A computer stand that I built

[bugo]

I use my laptop much like I would a desktop: I have a separate keyboard and mouse that I use. I built a stand for it where there is a shelf that the laptop sits on, and the stand has a flatscreen monitor above where the laptop sits. I set the laptop on the stand and use the monitor and the laptop screen as a dual monitor setup. I only open and close the laptop when I'm taking it somewhere.  It functions as a desktop the majority of the time. I only use it as a laptop when I go out of town and when I do I take it with me along with my mouse and keyboard.

Here's a diagram for the computer stand: The metal base of the stand is made from a ruined old folding leaf table my great grandmother used to have. You can see the opened laptop sitting on the shelf in the diagram. The flatscreen monitor is attached to the back piece of wood at the top of the stand with long screws with the same threads as the shorter screws that came with the monitor. The gap between the top of the laptop and the bottom of the monitor is perhaps six inches, but you could make the gap as big or small as you wanted it to be. You could even mount a second monitor on the stand, turning it into a triple monitor setup. The bottom part is made of some sort of metal while the top is made of scrap plywood. I actually designed it in my head at the hardware store when I went to to purchase the items necessary to build the stand. My mom gave me the scrap wood, and while in the store I thought of what kinds of bolts and nuts to use and how they went together and saw it in my mind's eye and I bought everything I needed to finish the project. Everything is bolted together with high quality hardware and it was overbuilt and overengineered. The top portion of the stand is detachable from the metal base and can easily be removed by removing 4 wingnuts. In fact, right now I'm not using the metal base at all. It was simple to make and works very well for what I use it for. It didn't take long to put together, and I probably have $10 in it, all in hardware (not including the monitor, of course). It's ugly as shit but I don't care. It's very functional. Function before form, it must be the German in me. On the end of the shelf that the laptop sits on, I screwed some hooks into the wood which I use to hang my watch and some other things. I also have my iPod mounted on the end of the shelf that the laptop sits on. I had to do some trial and error with some of the parts like the piece behind the laptop that the monitor is attached to which was originally much shorter and wider.

Another way to build it would be to use the lower half of an old computer chair to mount the stand on instead of the old table legs. You could the wheel the stand around and rotate it as well as adjusting the height. I haven't tried using the chair as the base so I don't know how well it would work or how steady it would be but it is rock solid the way I built it. I would be interested in how well it would work with a chair bottom as a base. It is cheap and ugly but it works very well for what I use it for.

[J N Winkler]

My own computer stand is an old folding card table.  I don't use a second monitor with my current primary laptop (17" widescreen) because the attached screen is large enough for my purposes and I have found that it is actively unhelpful to have too much screen area.  Bump it up to 21" or 23", for example, and you find yourself moving your head to read each line of text in a browser window that fills the entire screen.

The only thing I have re-engineered for my computer stand is the lighting.  I have a banker's lamp positioned behind the laptop screen, with the hood angled so that no part of the bare bulb is visible when I am sitting in my computer chair.  This lamp provides area illumination that is nicely balanced with the screen backlighting to ease eyestrain.  I also have a clip-on gooseneck LED lamp clipped to the back bottom of the table and angled to shine on the detachable wireless keyboard I keep on my lap.  This provides quite effective keyboard illumination.

Another family member uses a purpose-built swiveling laptop stand on casters.  It is an ergonomic disaster.  The swivel takes away rotational stability, while the ability to move across the floor is a standing threat to fragile objects like hard disk drives that can be yanked onto the floor (which is bare concrete) by their power cables.

When I travel, I generally take along an old laptop with 15.6" screen, but I am starting to reconsider that because with power adapter and cabling (it no longer has enough battery capacity to be usable unless it is plugged in), it is quite bulky, and the form factor makes it inconvenient even for low-footprint jobs like keeping a travel diary.  I am considering investing in a wireless or Bluetooth keyboard I can use with my smartphone.