Foldable Lap Protection While Out And About

You may remember me writing about The Lapinator in one of my previous columns. It’s a wonderful laptop accessory, and I still use it on a daily basis with my MacBook Pro as long as I’m at home. If I’m out and about, it’s a little too bulky to be carrying around with me all over. A similar product that immediately caught my eye at MacWorld, was the LapWorks Laptop Desk 2.0. Right away I noticed that it seemed a bit more versatile than The Lapinator since it can bend and fold into different positions.

The LapWorks Laptop Desk 2.0 fits flat across your lap or folds in half, and sits at an angle and operates as a desktop stand. Doing this raises your laptop three inches from your desk (or lap) and allows air to circulate under it. There are five different ergonomically comfortable typing angles you can adjust to suit your needs, not to mention you can use your computer easier when you’re lying in bed or on the couch all relaxed.

Field tests done by LapWorks show that the Laptop Desk 2.0 cools laptops by 15 to 20 percent, probably partially because of the built-in ventilation channels. The whole thing measures in at about 20 inches unfolded and 11 inches folded, so it can fit into your laptop bag or in a nook in your desk. It comes in black/black or black/gray and sells for $29.95.
If you insist on using a mouse, you can attach the Mouz Pad. It snaps right onto the Laptop Desk 2.0 and gives you a six-by-nine-inch area of space to use your mouse. This sells for $9.95.

A sister product I saw displayed along with the Laptop Desk 2.0 is LapWorks’ Laptop Legs. It’s a pair of two support legs that elevate the back end of your laptop. The legs attach to the bottom of any laptop with peel and stick adhesive. Each leg has two fold-down feet – the smaller foot elevates the back of the laptop one inch, and the second foot raises it 1-3/8-inches. The small foot has a large rubber pad for gripping onto your desk. With its seven-gram weigh-in it hardly adds any weight to your computer (that’s way lighter than my vetenarian-certified ‘tubby’ 37-gram parrot). The legs can support up to 15 pounds of constant pressure, and tested to fail at about 40 pounds. If you exceed that, then your warranty is voided. Although this proves effective, Nothing against LapWorks, but I personally did not choose to stick the legs on my computer because I just don’t like sticking adhesives on anything I own. You can buy the legs for $24.95.

Whether you use the Laptop Desk 2.0 or the legs, either one will help you and your laptop. When you type on a flat surface it forces you to move your elbows away from your body to position your hands comfortably for typing. Doing this makes your back and shoulder muscles fatigued. Elevating your laptop helps ventilate it and provides you with better ergonomics while typing.

In honor of Mother’s Day, LapWorks will donate two dollars from every purchase of $29.95 or more during this month of May to the National Breast Cancer Foundation. All products mentioned above can be found at www.lapworks.net. Make sure to enter the promo code 2CURE to make sure your donation goes through.

The LapWorks Laptop Desks have become so popular that it wanted to give back to the community. “We are fortunate that our Laptop Desks have become the best-selling lap desks in America, so we wanted to give back to a worthy cause and chose the fight against breast cancer,” said Jose Calero, LapWorks’ president.