Danielle Weatherbee knows that her notebook computer is her
undoing, but she can't help it.
As a medical supplies saleswoman, she's on the road constantly,
spending much of the day hunched over her keyboard at coffee
shops, on planes, in bed, even in cabs.
The painful result for the 29-year-old from Seattle is the
same as it is for the growing legions of laptop users across
the USA: Her neck and wrists ache. Her doctor warned her she
already has the skeletal health of a 50-year-old.
"But what can I really do?" wonders Weatherbee as she looks
up from her Compaq laptop to take a sip of latte at ReJAVAnate
Coffee Lounge in Las Vegas. "My laptop is the only way to go
for my work. I couldn't live without it."
Weatherbee's woes are becoming increasingly common.
No nationwide studies document the trend, but anecdotally,
doctors and physical therapists say that as portable computers
become cheaper, more powerful, smaller and lighter, and as wireless
Internet access becomes ubiquitous, thousands are suffering
persistent back, shoulder, wrist and neck aches.
The culprit: The keyboard and screen on laptops are too close
to each other.
"When you use a laptop, you can make your head and neck comfortable,
or you can make your hands and arms comfortable, but it's impossible
to do both," says Tom Albin of Human Factors and Ergonomics
Society, a national think tank that has issued a standards report
on ergonomics of computer workstations.
College students, who increasingly are required to own laptops
and use them in lecture halls built for 20th-century academic
life, are having a particularly rough time.
When Duke University ergonomics guru Tamara James appeared
before first-year medical students last month to raise their
awareness of the computer posture problems they can expect to
see in future patients, James was bombarded by ergonomics complaints
from the students themselves.
"They sit in lecture halls with built-in tables, hunched over
their laptops eight hours a day, and you can see it's very uncomfortable
with them," James says. "Even if they could move their chairs,
that would be a help."
Nearly 49 million laptops were sold worldwide in 2004, almost
double the number sold in 2000, an increase from 20.3% of the
computer market to 28.5%.
Meanwhile, the cost plummeted to $1,116 per unit from a U.S.
average of $2,126 in 2000, according to IDC, a Framingham, Mass.,
technology market research firm.
Analysts predict U.S. laptop sales could overtake desktop
sales by 2008.
Few health studies have been conducted, but one study in 2002
showed that laptop users complain of pain in more and different
body parts than desktop users, says researcher Carolyn Sommerich
of the Institute of Ergonomics at Ohio State University.
That's because desktop users have the ability to set the top
of the screen at eye level and the keyboard about 20 inches
below that for optimum posture.
"People who use desktop computers have a fair amount of muscle
and skeletal complaints, too, but laptops are, in a way, kind
of a step backward in design," Sommerich says.
The answer is to find ways to replicate the upright and flexible
posture of the desktop experience for notebook computers, ergonomic
experts say.
Laptop accessories aimed at improving ergonomic conditions
are a growing niche. Logitech leads the way with wireless mice
and keyboards.
Several manufacturers sell stands to prop up laptops. TableTote
sells a $50 plastic portable stand with telescoping legs that
packs up to the same size as a bulky notebook and weighs about
3 pounds.
While many of those offerings aren't practical for laptop
users who frequently travel, major computer makers also are
starting to address the problem, says Rob Bernstein, deputy
editor of the gadgets magazine Sync.
Toshiba announced earlier this year that it would soon sell
a laptop that allows screen and keyboard to become two pieces
to allow more flexible positioning.
And, Bernstein noted, some manufacturers are experimenting
with laser keyboards that shine images of a keyboard on any
surface and allow computer users to type on it.
"The technology is finally coming through, so people are starting
to find clever ways to use it to deal with this," Bernstein
says.
Experts say the sooner, the better. Ergonomists increasingly
are concerned that laptop use among children is causing what
were once considered old-age pains at an ever-younger age.
Worse yet, many fear that those who have learned poor ergonomics
in their youth will find it difficult to learn better posture
later on. "I see a good number of kids come in with lower back
pain," says chiropractor David Schwartz of the Back Care Center
in Dumont, N.J.
"Have you seen pictures of kids using computers? They lie
on their stomachs on the floor and work on their elbows.
"That's a prescription for a lifetime of neck pain, back pain
and lower back pain."
James, the Duke University ergonomist, is similarly worried.
"I hate the fact that these are the workers of tomorrow, and
they have upper-extremity problems before they even get to the
workplace," she says. "That doesn't bode well at all."
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