Freshly Squeezed Reviews: Doctor, doctor, please …
Posted by Frank Petrie 
May 1, 2007 at 7:24am
I’ve been handicapped for near half of my life now (not including my mental instability :-) ), so I have tried everything to improve my computing experience. Ergonomic keyboards and mice, speech recognition, etc. But there is nothing that I can recall seeing like this piece of software: Desk Doctor from Einspine.
“Desk Doctor is new software that identifies Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) and targets it accurately with a personal treatment plan. First the program guides you through on-screen medical tests. Then Desk Doctor uses its built-in reasoning to compile the optimum video-guided exercise program to reverse problems and keep you healthy.”
McCoy into the hatch. There’s a new doctor in town. Desk Doctor by Einspine. But to be safe let’s put it to the test before I unlock the hatch’s latch.
The Juice
Desk Doctor (US$128) helps you with preventing RSI, Repetitive Strain Injury. Who does this affect?
“Computer workers, video game players, people who text a lot on mobile phones or use PDAs are succumbing in alarming proportions to a group of diseases caused by just sitting and clicking. These conditions are usually conveniently put under the umbrella term ‘Repetitive Strain Injury.’ RSI covers a wide variety of problems both those with colorful names like Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Blackberry Thumb and Trigger Finger as well as “pain-between-shoulder-blades” or one of the hundreds of kinds of upper body tendonitis.
“What these diseases have in common is that they all can be caused by doing the same repetitive movements over a long time period. Doing them while in a fixed posture, especially bad posture, just multiplies the problem.”
The way Desk Doctor operates and develops your exercise plan is by having you take a thirty minute test (it’s suggested that you do this monthly) to give you a set of exercises to counter act the strains. The test is in two parts.
The first part is The Body Map. This is where you pick specific areas of pain or stiffness that you experience while working at your computer.
The second part is a collection of fifteen exercises that helps the software evaluate where your trouble spots are. (Don’t worry if you’re not sure of how to perform each exercise because they’re all accompanied with a demonstrative video.) These are extremely thorough.
After you have completed both tests, Desk Doctor’s Profile Viewer will generate a series of exercises (also accompanied by videos) for rehabilitation, prevention and specific trouble spots.
The layout of the program is excellent. Everything is easy to locate. You keep a window on your desk that lets you know when it’s time to do your exercises. It figures this out by keeping track of your mouse clicks and movements, plus breaks! Or, in Preferences, you can set a harp to play when your health numbers fall below the level of your choice. This way, you don’t have to look at your monitor, it’ll give you audio feedback.
The Pits
Support has me on a fence. When I go under the Help Menu and click on Help – nothing. But they have an extremely thorough support page on their FAQs page that made up for it. Unfortunately the link to the page is not under the Help Menu, so you’ll have to bookmark it.
The Rind
Nada.
The Pulp
Einspine’s Desk Doctor is right out of science fiction. You can tell that a lot of thought and late hour went into crafting this virtual doctor. This program is more thorough with its questioning than some of its human counterparts.
The price? It’s worth it. This isn’t just any piece of software.
You’ve started to maintain your computer. Now, it’s time to maintain its operator.
System requirements: Mac OS X 10.2.7 or later, QuickTime 7 for OS X, 256MB total memory, 18MB available memory, 500MB free disk space
Macsimum rating: 9 out of 10
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Frank Petrie
Frank Petrie is a freelance writer, technologies and products specialist and curmudgeon-in-training.
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Anita Roy Dobbs Says:
I have used Desk Doctor during periods of intense computer work, with deadlines so pressing that one part of you thinks you couldn’t spare a moment for stretching, except you know the pressure is on for weeks to come and you must have a sustainable work flow, and the very thought gives you aches. So I partnered up with Desk Doctor—if it said “stretch now,” I did stretch. I would do just a few stretches and then get back to work. (You just sit at your desk, they’re all sitting exercises.) And after a week of this, I noticed something else: my muscles had learned a whole bunch of stretches, very specific, relieving stretches, and my muscles actually developed ideas of their own. There I’d be, hammering away at the work, and suddenly, my hands would lift off the keyboard, my arms would go into one or another stretch—all on their own! It would just be for an instant. But I found it so remarkable. Altogether I was more relaxed and mobile in my work, more likely to stretch out my back or swivel my neck around, whatever—instead of the typical, tight, “Body? What body?” kind of posture that intense work usually results in. So I’m extremely impressed with this program. I just always want it on my team.
Posted on May 01, 2007