Having recently added a review of Herman Miller’s Aeron Work Stool it struck me that in many respects it makes the Ergon 3 Drafting Chair obsolete.

Introduced in the early 1970s the Ergon 3 has held pride of place as the best ergonomic chair available for working at higher work surfaces.

It’s very well engineered, solidly built in the style of a traditional upholstered office seat and although called a drafting chair, it has been bought by anyone that needs to work at a higher level.

In terms of price the Aeron only costs 10% more in its basic format, although the highly adjustable version is about 30% more.

It will be interesting to see whether Miller keep the Ergon long term, I suppose that overall sales will determine the outcome.

The star of the show for Allsteel at NEOCON next week, will be its new ergonomic office chair model - Acuity™

The chair is aimed at the quality end of the office seating market and is intended to compete with established products like Miller’s Aeron, Steelcase’s Leap and the Humanscale Freedom.

The Acuity™ looks a class act and I plan to add a review of it shortly.

In a recent post I speculated whether a recent antitrust settlement by Herman Miller would mean cheaper Aerons.

Unfortunately, it seems that Aerons are going to cost more as Miller is planning a product wide price increase in August.

The likely indicative increase will be around 3% and is due to the cost of increased raw materials.

How you sit in your office chair is very important for your body’s posture, long term health and comfort.

Humans weren’t really designed to be seated for hours on end, but unfortunately we are frequently faced with having to do so.

So, let’s begin with how not to sit.

You should avoid slouching or slumping in your chair as this will cause your spinal joints to open up and be in a state known as kyphosis.

This can cause problems with trapped nerves which can get caught when you return to a more upright posture.

Another thing you should be mindful of is sitting in the same position for extended periods of time. So, always make sure you keep your muscles and body moving frequently. Fortunately, our bodies tend to do this as a natural reaction to discomfort.

Take frequent breaks, use a countdown timer to prompt you. And do some simple exercises, I’ll post some in the Blog in the next couple of weeks.

Try to sit with your back reasonably upright, but make sure not to crane your neck forwards and be sure that your lower back is well supported to emphasize it’s natural ‘S’ curve known as lordosis.

Recent research suggests that sitting at a reclined angle is actually good for your back and posture.

Some of the better quality chairs like the Aeron, Life and Leap allow you to do this easily whilst still keeping your feet on the floor and remaining in touch with your work space.

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.

From time to time nearly everyone will suffer some back discomfort from working long hours in their office chair.

This is not very surprising as we weren’t designed to spend hours in a sedentary position.

It’s always advisable to invest in a good quality ergonomic office chair, but that alone is not enough.

You need to sit correctly in your chair, avoiding slouching and craning forwards. Make sure that the chair back is properly supporting your back, particularly your lower back as this tends to align your back better.

However, sitting rigidly at 90 degrees isn’t necessarily a good thing either. Research by Woodend Hospital in Aberdeen Scotland found that an angle of 135 degrees body to thigh seating position reduced the strain on the spine and its ligaments.

Unfortunately, this isn’t always practical in most office chairs as they aren’t designed to work at this kind of angle, at least not without tipping the user up in the air and so making it impossible to work normally.

Fortunately, some of the better quality chairs like the Miller Aeron and Steelcase Leap will allow the user to work in this more open angled position.

So, if you are troubled with back pain it’s well worth looking at this type of chair.

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.