Laptop Desk : Futura product reviews

I've seen it all... students with laptops balanced on stacks of books on their laps, businessmen on planes with the drop-down tables barely able to hold the weight of laptops being hammered furiously, even a roving photographer trying to download pictures via USB to a laptop perched precariously on a rotten tree stump, giving way as I watched in facinated horror waiting for the valuable machine to topple down the bank into the creek flowing lazily below...

So you can imagine my surprise when this little widget turns up on my desk with a folder full of marketing blurb, telling me how this is the next best thing to sliced bread... always the sceptic, I unpacked it and gave it a good visual inspection... nothing particularly fancy here... a coupled of moulded plastic panels hinged together, with the hinges cambered to give an interesting support structure... Put your hands together palm-to-palm with your fingers interlaced... now extend your elbows out to the sides as though you were trying to do a slow motion chicken dance... as the tips of your fingers pivot down they meet the back of the other hand... and lock your hands into a platform... this is the nature of the hinge structure for this little desktop platform.

Clever, I thought, and surprisingly sturdy too. The top face of the now extended laptop desk has 14 rubberised pads to offer traction to your laptop, and 12 ventilation slots across it... this proved to be it's biggest appeal for me, as it gave the cooling vents plenty of airspace to pump air through, giving the laptop the best chance of staying within operating temperatures. OK, so there's no active cooling system, but it sure beats suffocating the beast by sitting it on a folded jacket or stack of books!

To add an extra feature to this seemed to me to be nearly impossible... some great things are great because of their simplicity, not their complexity... but LapWorks managed to take advantage of this units ability to fold in half for easy, compact storage... they added a small foot inside and some ridges to some of the 12 rubberised grip pads on the underside, and suddenly this little unit becomes a desktop support stand to position your laptop's keyboard on a angle, basically allowing you to get better, more ergonomic use of your notebook.

Overall, this was a surprisingly effective unit, but there are a couple of important points to keep in mind when using it...
1 - I found the platform to be a bit shallow for my liking... sure, it spread across my lap just fine, but because I have a laptop with a larger footprint, this platform didn't extend all the way from front to back... meaning the laptop was a little unstable. Sure, it was more stable, not to mention comfortable, than if it was directly on my lap, but it wasn't quite stable enough to give me peace of mind.
2 - Don't EVER let go of your laptop while using it on your lap, not even with this unit in play. When the screen is open and in best ergonomic position, your notebook is quite back-heavy, and WILL take a backflip off your lap no matter what it's sitting on. If you want to go hands-free at any time, put it on the seat/floor/ground/whatever, or use it at a desk.
3 - For those who prefer using an external mouse, be aware that this version does NOT have much in the way of mousing space. For that you will need to switch to either another version of the laptop desk range, or wait until later this year when LapWorks plan to release the clip-on mousing pad for the Futura.
4 - This unit is avalable in your choice of colours, so long as you choose gunmetal grey. However, a range of bright, funky colours will be released later, so watch for details. We hope to receive some for review, and will be sure to let you know all about them if we do.
My only design-improvement suggestion would be a clip-on riser to address point #2 above... just a little something that pushes on the back of the screen to not only support it, but also to keep it in optimum ergonomic position.