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The best standing desk converters
By Kevin Purdy This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, Wirecutter and Engadget may earn affiliate commission. Read the full guide to standing desk converters. If you want to incorporate standing into your work routine but a full-sized adjustable standing desk isn't an option, the Kangaroo Pro Junior is the next best thing. After building, testing, and comparing 15 standing desk converters, we found our pick of more than five years offers the most stable, ergonomic, and adjustable standing setup while taking up less room than most converters. All standing desk converters are an inherent compromise, an attempt to make one part of your non-moving desk move for your work. The Ergo Desktop Kangaroo Pro Junior makes the fewest ergonomic compromises of the converters we've tested without being too annoying to use. That's no small feat for this category, believe us. Being able to control the height of your monitor and keyboard tray separately makes the Kangaroo Pro Junior a better fit for more people. The monitor mount means your display is more stable and takes up less room than a monitor standing on a platform. And because you work on a flat, deep surface, rather than a narrow tray, you can use whatever combination of keyboard, mouse, and other tools best fits your work. The Kangaroo Pro Junior makes you do a little bit more work than some converters—turning knobs and gently lifting with your hands—but that pays off in ergonomically superior arm and neck angles. If you don't have a monitor you can mount to a VESA bracket or you want to use your laptop screen but still stand at your work, the VertDesk Standing Desk Converter is the best fallback option, and we mean that as a compliment. It's more stable than many other two-tier converters, especially its keyboard tray. It's smooth to raise and lower, it rises mostly straight up instead of lurching out like many converters, and it has some built-in cable routing that make it easier to create a good monitor setup. If you've got a sizable desk to dedicate to standing (that you don't want to trade out), and you know you won't need to switch out your setup for other work, the E7 by Uplift gives you the most convenient standing setup short of buying a standing desk. It weighs nearly 100 pounds and takes up 26 inches of desk depth (nearly 40 with an overhanging keyboard tray), but it's quicker and quieter than other electric converters we tested, looks better than most converters with a bamboo or rubberwood desktop options, and lets you use either a lowered keyboard tray or a flat work surface. If you only use your laptop to work and want to start standing, the Cora gives you a lower-cost, less-permanent way to do so. Using your laptop alone whether sitting or standing isn't a great ergonomic setup, and the Cora cannot fit a monitor. But it also works great with a laptop on a stand, a small keyboard, and a small mouse, making your sitting and standing angles ergonomically better, if not ideal. It's also the quietest, easiest to adjust, and best-looking laptop riser we tested.
Kangaroo expands its line of affordable smart home security sensors
Smart home security is gaining traction, but it generally still comes at a price. Last year, however, startup company Kangaroo entered the market with its system of $30 peel-and-stick motion sensors and low-cost monitoring plans, designed to make security simple, accessible and affordable. Now, it's launching five new equally-affordable products to expand its repertoire and help its users take advantage of even beefier security.
Volvo’s self-driving cars are thrown off by kangaroos
Volvo, like seemingly every other company, has been working on their autonomous vehicle technology and it has run into an interesting problem. While testing its cars in Australia, the company found that kangaroos were both a nuisance and very confusing to its cars.
Kangaroo Notebook uses mini PCs to separate work and play
InFocus has unveiled the Kangaroo Notebook, an inexpensive laptop computer with an interesting concept: interchangeable mini-PC modules. Each is a completely self-contained Windows 10 PC, so you can dedicate one to important business functions, and another to family games, movies and apps. It comes as a package with the laptop dock and two modules, each equipped with Windows 10, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage (expandable to 256GB), and an Intel "Cherry Trail" CPU.
Kangaroo is a portable, phone-sized Windows 10 desktop
As convenient as a PC-on-a-stick may be, it's typically saddled with some major limits: you rarely have more than one port, and you always have to plug into a power source. InFocus (yes, the projector company) thinks it has a better idea, though. Its new Kangaroo PC gives you a battery-powered Windows 10 desktop that's about as small as a smartphone -- you can pull it out of your pocket, connect peripherals and start working for up to four hours. You can even connect to an iPad if you're bent on a completely portable setup. Also, InFocus takes a clever approach to expansion: there's an included dock with HDMI and two USB ports, and there are promises of more add-ons in the future.
Hertz launches hourly EV rentals in London, self-satisfaction comes free
Contract-free cellphones, declining marriage rates and car-sharing services all tell us you're a bunch of commitmentphobes. Lucky for you the world is willing to oblige your wishy-washy ways, and for those who also happen to have a bit of a green streak, Connect by Hertz offers hourly rentals on electric cars. After launching its EV rental program here in New York last year, Hertz promised to expand to several other cities and countries by the end of 2011, with London being the next to go online this Friday. British urbanites averse to car ownership will be able to pick from a fleet of vehicles including the iMieV, Nissan LEAF and Renault Kangoo, range anxiety diminished thanks to the city's 16 charging stations. It's not exactly the Jetsons, but if this is the future of transportation, we're ok with that -- we're thinking Mother Earth is too.
Wii smashes launch records in Australia
Much like operatic cringe-group Il Divo, the Wii has been mercilessly destroying familiar records as of late. Aussie-Nintendo picks up the pieces of yet another one, this time in the land of Australia. Selling 32,901 units in the space of four days, Nintendo's Zelda player can now confidently claim "the biggest launch of a videogame console in history." In Australia. Previously, the Xbox 360 held the record for selling just over 30,000 units in four days.Myer (a chain of stores, not a man) expressed pleasure at experiencing "a strong spike in total business which can be largely attributed to the introduction of Wii. We couldn't be happier with the fantastic products Nintendo are releasing. Our Wii launch experience has really shown that consumers have made Myer a destination store for gaming." Indeed, the folks at Myer would likely be even happier if console launches happened more often, as they're almost always marked by rapidly vanishing stocks and hordes of early adopters. The real trick is to keep the momentum going long after the release buzz has died down. Keep an eye on those records though, just to be safe.
