Back in the days where I had a PC conquering most of my tiny desk (uhm, that is like, 2 days ago), I had to switch between the desk and my bed all the time while using my Macbook.
Mom wants to play some silly exploding balls game in PC – Sugar must transfer to the bed. Sis wants to check out the latest news from the greek blogsphere – whoosh, there goes Sugar to the bed, grabbing pillows, amassing cables and being as grumpy as always.
I had two main itches with that: first, I have to gather all my cables and go, second, the Macbook is too hot for my thighs and didn’t facilitate prolonged use. The first I solved by buying a Logitech cordless mouse and eliminating a cord, leaving only the power cord. The other, I solved by buying myself a (pricey) iLap.
iLap is a fine product by rain design, a nice laptop stand that makes your gem stand as much as it needs to, thus avoiding neck and wrist strain. It comes with a great little pillow to use while you have your laptop on your, well, lap. It already boasted some raving reviews, so I decided to give it a go.
Needless to say, shipping such a thing in Greece costs like, double its price. I can never understand how the shipping costs can be so high – other companies offer like, 10$ shipping (which is moderately acceptable), why rain design has to charge us an insane 47$ for bringing iLaps to Greece?
So I turned to ole, trusty eBay. After monitoring all the european eBay sites for a while, I found a german auction for a total of 70 euros (which is still pricey as hell, but one has to do what she has to do). So I bought it.
It arrived almost a week later, in a nifty box which looked very much like the Macbook box, but smaller. In it you can find the stand, all sleek and aluminum, as well as its pillow and some nice pads for the bottom of your Macbook, to avoid scratching the iLap. Nifty.
The stand itself is really nice – quite light to facilitate travel and very pretty. It has an adjustable stand that is used to lever your laptop, bringing it to a quite comfortable height that allows you to work without squinting or bending your neck. Eventhough it’s small, I still haven’t taken it with me while travelling, thinking that it’s an overkill, but then again, you couldn’t find many stands more compact than that, so it may work for you frequent travellers.
The little black pillow is a piece of luxury, all velvet-y and black, with a nice silver lining, reminiscent of old couches. It’s perfect for resting your wrists after hours of writing, but because of its fabric and colour, it attracts dust like honey attracts flies, or, well, other insects.
Now that I won’t have to use my Macbook at bed that much, I still have it lying on the iLap on my desk. It’s manufactured in such a way that doesn’t damages furniture or your legs, while its aluminum coating does a pretty good job of funneling the heat outside of your machine.
It’s simpler and more elegant than other, cheaper stands, not offering bells and whistles like fans or USB ports. Still, it’s a lovely stand, perfect for Macbooks and Powerbooks, pretty much “in” the whole Apple spirit: simple, just works, elegant design, kinda pricey.
So if you wanna get (even more) hipper and avoid burns on your thighs (I know I still have the mark of a Macbook burn I got on my left thigh during the summer – comment enough and I’ll post pics on flickr), get an iLap, it’s well worth its money. If you live in an exotic country like Greece, where things are pricey and shipping twice as much, try and get some off eBay, just beware of imitations.
