Are cheaper Aerons on the way? Probably not.

Earlier in the week Herman Miller, manufacturers of the legendary Aeron chair settled an antitrust lawsuit brought by New York State and Michigan and Illinois. Miller agreed to pay $750,000 to be split between them.

The suit came about due to Miller’s policy of insisting that their resellers didn’t advertise the Aeron for less than the recommended price of $949.

Under the terms of the lawsuit they are still allowed to enforce the pricing policy but aren’t allowed to communicate with any of their suppliers about it. The agreement will remain in force until 2010.

It all seems a bit pointless really and I don’t expect it will affect the price of the Aeron.

It’s likely that online dealers were the target of Miller’s policy as they don’t have the overheads that a traditional bricks and mortar dealer has.

It must be frustrating to have people visit your showroom, try the product and then search the net for a better price later. That’s probably the way with a lot of product purchases these days.

Here’s where you can find the full story.

You can find out more about the Aeron range here.

We are all spending more and more time working sitting at our desks, keying in information and mousing as we surf the net.

And this heavy workload puts our bodies under ever increasing stress and strain.

Our muscles are designed to work harmoniously with each other, generally in pairs - one extends and the other contracts, but when we abuse our bodies with bad posture they have to work a lot harder. And ultimately this leads to RSI related problems causing inflammation and pain if we don’t correct things.

Even when our muscles are inactive they are placed under static loading, so sitting still for extended periods doesn’t help either, instead they need to be engaged in healthy movement.

So what are all these RSI related problems costing and how many people are affected?

Well according to a study some years back from the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations and OSHA it’s a big problem.

The average claim varies between $7,000 - $30,000 per injury with an estimated 700,000 claims a year and that all adds up to an annual cost running into billions of dollars. And worse yet the average lost working time is 18 days.

Surely it makes to sense to make every effort to minimize these claims.

I’m not suggesting that everyone rushes out and buys a top of the range Aeron, but equally it makes no sense to buy cheap poorly designed chairs.

A good starting point is to take a look at my recommendations for the minimum features that an ergonomic office chair should have.

Take a look at the reviews of products meeting these standards, it’s a good place to start.

I came across an interesting post recently at apartmenttherapy.com

Managing editor, Gregory Han decided it was time to replace his existing home office chair.

He had been using an Eames side chair which is hardly the ideal chair for working at a PC.

Rather than just buying a cheap task chair from the local office supplies warehouse, he decided to research the market for high end task chairs.

He quickly discovered that there are dozens of quality ergonomic task chairs to choose from and as he wasn’t going to able to evaluate them all, let alone try them.

He decided to shortlist it down to a handful of the top chairs like the Humanscale Freedom, Steelcase Leap, Knoll Life, Herman Miller Mirra and rely on other user’s opinions of them.

To find out which chair he finally selected and why, read about the chair he chose to go for.

Ball chairs continue to be a popular alternative to conventional office seating, people who have back problems often find relief in this alternative form of seating.

Although, I’ve covered a number of different models in the Stools and Ball Chairs part of the main website, the BalanceBall® is one that I have yet to consider.

It works on the same principle as other models of Ball chair in that it encourages you to sit healthily, that is “active sitting” you won’t doze off in this type of seat it’s designed to keep your back active and healthy.

The chair is available online for Gaiam.com and Amazon.

I’ll be adding a full review of the product to the Ball Chair review section of the site shortly.