BookArc
After having seen Matt Brett twitter about it, I knew I wanted one. The BookArc is a laptop stand, pure and simple. It fits the Mac aesthetic very nicely with its brushed aluminum look—the site says it's made of "heavy gauge" steel. Suffice it to say, this product is solid. It has soft silicone feet and silicone inserts so as not to scratch your desk or you MacBook. There's 3 different sizes of inserts which allow a decent fit for any sized MacBook.
They're a little pricey at $50 a piece. Sadly, trying to order them from the company directly meant a $50 shipping fee just to ship them to Canada. Yes, that is not a typo: fifty dollars for shipping a fifty dollar product. Thankfully, the Apple online store has them available and shipping was free because I bought two.
The BookArcs are a space-saver and attractive ones at that.
Conversation
I think they look nice but I think I would miss having two screens.
Sweet I got to have one of these.
I'd love to know how you get on with these. I've tried running my macbooks (1st gen and unibody) in clamshell mode, but found that they get too hot to use it like that all day. Maybe this configuration prevents that? If it does, I'm getting one!
I am using the mStand (http://www.raindesigninc.com/mstand.html) which would definitely be a great alternative that can run dual screens whenever required. Simple, good looking.
@Jon: A stand definitely helps with the temperature. At least mine never feels hot when I remove it from the stand.
I love the BookArc (The BackPack as well) and it's brilliant how stunning it looks when it houses the unibody MacBook Pro. However, the only problem, as Jon Hicks notes, is that the book will get too hot in clamshell mode, specially when I'm in Aperture or After Effects.
I'd love to get one of these, but I think I'd rather have the extra screen real estate. Very cool product though.
A real nice idea that. I might save myself the cash and have a go at making one at the weekend :-)
"The BookArcs are a space-saver and attractive ones at that."
I don't understand the syntactic construction of this phrase.
I imagine they appear polite
it is very cool prduct.
Neat! But what about heat problems when being closed?
I've had them up and running for about a week and I honestly can't tell if it's a heating issue or not. I had run my MBP with the top closed even before I got the BookArcs and it worked fine. However, within the last week or two, my laptop has been crashing a lot more. At first, I thought it might be heat related but I've gone the last two days not using the BookArc and it's still crashing. The MBP should be able to handle running in clamshell mode.
They Look really good. Great idea. Yet another thing pulling me to upgrade to a mac :)
Good for saving space and making the area look a bit different and sure I would like to have two of these, one for my friend :)
Too bad it doesn't fit my IBM Thinkpad..
Great design, great usability