A few years back I got a good deal on a sweet Samsung 22″ LCD monitor that retailed for $300+. So good I told a few friends of mine and they cleared out the stock of any Best Buys in range ($143 including tax). The one thing you see in 99% of these LCDs they sell is that the base, or stand that they use is pretty basic. There’s no height adjustment, no swivel and no ability to rotate the physical screen from normal mode (landscape) to full page mode (portrait). Which totally bites after paying a nice amount of change (ok, not me but those people that didn’t get quite a deal).

I mean, what’s the point of skimping on the stand after charging you all that dough? OK, maybe the rotation I can see (well, not really but I like to pretend to be reasonable in public) but not being able to adjust the tilt and height is ridiculous!

So what can you do if you want to get your brand-new huge and honkin’ crystal clear widescreen LCD at a reasonable eye level? Raise and lower your chair so you’re either typing on the floor or typing with your arms above your head? Put the new state of the art monitor on a stack of telephone books? Maybe some old pizza boxes?

What if you want to look at web pages more easily by rotating the screen to portrait mode? Do you flip it sideways and wedge it between 2 milk crates?

You get a replacement LCD monitor stand. One that allows you to adjust the tilt, height up/down and let’s you rotate your monitor to portrait mode. Usually they comes with screws that attaches to the 4 holes in most LCD monitors and televisions and are very easy to install.

Once I got my Samsung 22″ Syncmaster 220wm monitor I quickly realized I wanted a better stand and especially one that allowed me to rotate the screen to portrait, so I could see more of Web pages when I surfed, read comic books in their native format or wanted to draw on the computer in portrait. Very useful capabilities that are sorely lacking in most monitor stands these days!

After searching on the Net and checking out a lot of stands, I was pretty stunned to find (on sale) the Ergotron Neoflex LCD Stand for $30. It allowed height, tilt, rotation and even had a base that rotated 360 degrees like a lazy susan; I was a little skeptical that it did all that and would work on my monitor for that low of a price.

Which never stops me from trying something so I ordered the sucker (I got free shipping too) and after a few days it came and I tried it out. It was great, it was simple to attach, worked very easily and held my monitor just fine. Rotating the large monitor between landscape and portrait was easy as pie and the height adjustment gave a great range; let alone the swivel base. It was even more than I hoped for the price. And the quality I could find no fault with.

So if you want a better stand for your monitor, especially one that will allow you to rotate the screen to portrait mode, try purchasing a replacement stand for your LCD monitor.

Ergotron still sells the Neoflex LCD stand (fits up to 22″ LCDs) for about $40 online depending on the store and it worked great for me. Search on Google by clicking this link if you’re really really lazy.

If you’re an artist, a web surfer with a large monitor or just someone that realizes that it’s great to go from landscape to portrait at times, then a replacement LCD stand is for you. Or if you really need to adjust the height and tilt of your monitor and there are no pizza boxes to put under it. Oh, and if you like to read whole articles by long-winded blowhards like me at one shot, you need to start surfing in portrait mode!