Monitor mounts

Maddz

Maddz

Demi-God
I'm eying up a M4 Mac Mini, but I will have to buy a monitor for it (our 'spare' monitors are at least a decade old and really ought to go to the tip). My current set-up is free-standing; a MacBook Pro on a Fellowes riser that sits on a small folding desk in front of my armchair. If I get a Mini, it will sit on a side table off to one side (underneath my sewing box), with a monitor & other peripherals on my little desk (70 x 41.5 excluding the bevels).

I can't have a free-standing monitor as it won't be safe - I pull the desk in and out as necessary (i.e. wobble, wobble), so I either get a portable monitor with a kickstand, or I get a VESA desk mount. The problem with the latter is that the desk has a 3 cm beveled edge and a 5 cm lip underneath, and the edge is 3.5 cm high. Any clamp needs to be at least 4 cm high to fit over the edge, the upper mount pad needs to be offset by a minimum 4.5 cm, the lower by a minimum 6 cm. No, I don't really want to drill into the desk and use a grommet mount.

Any recommendations for a suitable mount kit or do I buy a 18" portable monitor with a built-in kickstand?
 
dbm said:
Floor standing monitor? (For example, there are others)
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I did look at a floor standing mount, but there's a space issue. The chair I use is sideways to the sofa; there's room for me to push back the little table but not if there's something behind it. As it is, if Paul doesn't put his lap tray away properly, I can't push the little table back.

It's been suggested in the past I get something along the lines of an Apple TV box as we rarely watch TV and it's heavily underused but on the rare occasions it's used, it's usually something Paul is watching and I'm not.

I could go back to the glass topped laptop table I used to use, that's heavy enough I won't be worried about the set up over balancing, but it's much smaller and has an annoying knob on one side of the central pillar (poor design - it should have been located at the back not the side). Hmm, wonder if I can find a new version... I think I found it on Ebay.
 
Guvnor said:
That looks good.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it does look good, but it's actually designed to be sideways on - the top is mounted in a portrait orientation not a landscape orientation. It doesn't look like something you can change the orientation of the top and it's a bit expensive to play around with. There's a proper desk version at £20 more, but again it's a height adjustable desk. Ideally, I want something in a small desk size (like I have already) that you can set the height (or is already 65 cm high) which I can pull towards me and the feet slide under the armchair (so low profile, no castors).

This one is better: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BVG9XKYV/ but again it's slightly smaller and the feet aren't really low profile. The tube is 3.5 cm high, which is just the height of the clearance. It'll also be tight widthways - the legs of the armchair are 62 cm apart. My current desk is 59.5 cm.

I remember when I replaced my armchair and had to replace my previous laptop desk (it was too low) I had awful trouble finding a solution. The suite I have has low feet and not much clearance underneath so I ended up with the folding picnic table I'm currently using.
 
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My job for the weekend…

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Oh, wow! Must order mine but I need to finalise the extra bits I need. So far, I’ve identified:

A new desk
A new monitor
A monitor arm
A web cam

I have a keyboard & trackball along with other old-style USB peripherals which should still work. The only thing that won’t work is my iPod Classic and iTunes; I’m tempted to clear out the hard drive on my old iMac and use that to manage music. At least it has the built-in slot drive.
 
Maddz said:
The only thing that won’t work is my iPod Classic and iTunes; I’m tempted to clear out the hard drive on my old iMac and use that to manage music. At least it has the built-in slot drive.
Click to expand...

According to some posts I've seen, it is possible to sync an iPod Classic to Music; it's just very slow and you can't sync any subscription titles (obviously)... We'll see; I've got iTunes backed up in iCloud along with miscellaneous downloads I've acquired over the years. Around 90%+ of my library is imported from physical media (CDs at the moment, some YouTube stuff to save me ripping my vinyl collection). (Which reminds me - I must finish converting the LoTR audio drama I was able to d/l some years ago and go on with vinyl downloads with yt-dlp.)

I may wait until after Xmas and take advantage of the sales for the additional peripherals; I've just purchased a new car and will need to get my head around that. Yes, Tom - it's an EV - a MG ZS. The Dacia Spring had too little range for my taste; the round trip to Corby then Milton Keynes we did for Concrete Cow is 120 miles with no side trips, and the Dacia is quoted at 140 miles under ideal conditions (the MG is well over 200). I may also need a new iPad; that's getting a bit cranky with the screen not responding.
 
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