Where Do You Keep Your Laptop When Using at Home With External Monitor and Keyboard?

June 11, 2007 12:06 PM

Where Do You Keep Your Laptop When Using at Home With External Monitor and Keyboard?

I DON'T need my laptop available to me when working at home. It can be squirreled away somewhere because its plugged to an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse, so I never touch the laptop except to unplug stuff, grab the computer, and hit the road. So I need it: 1. off my desk, preferably out of sight, and not taking up any other frequently traveled real estate 2. easily accessible (to grab and run) 3. with lid propped open (so it doesn't sleep or overheat) 4. within a reasonable distance of my desk ('cuz not all my cords and jacks are all that long). I guess I could stick it on a printer stand shelf or nearby bookshelf, but that seems a waste of space. I don't want it up on a laptop desktop stand because, again, I never need access to the thing. It's just clutter. So weird I see no clever solutions out there, as this is something vastly many people do. Does everyone do it as haphazardly as I do? I.e. stick the laptop on a corner of your desk where it uselessly takes up space?

posted by jimmyjimjim to home & garden (12 comments total)

how about one of those slide-out shelves that people typically put their keyboard on? if your desk doesn't have one it's easy to buy and install.

btw as far as your computer sleeping: you do have the option of it not going to sleep just because you've closed it (control panel, power options, advanced...when i close the lid "do nothing")
posted by poppo at 12:14 PM on June 11, 2007

Before I switched back to a tower, I kept my daily-use laptop docked under a monitor stand. Even more effective in combination with a laptop dock.
posted by jamaro at 12:21 PM on June 11, 2007

Under a monitor stand is a good place. I don't see any reason you couldn't run it vertically. Hard drives don't care, and the heat pipes they often use for cooling should be engineered to work regardless of the orientation of normal gravitational forces.

Also, for a lot of laptops, you don't need the screen open to prevent overheating because they don't need to draw air from the keyboard.

The main issue I can see with vertical placement is the cables.
posted by Good Brain at 12:54 PM on June 11, 2007

I Put It On The Corner Of My Desk Since Dual Monitors Rock and It's Handy Even if Just For iTunes.
posted by bonaldi at 1:01 PM on June 11, 2007 [3 favorites]

I put it on my desk's slide-out keyboard tray, behind the keyboard, and then I slide the tray back in so that only the keyboard itself is visible. The monitor, USB, audio, and power connectors are attached to the desk with sticky-pads to make plugging in the laptop convenient.
posted by Mars Saxman at 2:52 PM on June 11, 2007

Thanks, guys, yeah, my mac powerbook G4 can, it turns out, drive the external monitor with lid closed. Great!

Mars, can you tell me more about those sticky pads? What exactly are they?
posted by jimmyjimjim at 7:20 PM on June 11, 2007

I would go back to bonaldi's point about having dual monitors on your desktop--to me, that's the number one wasted resource in most offices where there are a lot of docked laptops. You can leave the laptop open and on, next to the LCD monitor on your desk, and leave e-mail, etc., open on the smaller laptop screen while you use the bigger one for Photoshop, Excel, whatever. It's just kind of a shame to leave all that extra screen real estate _off_ in a closed laptop, when you could be using it.
posted by LairBob at 8:32 PM on June 11, 2007

Well...I have a nice big external monitor with room for all the windows I need. Plus I have a fast application switcher/hider that works with simple keystrokes, so bringing up email, checking it, and rehiding it take a flash of a sec. I just have no need for the extra screen real estate....
posted by jimmyjimjim at 11:29 PM on June 11, 2007

I just have no need for the extra screen real estate....
Then you're doing it wrong. This is like saying "I've have no need for a larger penis....". Unless this external monitor is a 50" wrap-around-the-head number, more real estate is always handy.

I mean, come on, it's more. That's why call it more.
posted by bonaldi at 5:54 AM on June 12, 2007

Ahem, "that's why they call it more."
posted by bonaldi at 5:56 AM on June 12, 2007

I don't need a larger penis, either.
posted by jimmyjimjim at 7:55 AM on June 12, 2007

That's not what your m-- gmph gmph wisecracks don't what?
posted by bonaldi at 12:34 PM on June 12, 2007