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Lap Desks
I have a 15" laptop and have used a number of lap desks over the years, and none have satisfied me. I don't really need a mouse pad space (trackpad) but it wouldn't hurt to have a mouse space available for gaming. I sit in a very large chair so using the armrests isn't an option. I'm just curious what experience you all have with various lap desks. Any particular favorites? I've seen shelves that you can slide over your chair, to glorified pieces of plywood, but what have you turned up?
The "lap desk" I use is basically just a chunk of smooth wood with sort of a bean-bag pillow attached to the bottom. $10 from my local college marketing class. Works perfectly, doesn't get too hot, etc.
Pillow on one side, hard plastic on the other. Only $8.99 or $8.64 CDN
It's not technically a lap desk, but I've been using one of these for a few years now.
It's sturdy enough to hold a 19" CRT, keyboard, and mouse, adjusts easily, and has wheels so you can just roll it wherever you want. Yeah, it's expensive, but it's worth it.
I have used the lapinator for the last 2 years. It is comfortable and dissipates heat well. www.lapinator.com
Institutional cookie sheet. Large heat-dissipating aluminum tray with raised edges. Enough extra room for a compact mouse or other stuff.
I'd check your laptop fans and make sure they are operation and not clogged.
I had a serious heat issue with a gateway until I opened it up and used compressed air to blast away some serious dust. What came out looked akin to dryer lint. No wonder that thing was getting hot.
The cleaning helped tremendously, but I had to do it fairly often. I consider issues such as this design flaws.
Well, I do a lot of traveling, so I picked up one of these and it is a lifesaver. It folds up and stores in the laptop bag, and if you do not fold down the legs, it would work in your lap.
Personally, I prefer one that is free-standing, but this works for both solutions - and has enough space for laptop + notepad + mouse + other junk. And, if you travel as much as I do, it make long waits at the airport\train station\wherver a lot easier to be effective. I have a few velcro tabs on it to hold backpack drives, antennas, etc - huge help (for me at least)
Bob
I second the idea of blowing the dust out of your laptop. I have an asus W3V, and after about a year it started to have serious overheating issues. After trying a bunch of different software setup things (drivers, resolution, etc.), I was about to give up and buy another computer when I decided to give it one last shot, and just blow all the dust out of it. After opening up the panels at the bottom, taking out the keyboard, and blasting air into it (got big chunks of dust that were probably at one time dust bunnies), it now works fine and no longer has any heating issues. Your problem with laptops overheating might be that you just live in a dusty area. As a side note, it took me a few years to break my wife of putting her laptop down ontop of a blanket to protect the coffee table. That cretainly contributed to overheating issues for her.
I know it sounds funny, but if you're looking for a 'lap desk' why not check out lapdesk.com? Seriously, I have one of these (got it as a Christmas present last year, had to search google for a bit just now before I even found who made it), and it works very well. I have the "Jumbo Lap Desk", and originally used it for doing crossword puzzles, but soon found out what a great laptop desk it made. The cushion underneath is very soft and comfortable on my legs while the flat surface allows my laptop to vent properly. You can find the one I got from organize-it-online.com, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.com (and amazon again... it looks like exactly the same product, but for a different price... I don't know).
The version I have is around $15, but it looks like the manufacturer has plenty of fancier models as well.
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My MacBookPro is vented toward the back. That's a nice touch. The only problem I have found with the MBP is that its complete lack of feet makes use of laptop "desks" with fans useless because there's no air intake for circ. Picking up a package of stick-on furniture feet and putting them on the laptop desk solved the problem. Antec makes a pretty good desk with fan.
I have....it's DEFINITELY worth it. I bought it from LapDawg and found they have pretty good customer service. The price includes shipping which is why the product seems a bit more expensive. The product itself is quite unique. It can transform into 5 different table modes they claim. They have a pretty good gallery of the product on the right nav. Here's a pic of my fav position http://www.lapdawg.com/gallery/laptop-stand/pages/laptop-stand-mid-6.html It takes some getting used to, but it's really quite useful once you get the hang of it. HG
And even more explosive if it's a Dell laptop!
The details are trivial and useless; The reasons, as always, purely human ones.
Maybe you can build a laptop stand yourself, they are easy to build and usually cheap. To give you some ideas, there are some guides about making custom laptop and notebook stands from different materials at Repair4Laptop.
Depends on whether you have a real "laptop" or one of those 'luggable' "portable desktop replacements."
I have a 15" ThinkPad and it's definitely a find-a-table sort of deal. Although it has a nice keyboard and TrackPoint, it's so heavy that I'm constantly fighting to keep it from sliding away if it's on my lap, and it gets quite hot (and it has an exhaust vent that's easy to block if it's not on a table). My SO's Dell (some sort of monstrous thing, maybe a 17"?) is even worse. They both have a lot of sharp corners and hard edges.
But on the other end, I have a 12" iBook, an old G3 model, that works fine on my lap. It gets warm but not uncomfortably hot, the trackpad is positioned so that you can move back and forth from it to the keyboard without a lot of problems, it's light and doesn't slide much, and there's no hot-air exhaust to worry about blocking. It's not quite "curl up with a book" small and light, but it's pretty close. Also, even though it's 5 years old, the battery still runs for hours longer than the ThinkPad or the Dell.
I have no idea whether the current 12" Apple laptops are as "lappable" as my old one, but you could do worse than to pick up an old G3. It would probably run Ubuntu quite handily.
Anything bigger than 12", IMO, is too big for real 'laptop' use.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Not sure if it's because of the contortions I have to do to see the screen through the reading part of the bifocals, or if both are because of my age, but it sucks.
;-) In my case, I'm still getting away with wearing contacts in combination with one set of reading glasses for the computer, another set for books, but have to remove everything when I'm doing something like shaving.
Instead of bifocals, why not have your opthamologist come up with a prescription for computer use only?
Something you may or may not know (yet) is that a comfortable distance for a monitor is different than that of a book or newspaper, and again different than what's needed when in front of a bathroom mirror. Put another way, if your glasses (the bottom half, at least) correct for reading at 14", your eyes will work harder when reading at, say, 36". The reverse is equally true. Working harder and not being able to do the work is what happens to the eyes around 40 and people discover they need reading glasses, a new prescription, or multiple prescriptions.
Then there's the issue of bifocals being appropriate for reading something below your line of sight like a book, rather than up or directly ahead like a computer monitor. Assuming your current prescription is good (and you've gotten past the bifocal adjustment phase), it's possible your headaches are due entirely to the cockeyed position of your head and neck to compensate for bifocal use (limited field of vision, wrong angle etc.).
Sucks no matter how you look at, I guess.
As for the OP's question, I can't offer anything useful. I prefer to sit and work at a desk, knowing that the ergonomics apply to the neck, shoulders and back, as well as the wrist and fingers, to say nothing of the fact that "less relaxed" positions are generally more conducive to alertness and concentration. Then again, the Romans were known to prefer eating their meals while in a reclining position, so maybe we're all missing something.
These are inexpensive, the last two I bought were about $20 apiece. One was plastic, with a non-slip soft rubber/plastic mat glued on its top surface. The other one was wood. Both had a beanbag underneath, which adapts to the shape of your thighs. These are barely wide enough for a laptop and a small mouse.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
I would really recommend you take a look at www.airdesks.com , I found them a few years ago and the one I have has worked great for the last few years, I picked one up for my parents and they use it daily for their laptop. In addition I others I recommended it to for use during recovery from surgery swear by them as well. Not well advertised, pretty simple design but they work great. They even have a unit for use on a treadmill that I may be picking up soon.
I have a Laptop Desk (www.laptopdesk.net). I really do love it, too. It doubles as a laptop riser when I use it on my coffee table or at my desk at home, and it's really quite sturdy and portable. Totally worth the $30. Don't get the Futura; get the original one - it's definitely better.
I'm a geek girl. Seriously.
One I like is the "air desk" from www.airdesks.com
My wife and I have both used different sizes of the padded aluminum iLap (from Rain Design) with our PowerBooks / MacBooks / MacBook Pro's over the years. They can be a little expensive in the larger sizes, but are rugged and comfortable and do their jobs very nicely. No complains.