Do you love your desk? It’s an odd question but your answer’s important. You see, I love my desk.

It’s an Anthro Elevate Adjusta. It’s 48” wide and 40” deep, and it’s on wheels. Best of all, its height is adjustable!

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Some background: About four months ago, I made the big decision to clear out all my furniture in my office.  About 20 years ago, I started buying this expensive teak office furniture made in Norway. Over a few years, I purchased a 72” credenza, 60” hutch, four filing cabinets, four desks with room for monitors from before the flat-screen period of civilization.

The teak furniture was beautifully constructed and had sentimental significance because I launched my company from that furniture. But I went paperless years ago and now valued the open space. Moreover, I wanted to build a video studio in my office. Everything— even my desk — had to be on wheels.

I spent weeks researching my alternatives before settling on Anthro. Anthro is an unusual office furniture company. It’s totally high-end.

The desk took about two hours to assemble. Every screw is finely machined, as is the steel tubing used to construct the base. The desk surface is slightly shiny and has a hard finish like Formica.

Even the wheels are top-quality and roll with an industrial strength smoothness. This desk is so solidly constructed that a cup of coffee sitting on the desk won’t shake and spill when you wheel the desk around. And my room is carpeted.

A wire tray tucked behind and under the back of the desk hides all of the wires and my Monster power center, and that single power cord is the only wire running from the desk to the wall outlet.

The motor that lifts the desk supposedly will elevate as much as 300 pounds of equipment. The height ranges from 27" to 53". So it could accomomdate Shaquille O'Neill or Verne Troyer.   

Anthro seems to be a great company. Service was excellent. I  also purchased an Anthro cart that I custom-designed with storage space for a printer, phones, cable modem, printer server, and cabinet.

Height-adjustable desks with wheels are excellent for a video studio. You can stand while giving a presentation and video yourself next to a monitor on your desk. Your desk can be at the right height for you to click a mouse as the video shows your screen. You can also use the monitor on your desk as a Teleprompter—at eye level. In addition, you will have  shots where you want to move your desk completely off camera.

Another really cool thing about my desk is that I can position it adjacent to my elliptical machine and work out while on the computer. I can make VOIP calls, browse the Web and even write while I am working out. I actually spend an hour a day on the elliptical doing this. (I’ve written previously about the Ergotron  LX Desk Mount that I used as a Keyboard tray on my elliptical.)

Sit-stand desks are going to be everywhere a decade from now. We all spend too much time sitting.

Anyone who comes to visit me and see my set up thinks it’s absolutely great. My desk rolls around and elevates.

The Anthro Elevate Adjusta desk cost me $1933.59, which is not a small amount of money. But it is the best desk ever.

Ultrabooks will be the focus of PC makers in 2012. They have the processor speed to run multiple applications at once and are lightweight. Will advisors embrace them? 

The New York Times reports on ultrabooks -- PCs weighing about three pounds and under an inch thick -- and provides a good overview. But will advisors buy them?

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Analysis daily of issues affecting advisors Aggregation of news from dozens of sites targeting wealth managers Reviews by advisors of practice management applications 30 independent experts blogging on advisor business issues 24/7 access to webinars with 50 hours of CFP® CE and 100 hours of IMCA CE Register Now

I've been using an ultraportable laptop for about eight years. Ultraportables were predecessors to ultrabooks, but they cost twice as much. 

Getting the power of a desktop in a computer that weighs four pounds is great. But don't look at the $1000 price tags advertised on these machines if you run lots of apps at once, do your own video editing, or use your PC to perform other processor-intensive computing. You'll probably need to customize your ultrabook with a 2.8 GHz of faster Intel i7 processor and get eight gigs of RAM along with a 256 GB solid state hard drive. That's probably going to drive the price of the machine to about $2000, and that doesn't even include a service plan and some other extras.

For advisors who never need computing power because they do not run multiple apps at once or use their computers to run desktop apps for portfolio reporting or other power-hungry tasks, a low-cost ultrabook will be fine. Many advisors are already switching to iPads and other tablets and say they rarely need a laptop or desktop.

I'd be interested from A4A users running their businesses on tablets. What are the problems?

Tags: active management | Offbeat | productivity | research

I’ve searched for the best way to use my elliptical while working on my computer for over two decades, and recently made a major advance in my research:

If you're a private wealth advisor, please join Advisors4Advisors (A4A) to get its full benefits.

Register now, and we will donate $20 of our $60 membership fee to Bubbles The Clown’s financial literacy program, and you can post an icon on your website saying you support Bubbles' 501(c)3 charitable organization.

Plus, get other membership benefits, including:

Analysis daily of issues affecting advisors Aggregation of news from dozens of sites targeting wealth managers Reviews by advisors of practice management applications 30 independent experts blogging on advisor business issues 24/7 access to webinars with 50 hours of CFP® CE and 100 hours of IMCA CE Register Now

The Ergotron LX Desk Mount LCD Arm combined with the Ergotron Notebook Arm Mount Tray and an LX Extension Arm.

Tags: blackberry

In just a few years, Apple products have gone from practically nonexistent in the advisory business to a must-have item, replacing the Blackberry as top mobile computing solution.

If you're a private wealth advisor, please join Advisors4Advisors (A4A) to get its full benefits.

Register now, and we will donate $20 of our $60 membership fee to Bubbles The Clown’s financial literacy program, and you can post an icon on your website saying you support Bubbles' 501(c)3 charitable organization.

Plus, get other membership benefits, including:

Analysis daily of issues affecting advisors Aggregation of news from dozens of sites targeting wealth managers Reviews by advisors of practice management applications 30 independent experts blogging on advisor business issues 24/7 access to webinars with 50 hours of CFP® CE and 100 hours of IMCA CE Register Now

The latest advisor technology survey from Financial Planning notes what we already know: the iPad is king in the tablet world among advisors as well as the general population.

The non-Apple tablet market is incredibly crowded with machines that mostly run the Android operating system, and a few are already selling at well below manufacturing cost in a desperate attempt to gain critical market share.

Nothing against Android, but what the Financial Planning survey reveals is that advisors want to minimize the number of operating systems they use.

Almost half of the advisors the magazine polled use an iPhone and now 38% use an iPad as well. And a once-unbelievable 11% have even bought at least one Apple desktop or laptop for the office.

Roughly 37% use an Android phone and 21% have bought an Android tablet.

Add the 3% who've bought Windows tablets, and you've got penetration of 62% as far as advisors using these little computers goes.

Two out of three advisors have tablets. This is no longer a niche platform.

But on the phone side, the once-ubiquitous Blackberry is now losing share. Only 25% of advisors now use one, down from 37% last year.

Even two years ago, I would never have expected any Apple computers in the financial industry, except for niche applications like client communications. And Blackberry was king.

Things change. That's what technology is all about.