The display stand saga

Saturday, July 1st, 2006 at 06:56pm

Not long after I got my 24" display I started thinking that it would be nice if I could replace the standard stand with one that clamped to the back of the desk. Investigations followed which resulted in the ordering of an Ergotron Neo-Flex LCD arm last Tuesday from a place in Sydney for the reasonable price of AU$125.

Over the next day or so I began to doubt my decision after I looked through photos of their setup that people had posted to the [H]ard|OCP forums (specifically the 2005 and 2006 Post Your Workstation threads) and got some ideas about how I could better use the stock stand such as simply placing the centre speaker of a 5.1 system inside the D shaped base. Another prevalent idea as to store items in the base of the stand so I relocated the cradle for my mobile phone to be under the display and put my keys, wallet and digital camera inside the base which frees up some space on the right hand side of the desk where I normally kept these items.

I had just gotten settled into minor change when the stand arrived on Friday. My doubts increased once I saw that the stand was smaller than it seemed in the photos and looked less likely to be able to support my display. Also among my first impressions was that the the plastic clips to hold the cables along the arm were less than ideal as one of them just popped off as I was taking the stand out of the box. My consolation for that was that I could run velcro ties through the slots that the clips used.

Once I had attached the 100mm to 75mm adapter plate and swapped the clamp mount for the grommet mount I attempted to mount it to the desk via the cable hole (after removing the plastic cover) but even this didn’t go smoothly as the fastening nut that came with the stand wasn’t properly threaded so it would not screw onto the bolt. This was easily overcome by getting an appropriately sized wing nut from the garage but that only let me encounter the biggest problem yet. I couldn’t tighten the joints enough to stop the screen sagging so I called it a night and put the stock stand back on.

This afternoon I tried again, included taking out the extension piece, but nothing could support the display properly so I am again back to using the stock stand. From here I guess I will sell the stand and if I try another one I will ensure that the rated capacity is well above the weight of my display and that it doesn’t just rely on a simple friction based mechanism to support the weight.

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