This idea first came to me a little over a year ago, when I wanted to get a stand for my MacBook Pro to sit on and an external iMac G4 keyboard to use optionally at my desk.  I had no real reason for wanting to do this, which is probably why I never did.

As such, with the issues my MacBook has had the past few months with the keyboard reading that the shift key is always being pressed (when it’s not) I’ve needed to outsource to an external keyboard to type.  Unfortunately the only one I had up until last week was my tiny bluetooth keyboard for my Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook… pretty hard to write blog posts on that, let me tell you.  So I took matters into my own hands and bought a cheap external keyboard and stand from Amazon.com and turned my MacBook Pro into a desktop of sorts.

The stand I bought for this mini-project is the Cosmos Black Laptop/iPad stand which only cost about $14, and despite that it looks like it might not hold a regular size MacBook Pro, it’s not problem for this little accessory.  I also got a Logitech keyboard for under $10, which beat out paying $23 plus shipping for an iMac G4 keyboard (though I still really want one… it just makes a cool sound when you type on it).

I did actually have one issue when putting all of this together, which was that the stand was just a bit too long for my desk to fit both the stand and keyboard.  Luckily, there is a small gap behind my desk and a lower ridge (like a 1^1/2 inch shelf) on the wall where part of the stand can securely sit on, which gives me enough room to place the keyboard.

There is another positive side to doing this with my laptop, other than not having to deal with the shift-key issue, which is that supposedly keeping my laptop on a riser will help to improve my posture while I work on my computer.  I can’t say for sure that it will help me or not, I tend to slouch even at a normal desktop computer, but I guess we’ll see what happens.

In the meantime, I love how awesome this setup looks on my desk!