From Laptop Stand

It’s dirt simple, and, unfortunately for the photo, an ugly prototype made from wood found in my father-in-law’s scrap bin. Actually, the first prototype was made from a folded piece of triple-wall corrugated cardboard (and I used it for months), so this one’s fairly durable by comparison. There’s room between the lappie and the back plate to stick a usb hub and the wireless keyboard mouse receiver if I wanted, and the air flow is pretty good. Best feature aside from the height - this design could easily be mounted to a wall (or monitor arm, if I had a spare) and made to fold flat. The next version will integrate the ThinkPad dock into a high-angle stand for some quick-connect goodness.

Please pardon my re-purposed CRT wall-mount arm. I convinced the suits to spring for an LCD, but not a wall mount. Luckily, this 60lb capacity beast was waiting for me next to a neighborhood dumpster. Call it trash picking or recycling, free is free.

That sounds like quite the set-up you have!

Reading that reminds me that I have been meaning to buy/build a cooling pad for my laptop. I run HDDLife, and I notice that the temperature regularly exceeds 40 degrees, especially when sitting on my desk for 5 hours.

Do you have a picture of it? I would be interested in seeing it.

Geoff

I’m running an auxiliary monitor off my ThinkPad T42, and I’ll never go back. No additional software or hardware was required. But the thing that makes it really fun is the wooden stand I built to prop the laptop up to the same height as the arm-mounted 17″ external LCD.

With this setup, the effect of the difference in screen size is negligible because my mouse pointer tracks straight across from one screen to the other. The wooden stand is very stable, and is designed for the lappie to be open almost 180°, so it has a very small footprint. Typing on the ThinkPad is out of the question when it’s in the stand, but I designed it for use with a wireless keyboard and mouse.

That Multi-Monitor task-bar is a great idea, though I’m sure the ThinkPad integrated graphics aren’t up to the task. Still, my productivity (and my ability to think straight at the computer) got a big boost from this combination of extra screen and desk real estate.