Stay-at-home mobile accessories
Most
laptop gear is designed to enhance your mobile life, but what about all
those hours you spend using your portable at home? Today’s Mobile Mac
takes a look at a couple laptop accessories for your humble abode.
Belkin Laptop Hideaway
I
don’t know about you, but in our home, laptops are often used away from
a desk—for example, on the couch, sitting in bed, or at the kitchen
table. Belkin’s magazine-rack-looking Laptop Hideaway
offers a convenient and attractive solution for carrying your laptop
and its accessories around the house—and for storing them when not in
use. The rigid shell is covered in good-looking, snag-resistant fabric,
with the inside lined with softer material over thick padding. One side
of the Hideaway holds a 15.4-inch (or smaller) laptop; the other is
split into two smaller pockets: one for your power adapter and other
small accessories, the other for larger accessories or books and
magazines. The handle on top makes for easy room-to-room toting.
The
Hideaway is surprisingly sturdy and stays upright even when fully
loaded. It also looks good, although an all-brown design, instead of
brown and blue, might have been a better match for the furnishings in
many homes.
Kangaroom Bamboo Laptop Stand
Unlike many of the
laptop
stands
we’ve
reviewed, Kangaroom’s Bamboo Laptop Stand
isn’t designed to lift your notebook up to an ideal working height (or
at least that's not its primary purpose). Instead, the
ecologically-friendly platform—it’s made of sustainable bamboo—aims to
keep your desk free of wires and gadgets. On the right-hand side of the
stand are two “cradles,” each 3.2 inches long, 1.4 inches wide, and 1.5
inches deep, with an opening at the bottom for a charging/docking
cable; you pull the cable for your iPod, iPhone, or other phone or
portable player through the opening, plug it into the device, and then
rest the device in the cradle. (Unfortunately, there are no clips or
grooves inside the cradles to keep your cables from falling underneath
the stand.)
To further reduce cable clutter, the back of the
Stand is open for hiding a surge protector—not included, although
Kangaroom sells an appropriately-sized model for $13—underneath. You
then plug all your power adapters into this power strip to keep them,
and their cables, hidden beneath the Stand. There’s also a large
opening in the middle of the Stand to provide ventilation for your
laptop.
The Bamboo Laptop Stand is quite solid; its wood is
attractively finished; and its overall width—20 inches—isn't much wider
than a 15-inch MacBook Pro sitting next to an iPod dock. (The Stand is
12 inches deep.) However, the Stand’s low height, just 3 inches in the
rear, has a couple consequences. First, it doesn’t quite raise your
laptop’s screen enough on an typical desk. Second, and more important,
given the Stand’s advertised benefits, is that this low height doesn’t
provide enough room for larger power adapters, such as Apple’s laptop
adapters, to fit underneath when plugged into a power strip. I also
wish the stand provided features for keeping your laptop cables—USB,
power, network, and the like—organized and to prevent them from falling
behind your desk when unplugged.
(Kangaroom claims you can use
the Stand on your lap, but I didn’t find that to be the case, given the
Stand’s open-bottom design.)
