Some Like It Hot!

Have a cool lap with the iLap

If you’ve got a Mac­Book you’ll know what I mean when I say ‘Some like it hot!’. In fact any­one who uses a lap­top (it’s by no means exclu­sive to Apple) on their lap will be aware that things get hot , hot, hot! Slap two of these together and you could be crank­ing out pop tarts at vol­canic tem­per­a­tures. (George Fore­man watch out – I can see it now, the iGrill). Of course if you use your lap­top on a desk you will be unaware of this ‘hid­den bonus fea­ture’. But if you’re like me and sit watch­ing TV on the sofa and whilst surf­ing it can be a prob­lem. OK, I’ve exag­ger­ated a lit­tle for dra­matic pur­poses, but the point I am try­ing to make is that even through nor­mal every­day clothes, there is def­i­nitely a burn­ing sen­sa­tion when using your Mac­Book on your lap for any pro­longed length of time. So what are your options? Well you could try: 1. Wear­ing thicker clothes, some­thing like a NASA space suit would prob­a­bly just about do the job. 2. Only using it for incred­i­bly short peri­ods of time, I like to call it ‘Speed Surf­ing’ 3. Buy some­thing that dis­si­pates the heat away from your Mac­Book. Keep­ing you and your lap­top cooler.

iLap Lap­top Stand

Intro­duc­ing the iLap lap­top stand from Rain Design. Now this was never going to be a very long review. There are no lengthy instal­la­tion pro­ce­dures, no cal­i­bra­tion processes and def­i­nitely no soft­ware updates to run. Well, this is good to go out of the box. Well it should be, it’s a piece of bent metal with some padding! In sim­ple terms, yes that’s exactly what it is. But what a beau­ti­ful look­ing piece of bent metal!

So let me tell you a lit­tle bit more about it…

Firstly, I love the look of it. I would highly rec­om­mend vis­it­ing the Rain Design web­site and tak­ing a look at the some of the other prod­ucts they pro­duce. I get the sense prod­uct design is very impor­tant to them some­thing I appre­ci­ate. The iLap is made of alu­minium which has been sand­blasted to give it a matt sheen. The alu­minium con­struc­tion has excel­lent heat dis­si­pa­tion qual­i­ties, 13 x more effec­tive than stain­less steel! It is beau­ti­fully fin­ished off with no hard edges as you would expect on some­thing that is designed to sup­port your expen­sive lap­top. When you perch your Mac­Book on the iLap for the very first time you will notice that your Mac­Book sits approx 5mm off from the iLap. This is delib­er­ate, as it allows the air to cir­cu­late under­neath, which helps to keep you and your Mac­Book cooler. The Mac­Book is noto­ri­ous for hav­ing exces­sive heat prob­lems, but I hon­estly can’t remem­ber the last time I heard the noisy Mac­Book fan kick in.