Have a (Mac) notebook “dock”/stand you really like?

January 26, 2009 by chuq · Comments
Filed under: About Chuq, The Online Life 

A few days ago I ordered a top-of-the-line 15” MacBook Pro and a 24” LED Cinema Display (which means I have a Mac Pro, a MacBook Air, and a 23” Apple Cinema Display for sale; email me if interested), and am now on the hunt for a “dock” or stand.

When I say “dock”/stand, I’m not referring to something to place the notebook in/on when it’s not on my desk (e.g., something like Belkin’s CushTop, for which I wrote a glowing review last year),1 but rather a stand to use when it’s on my desk and piped to the external display.

via Justin Blanton | Have a (Mac) notebook “dock”/stand you really like?.

I investigated this a few months back and ended up going “whole hog”, installing a dual arm monitor stand from Ergotron. One of the arms holds my 25″ Samsung monitor, the other has a tray that holds the laptop. That allows me to use both screens and adjust them to my preferences.Not cheap — it’ll cost you a couple of hundred dollars, but the ability to move things out of the way, especially UP, freeing up desk space for non computer use when I need it, is wonderful. It’s built like a tank, nicely adjustable, pretty easy to install, and has worked like a champ for the last six months. Only weakness, and it’s minor, is cable management, easily solved with a supply of tie wraps.

I finally decided, once and for all, to solve this problem and quit working around it, and I don’t regret it. My one wish, since I used the through-the-desk install point and drilled a hole in the desktop, is that I wish I’d moved it about 6″ to the left. Oh well, live and learn…

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  • Charles
    Oh yeah, Ergotron rocks, their stuff is absolutely the best. I used to make a lot of money selling Ergotron stands back in the days of the Mac II, when people needed industrial strength stands to get their monster 19" Radius color monitors off their desks. Currently I'm lusting for their monitor arm for my 30" Cinema Display, but I can't afford it.
  • Wow, that's an amazing stand.
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