Cardboard laptop stand

When we got our new 46″ TV for an early Christmas present, we also got a big 46″ cardboard box that it came in. I kept the box this long for two reasons, 1) just in case it had to be returned to the store, and 2) I’ve been trained to keep anything and everything that has chance of remotely coming in handy. And believe me, large sheets of sturdy cardboard is very handy.

Trying to be ergonomical

So when Jen started talking about ergonomics and her work laptop on CAVEradio one night, I planned to get her a laptop stand for Christmas. I was out looking at stands and found the cheapest was about $25 bucks, which if you ask me, is a lot for a little piece of plastic that doesn’t do much. Secondly, these cheap-o stands only raised the laptop maybe 2-inches and are intended for desktop typing. I was looking for something different.

I was looking for a stand that raised the laptop screen enough to basically act as a normal monitor, not using the laptop keyboard to type. The few stands I found that were made at doing just that were no less than $40. Of course, they all had cooling fans and USB ports and all sorts of crap it didn’t need. I opted to skip the “pro” laptop stand and instead try making one myself…out of something handy I had at home - cardboard.

It just has to work

I mean, it’s a laptop stand, it just needs to raise the damn thing a few inches. It doesn’t need fans, it doesn’t need ports and jacks…it just needs to work. I went on-line and found a few examples of what other people had made to get some ideas. I grabbed the hobby knife, a ruler and 45-minutes later I had a laptop stand - custom made, at that.

And so far it works great! It does exactly what it needs to do - raise the laptop…oooo…ahhhh…

It’s also quite sturdy which was actually a concern of mine. In my first doodles I over-engineered my stand (which is typical) worrying about stability. Once I cut the cardboard I found it was really thick shipping cardboard. Double corrugated. This was a little beefier than your standard issue Amazon shipping box. It was good stuff.

The stand is only four pieces, two sides and two crossbars.

Being resourceful is very rewarding

Had the cardboard not worked, I would have investigated using PVC pipe. I could buy one piece of pipe and few elbows for less than $15 and then just cut and connect them for a stand. It wouldn’t have been angled but it would have done the job without having to spend $30 or more.

However, if you think about it, my custom cardboard laptop stand really cost me $850. And then if I think even more, that single TV purchase got me two things for $850, so that makes the TV and the stand only $425 each. Now if I can just create some more cardboard wonders I’ll help reduce the cost even more!

But in the end, I just like making stuff - especially from materials I already have. It’s much more fun that buying something.