Personally I find the
Herman-Miller Aeron or Mirra chairs to be vastly superior to anything offered by Steelcase but admittedly at 2 or 3 times the price of Steelcase. However given their 25 to 30 year lifespan that brings the annual cost down to less than $50 a year — a small cost to pay for real comfort and back support. But that is just mine and my wife's opinions.
As to your remote computer access question…
- While I realize cost is a consideration — it is for all of us — remember a cheap but unsatisfactory solution is inevitably ends up being an expensive waste of money.
- Generally with an old computer you get less performance than you pay for and more problems that you do not want. (I just worked for a week on an older MacBook Air trying to get it to work satisfactorily and finally gave up because I couldn't even get it to reinstall Lion and run — obviously it had other internal problems so it was not a bargain.)
- You want a screen that is big enough to see comfortably and of you are going to be writing much at all you want a decent keyboard.
- I frequently remote to my desktop using a 12" iPad Pro with a keyboard and it works VERY well but that runs $1,200 or more. I also remote in from my iPhone 6 Plus but the small screen and onscreen keyboard make that doable, but only for very limited tasks
- Factory refurbished Apple laptops are available at reasonable prices, but may still be out of your price range. (11" MacBook Air runs $750 and anything with a larger screen pushes the price to over $1,000).
That leaves me with the following suggestion. Assuming your desktop is within bluetooth range (nominally 30 feet) an
Apple TV attached to your television set, Airplay your computer desktop to your TV via the Apple TV, a good wireless keyboard, and careful configuration of Mouse & Trackpad options in System Preferences ➢ Accessibility to handle those functions. Even if you have to start from scratch and buy the Apple TV and a wireless keyboard the total cost could be less than $300 and a lot more satisfactory than other options. That also gets you Hulu, and a variety of other data sources.
I can't say that I have tried this, but it should be workable and would give you full access to your desktop computer's resources.
