well, it's true. Like I

Emily: won't lie. I'm a very big tech nerd.

I love technology. I'm not a buy clothes or buy software kind of person. I'm a tech girl. Yeah. Um, you. Which is why I have so many Apple devices and it's probably why I'm also so broke, um, because it's not cheap. No, that's not. But, um, I love the Remarkable. I might have convinced Chris into it without a whole lot of protest, to be honest.

But a Remarkable, for those that don't know, is a, basically, it's a digital notebook. So, think about it as a giant, um, Kindle. Yeah, that you can write on. It's the same look and feel. It's got the same backlit kind of vibe to it and you can write on it. It comes with the pen. I mean, you have to buy it separately, but it comes with the pen.

The pen has different nibs. You can like, you literally weigh your nibs down if you write too much as well and you put too much pressure, but it has so much functionality within it. Like you can have notebooks. So I was usually like a two notebook kind of person depending on the level of work or client that I have.

Um, and I can combine that all together, you can tag it, you can, you know, file it in the right order and structure, you can upload PDFs to it, you can annotate on PDFs, you can, um, text, like, handwriting to text on it, it's so good. And it's actually really

Rah: good at that, because when I use the Remarkable for things, Two and a half weeks.

Yes. Yeah, I noticed it was really good at that.

Christine: Yeah. No, I liked it and I liked the fact that, because you can tag it if I, you know, go, oh, you know, I was talking about such and such, took notes on it, and as long as I've tagged it, I can actually search by tag and find every re, you know, reference to the FFO podcast, for example, if I've tagged it properly that way.

Emily: And that's why I wanted to convince Chris to it, like while I could live with my two notebooks that I was carrying everywhere. It takes that away. We don't need it. You had like five?

Christine: I think we got to like seven. Well yeah, because I did a notebook per client. That's just how I rolled. It kept everything together.

Um, but you know, it becomes a weight problem. And I only need one weight problem in my life. Um, so the notebooks really had to go and it has just been, you know, we talk about game changers in our world, but um, um, um, Um, but it was, um, it really was. It is so light. The bag that I drag around now is like a third of the weight of what I was dragging around, especially between home and the office.

So, I love it. I love it. Yes.

Emily: It's such a good tool. Yeah. And look, it's not, it's not a cheap tool. It is tax write off able cause it is a product of business and you can in regardless of whether you have your own business or you just work it's tax write off able. Um, and it just, if you commit to using that properly as your method, it is worth its weight in gold.

Christine: Don't be like my husband who had a huge Um, episode of FOMO and he's a notepad, notebook user always has been for clients and he had to have one, had to have one, annoyed me for like 10 days and then was like alright, you know, claim it in tax and what not. It has sat on the coffee table since just shortly after.

The new financial year commenced. Oh dear. So clearly, it's not, he's not, he's not invested in it. And of course I just go cha ching, cha ching, it's sitting there still. Yeah. But the great thing is for me, that means that I've got a spare remote. I was going to say, you've got a spare if something happens to it.

You know, whatnot. Um, but yes, yeah,

Emily: it's a good tool. It's also really light. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Um, and not like it's, it's so easy to carry around. Like it doesn't weigh anything. Unlike my laptop, which is like a brick, but it's really, um, an easy tool to take with you. Yeah. And you can draw on it. You can highlight it.

It doesn't show color on the actual, um, screen. On the actual device. But when you look at it on like your app for the computer, yeah, it does. The colors everything come through and it lets you use different pen nibs. So you can do calligraphy, you can have different layouts of the actual calli calligraphy font.

My

Rah: handwriting with that pen doing calligraphy was it makes shitty writing look gorgeous. It really does. Is the one thing I massively miss when we moved away. So

Christine: what, so what's your, so you, you know, you did try the remarkable I did. So what, what tool? Um. Hardware tool that you're using. So I was

Rah: quite lucky in terms of the remarkable, cause I could have been like.

Your darling husband, um, of buying it and then not utilising it. But, we, the Remarkable that we have, which is the same model as yours, that you guys have, um, is a review model, because husband works in tech journalism, so they get review products. And so, it was very flash in that it came with the nibs and the pen.

But it also came with a keyboard folio thing that I looked at, and that's an extra 300. Oh yeah. So I had the full keyboard testing thing, like, stunning. Was obsessed with it. Started, you know, I had all these ideas that I could use it to be delivering webinars and doing live stream. Here's me doodling on my Remarkable like, Um, but I ended up switching back to my iPad, which is quite old.

Um, because, well, a, it's an iPad and I can use it for other things. Yeah. And I just, it was just butting against my head internally that the remarkable was a single function device. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Get that. Um, I get

Emily: that too.

Rah: As much as I loved it. Mm-Hmm. . But, um, this iPad I've had for donkeys years and have barely used it.

I used it as a notepad for a while. Yep. I, you know, I've done calligraphy lessons and all those sorts of things, like I've used it as a creative tool. but inspired by having the remarkable Yeah. I fully onboarded myself back into doing all my note taking in an app called Good Notes. Yes. Yeah. Um, which similar to the Remarkable Can Sync online, I can look at my good notes on my laptop, on my phone.

Yep. On the iPad. The main thing was that it was in color. . Yeah. I take that which note. Yeah. Um, but the other thing as well, and I've not been using this feature a lot lately, is that I can be in a notebook. in the app on my desktop. Yep. Take a screenshot of something on a website. Yep. And paste that into a particular page.

Yeah, see that's pretty good. And then I can annotate it. So if I wanted to say to somebody, this bit on the website needs to be fixed, you know, let's move this over here. I can annotate. Mm hmm. When you talk like that,

Emily: it makes

Rah: me go, God, should I start doing this on my iPad? No. No, I also You can do online, like there's apps that you can do the annotating, like Canva, you can do it that way.

Emily: And screenshot, PDF it, and then put it in. Yeah, exactly.

Rah: Yeah.

Emily: And I find, I just keep trying to remind myself that every time I try and write on my iPad, I like to lean across the whole fucking thing. And it, it pinks my, my hands up everywhere and doesn't like it.

Rah: So I end up having to do this weird grip with my arm.

And I think it depends on the app as well, because Apple does have the default notes app. Yes, it does. Which is quite good. Which I tried. But when I was I was testing whether or not GoodNotes was still the right app for me to have. Lots of people were saying the Notes app on Apple is actually fantastic.

Which I still use it anyway, for other, like, jotting down things. It's like my scratch pad, quickly. But, um, the thing with the GoodNotes is that it's got, you tell it what's your writing style. And so, and if, how you hold your pen, and so it will, based, and when I changed it to the wrong line, it started moving the cursor to where my wrist was.

So it picks up if you can tell it, if you can tell it. Yeah, that's good. So based on how you hold, it's got pictures of how you hold a pen. Yep. Okay, so you can match it. Mine is pretty close to that. Yeah, that's pretty clever. Um, yeah. And the other thing, I think I was showing you guys the other day, is that it, I've trained it up to understand my handwriting, that it can now do autocomplete.

in my handwriting style. Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Which again, shows that AI is taking on the world. I think you need to

Emily: like do a little mini course on teaching people how to actually set up. Oh, another webinar idea. I haven't finished

Rah: executing the plans from the last time we talked about webinar ideas.

It's all in the bucket. It's all in the bucket. Yeah, chuck it into the ideas bucket. Chuck it into ClickUp. Um, yeah. So now that I've got that, I'm finding it a lot easier just to keep tabs on things. Cause even though I've got like the Asana and ClickUp. You know, ways of keeping tabs on things. But just the process of writing down ideas, or even just journaling.

Like, I had um, a difficult client situation about a month ago, and I was like, I can sit here, I mean I had a bit of a cry, but I was like, I can just sit here and wallow. Or, I've got my book right here, I'm just going to start a new notebook. And just download it, all the feelings, because the act of handwriting is as ugly as it is.

And finish that, spend about 20 minutes writing it all down, put it into the book, and that's a book that I won't open. You know, it just sits there as the download of the contents in my brain. Yeah. No. And then

Emily: see I've got an actual physical journal if I wanna, if I feel like shit, I need to get some shit out.

Oh see,

Rah: I don't want that shit lying around in case someone finds it. But

Emily: yeah,

Rah: I

Emily: mean

Rah: I've story how crazy story and it's not from a trust issue from like the people I live with or person I live with.

Emily: I have a story, I have a story about that one for another day. Okay. Not great. Um, for that exact reason.

Oh shit.

Rah: Um, I had

Emily: that happen, but it was on a blog, so Mm. Yeah. Okay. That's worse. Yeah. Um, I, I, I mean I get that completely. I have them since I was a teenager, so I do find it kind of funny. Every now and then you go back and read some old one ones that's fucking awful, um, to be like, fuck, how neurotic? I was like, what?

But suck but suck love. I really ain't OCD about handwriting. So like, I don't like, so when I'm actually writing in my own journal. I have to do it really slowly and make sure my handwriting is perfect because it's, I get like satisfaction looking through pages with perfect handwriting and having it completely filled out.

So it's like the only book I've ever completely filled to completion would be a journal. Because I hate like, you know, you finish a job sometimes before you've finished a notebook that you've completely filled. Got for that job or, you know, and it's so perfect. So I take real OCD satisfaction out of that, but I have found myself wanting to write in my remarkable just so I can fuck around with the calligraphy pen.

And I was like, I'm going to start writing a book again. And then I've started writing, I've got my character profiles. I've like, I sat down one day. Because I clearly didn't want to do work and just started like putting it all out. That's why we started

Rah: the podcast so you'd have something to do. Oh no, it's never enough.

Stop replacing it. Never enough. But I also can always find room for one more. And then I never look at it again. Yeah, right. Just like a true, like a true author. Yeah. An ADHD chick. Yeah. But yeah, so apart from being, well, even though I'm completely different to you two in terms of not having a remarkable as my main tool, but yeah, I'm with you Em in terms of Apple.

And I've only been using Apple for the last like 12 years. I'd say I'm relatively new to it. Um, took a long time for me to get used to it. Just certain keyboard shortcuts that didn't match what I was used to on Windows. But, yeah, then progressively started moving everything over. Went from Android to iPhone.

Um, and for that the main reason that I find it really useful is things like I can copy and paste between devices. Yes. So I can copy a URL from my computer. And then go to my phone and paste into my browser and then open it on my browser, that kind of thing. And I know there's more efficient ways of doing it, but just little things like that.

Or taking a photo on my phone, hitting copy, going to my laptop and doing paste into a Facebook post.

Emily: There is some benefit with Apple because you can like, and even just drag the browser window across to the iPad from your computer. Yeah, you can

Christine: do second screen with your iPad. Where I have to share it, so I'll share it to either my OneDrive, my Dropbox, or my Google, you know, that kind of thing.

Yeah, our

Emily: stuff automatically uploads to the iPad if you've got

Christine: it set up correctly, which I love because then I can

Emily: just, you know, Pull stuff off so easily. Yeah. Yeah.

Christine: I mean, mine goes, mine, mine syncs. So I am an Android user and um, so it all syncs, all my photos sync so I can, it is sort of there already, um, but sometimes it takes a day or something for Yeah.

Depending on how many thousand of photos I take it while we're podcasting or something like that. Yeah. But yeah,

Rah: and I think my final, um, hardware, um. Thing that's very technical word. Yes. My other favorite piece of hardware is my Bluetooth lapel microphone. Oh Yeah, people who follow either some of the networking groups that I'm in or see some of my socials and I'm wearing my little Little black dongle.

Yep on my dress but it's so freaking easy and I was, I found it because I'd seen people on TikTok that I watch who use them and they're often just those little things and they hold them really close to their mouth while they're talking. Um, but they only cost like 70 on Amazon.

Emily: Yeah. For a two pack.

Rah: Yeah, for a two pack.

Um, Shakur. Um, sorry. God, I sound super white. Um, and I loved it so much that I bought. So it, for phone users, you can plug it into the charging port of your phone. And so I have bought the one obviously for my old iPhone, which has still got the lightning port. Oh yes. Um, but loved it so much that I went and bought the one that's for USB C, so Android and newer iPhones.

Because then I can actually use it on my laptop as well. Yeah. So when I'm recording content. Yep. Or tutorials. And if I, 'cause you can use the AirPods, which you know, of course I have 'cause I'm an Apple nerd. But it's just the sound is that much better. Yeah.

Christine: Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. Having that

Rah: and for that price, I was like, God, that's okay.

It's worth it. Yeah. And I've had them for like three months and I still haven't, um, charged them. Not that I use them a lot. No, I know. But that's a pretty good battery, so it's, yeah, that's good. You know? Um, so yeah, so that would be my. Yeah, my favourites. Oh

Christine: my God.

Rah: How about you? Yeah, how about you, Chris? Oh,

Christine: God, well, we've already established that I'm Android.

Um, so, I love a touch screen. I have

Rah: to say I'm very jealous that you have a touch screen on your laptop. Yeah, so

Christine: I have a laptop PC. I was, of course, obviously born before the internet. And It was a long time before a computer hit while I was in hospitality. So, computers in offices took a very long time to arrive.

But I learned on a PC and I even went off with my friend Melanie and we went to TAFE at Broadway. Ah, Broadway! To learn. Microsoft and Word and Excel. Those were the days. And I'm talking like 1999 people. So, you know, it's not really that long ago. No, it's not. Um, anyway. I'm sure it was

Rah: the end of the

Christine: century.

Oh, well, it was the end of the century. Shush, shush, shush. Hush, young thing. Hush, young lady. Um, anyway. Old ladies are talking. That's right. So, yes, I'm very, I like a touch screen and, um, sadly when I'm doing something with the sun and air and we're using his, um, Macbook. Um, I always say it wrong, you see, and I'm very, I don't need, you will correct me.

I think I called it a Chromebook once, and I know that that's not a Chromebook, but I really, it just came out. I know, I know. Well, I never owned a Chromebook. But anyway, touchscreen on my laptop, I love it. Um, one day, One day, I'll have a touchscreen monitor. Oh, do they exist? Yes, they do exist. I mean,

Rah: I touch my screen all the time, but only because I'm pointing at things.

Well, I touch

Christine: mine sometimes, but it's like, damn, it doesn't move, um, kind of thing. So yeah, touchscreen, um, is important to me. Um, and I am a keyboard and mouse user. Um, and I have a keyboard that's a travel keyboard. It sounds very daggy. And I have a lot of because I have a home office and a work office and I duplicate because I don't need to lug all of that weight to and from.

Um, so I have, you know, full, full keyboard at the office and in the home office and, um, and I have a shortened keyboard. Um, keyboard for travel and that's a bit exciting. Um, it's a new purchase because he used to lug around the full one, but you know, they're very big and bulky and everything. And sometimes I do feel a bit daggy, but then this is me, right?

I like it. I have a laptop. I don't want to stretch. I don't want my, my posture to be wrong when I'm sitting at a desk chair working for hours. So the cable and the mask. are important. My first laptop was the Microsoft Surface Pro, loved it. Oh, the Surface was a great laptop. It was awesome. Great device.

I'm on a HP at the moment, um, I, um, it's a Bassin Olofsson, I probably pronounced that wrong. I love it, but I use a Microsoft keyboard. Yep. I love that. Yep.

Rah: They do make great hardware for all the ways that I don't like Windows anymore. Yeah,

Christine: and I've only just recently moved off the mouse and that's more of an arthritis problem.

So, M has got me on, I've got the Logitech MX Master 3. It's awesome.

Emily: Recommended

Christine: by my husband. Absolutely. Um, but that's been a game changer because there's less, there's less Voltaren being rubbed on my right hand at the moment. So that's really quite good. So for me, a lot of it is about the setup. It's the dual monitors at my desk.

It's the portable monitor when I'm traveling. Um, and Leanne from our wonderful team recently got her hands on a Triple monitor or something that crazy attaches to the back of her laptop and creates one screen into three. Yeah, so she's kind of like got three screens in front of her so I'm quite, I'm quite jealous, device jealousy there.

So do need to look, um, look out for that. She got it at Bunnings had no idea Bunnings sold

Rah: anything like that. I don't like that. Well,

Emily: no! I was thinking Well, they do have like the tech section with the Do they? They have a whole security, home security section. I know they've got security and stuff, but I've never thought The screens is a weird one.

Yeah, I've

Christine: never thought about But anyway, that's where she found it. I

Rah: just go there to

Christine: buy the catnip. In the garden section. Yes. Mmm.

We spent a lot of time at Bunnings when the son in law was young because he had a fascination with lawnmowers and I've stood in the lawnmower aisle many times while he sat on the ride on mowers underneath, it was that tiny bit, you know, and lots of photos of him in there. So yes, but not monitors. So yeah, so for me, it's the setup.

The sit to stand desk, the dual monitors, um, you know, the touchscreen, so it's that Good keyboard and mouse. Good keyboard, just, and it's this, that pod's just a great chair, um, as well.

Rah: Yeah, makes a big difference.

Christine: Yeah, and I suppose really the only last thing is my headphones is, I've recently got onto RockShox ones, the ones that are bone condensing headphones.

I can actually forget that I'm wearing them. She lives in them. I can. I can really forget because I don't feel them. They don't sit inside your ear. Um, it just sits over my ears. Sometimes it's a challenge because I do wear glasses. Um, because they go over, loop over your ears, but they sit just in front.

Okay. Almost like, not in your temple obviously, but just in front of your ear. And I love that because I can hear what's going on around me. Yeah. And then the phone will ring. Or listen to our podcast while I'm walking hurriedly. Yes. Um, but I can still hear. Yeah, around me. Yeah. Um, so from a safety point of view that works for me.

Yeah. Um, but yeah, so that's my other piece of, you know, device hardware.

Rah: And if anyone listening has an amazing piece of hardware.

Christine: Absolutely. Because everything, you know, what can be right for you now can be not fit for purpose in a couple of years or you haven't come across something. And I think my, you know, my rock shock.

Earphones was just talking to somebody else who had come across because they rode bikes, you know cyclist Yeah, and I need to have that sensory awareness. Absolutely. And so it's like Kind of thing. So yeah, it's amazing So if anyone's

Rah: got any other hardware that they love send us a message link in the description the show notes.

Absolutely. Send us a DM on all of the socials that we've got.

Christine: Yeah.

Rah: We'd love to love, love to hear alternative options to make our lives easier. Yes, please. We're always trying to hack our way to improving even more. Yeah. Even more amazing than we already are. Oh my gosh. Yes. But yeah. So thanks. Thanks for the chat ladies.

Thanks to the Sunrise Studio. Very fancy pants. Yes. Emma is massaging the wall. Soundproofing on the wall. Yes. It's very flash, but yeah, thanks. We will talk to you next time. Thank you. Oh, be sure to like and subscribe. Oh yeah. That thing. And visit our website, faroundandfindoutpodcast. com. au. It's very fancy.

Yes. Very fancy. Okay. So now I don't have to cut myself off. No, you don't have to, but thank you very much. Thanks for listening, everybody. Okay. Talk to you soon. Bye.