Jeeez, Jason - did you have a spy cam set up at my place or what? I have gone through this same argument with myself in just the past several days. I have a great Princeton LCD that I use at home but thought it might be nice to actually have access to the camera that's built in to my MacBook. From the looks of things, this will be perfect. Thank you!!

I see you are also a Trackball fan Jason. I love my Expert Mouse Wireless!

I am feelin' you Jason! I too have been using Kensington Trackballs for years. The Expert Mouse is my third (the other two being an Orbit and Orbit Optical which I use with my iBook). And Kensington's customer service is first rate! I had a problem with my Expert Mouse which I had past the warranty period and they sent me out a brand new one free of charge! I am a Kensington Trackballer for life! (Sorry for getting off topic).

Zensunni: See all that open desk space on the left side of the picture? That was where the laptop was. My desk is quite a bit more open now.

You can adjust the laptop's height when related to the monitor to a certain degree, but not as much as I'd like (as I mention in the story). However, my laptop could be higher than it is in the photo, if I wanted it to be. Every individual has to make their own personal ergonomic decisions, definitely. The entire rig moves up and down together quite well, which is nice if you need to move your screens up and down.

The stability is great, I have to say, when the laptop is on or off the stand. It seems quite sturdy to me. The base is wide enough to spread that weight out and make it quite stable.

I admit the Alto would be a better option than the coolpad in terms of lifting up my laptop (although the podium coolpad comes with risers to raise and tilt), but its primary use for me was lifting my MacBook Air just high enough so I can use a standard MacBook MagSafe adapter with it instead of a MacBook Air MagSafe adapter.

At less than $200 I don't think this stand is overpriced, but I also appreciate that it's not for everybody. There are lots of other solutions that take up more desk space and offer less adjustibility and flexibility, but are way, way, way cheaper. But despite my initial skepticism, I ended up liking the Ergotron. It's pretty cool. I do wish I could have my laptop on the left instead of the right, though...

---

Jason Snell, Editorial Director, Macworld

I rather like my mStand. Works well and has room underneath it for the keyboard or such.

---

Member of the "Crazy Mac Users who run Anti-virus on their Macs" club - come join us and you too can be snickered at!

i just put the laptop on a box next the monitor; i align the bottoms of the screen, which is much more practical than the middles; sounds like this stand isn't flexible enough that i could count on doing the alignment properly ...

Generally having a keyboard tray so that your keyboard and pointing device are lower than desk height is considered more ergonomically sound, since desk heights are generally set too high. Also it saves on desktop space!

---

Jason Snell, Editorial Director, Macworld