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April 29, 2006 11:04 AM

Treadputer Upgrade

We made some ergonomic upgrades to the Treadputer this week.

Treadputer

The main changes, compared to the last iteration, are:

  • Mounted speakers
  • Angled keyboard and mouse holder (the angle is very important)
  • Much better stabilization for keyboard / mouse

We are still working on the headphone / microphone configuration.   Getting this right has proven to be a lot harder than we expected due to ambient noise, weight (it sucks to have real headphones on for two hours while you are running / walking), and modality (speakers and microphones don’t mix that well.)  It’s also time to put a better desktop background on those pretty monitors.

Posted in: Marathons

COMMENTS (10)

so what does building a treadputter cost?

Andrew Fife , April 29, 2006 12:37 PM

I'm going to guess we've spent about $5,000 on this config.

Brad Feld Author Profile Page, April 29, 2006 12:40 PM

And to save those of us who have not read about earlier iterations, just exactly what does one do with? on? a treadputer?

Chris Mercer , April 29, 2006 3:05 PM

I wonder if there actually might be a market for these things with traders on Wall Street. I don't think anyone would want to work on a treadputer full time but I'm sure a lot of traders would pay $5K for the 1-2 hours that not having to go the gym afterwork would save them.

Andrew Fife , April 29, 2006 8:46 PM

You mentioned you need a better wallpaper... With multimon, the secret is to make a single image that is the size of all three monitors strung edge-to-edge, then choose the "tile" option from desktop properties. When done properly, you can set up a nice triptych.

Dan Shapiro , April 29, 2006 11:40 PM

Oh come on!

Too much time and money!

When I used to use one of these things I sweated all over the display. I guess most people do something similar. If not, they're not working hard enough! :O)

rob , April 30, 2006 2:05 AM

Andrew - I run or walk on it during the day while I'm working, especially on those long three+ hour board calls that seem to be part of a VC's life.

Brad Feld Author Profile Page, April 30, 2006 8:58 PM

I love it (but you're insane)!!!!

Will McInnes , May 2, 2006 12:54 PM

I acually sell these with the same vision fitness treadmills that you are using,hows it working for you?

officetreads , April 26, 2007 3:44 PM

Well, I built mine for about $500. The most expensive thing was the wall bracked to hold the screen. (about $300, as I recall). The rest was just stuff from Home Depot.

http://www.hdcn.net/treadmill/treadmill.htm
John

John Walker , May 15, 2007 5:28 PM

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