My Love For Life Review

I have been wanting to get a laptop stand for my work laptop which is a Lenovo ThinkPad R400 as well as my Dell Mini 9 at home. But those which are made of plastic and come with USB powered cooling fans are not long lasting and the elevation angles they provide are not adequate to raise the LCD screen of my laptop to my eye level to give me the ideal sitting posture. Sure I can choose to get those which are made of metal or even hack one following ikea hacker but both require either more money or a certain level of craftsmanship. Being a cheapskate myself, I finally found a solution which is to make one out of cardboard! That way I can salvage any unwanted cardboard box and save money too. Nice!

The first step is to print out the templates on a couple of sheets of A4 paper. I actually built 2, one actual size which is the point of focus of this review and another which I have scaled down to 66.66% of the original size to accommodate my Dell Mini 9. The printout on the left is not re-sized where as the printout on the right is re-sized to 66.66%.


The next step is to cut out the schematic outlines printed and trace them on the actual cardboard. I have used a blue ball point pen and a 30CM plastic ruler to assist me in the process.

After tracing the schematics on the cardboard, it is time to cut out the cardboard parts. Care must be taken during this process as the harder the cardboard the harder it is to cut. Use a sturdy and sharp pair of scissors if you have one as my method of using NT cutter can be quite dangerous and tricky.

The 2 main support parts have been cut out.

Now tracing the schematics of the 2 pairs of support cross sections on cardboard, starting with the bigger cross support section.

Finished tracing the smaller support cross section parts. 2 pieces of the bigger support cross section at the bottom of the cardboard and 2 pieces of the smaller ones at the top.

Parts for the 2 support cross sections cut out from the cardboard.

Overview of all the parts with trimmings and adjoining slits cut out.

Support cross sections assembled.

DIY cheapskate laptop stand fully assembled.

I have placed my Lenovo ThinkPad R400 laptop on the stand and it is working nicely.

Side view of the DIY cheapskate laptop stand in use.
The DIY cheapskate laptop stand is quite sturdy (depending on the hardness of the cardboard material chosen for the task) but it is not recommended to use the built in keypad and touch pad on the laptop when it is mounted on the stand due to the unergonomic typing position. Hence now I am using a normal PS/2 keyboard and optical mouse connected to the laptop for my daily work.

You can get the templates and detailed instructions for building your very own DIY cheapskate laptop stand at this instructables page.

My Love For Life experience review rating for DIY cheapskate laptop stand: 4/5

My Love For Life Review