Want a way to quickly dock you MacBook Air to all your desktop peripherals, but don't want to drop $1,000 on Apple's Thunderbolt display? Then you might want to consider the LandingZone, a $140 desktop dock for Apple's tiny MacBook.
The LandingZone sits on your desk, hooked up to power, a monitor, an Ethernet cable and up to four USB devices. You turn up to work with your 11 or 13-inch MacBook Air and set it down. Move the lever at the back and the sides of the LandingZone move in, clamping the notebooks and inserting plugs into its ports. Once closed, you can add a flimsy Kensington security cable to keep it all in place, and the dock keeps the rear-end of the Mac up in the air for fast cooling.
As docking stations go, this one seems worthy of the well-designed Air.
Currently, the LandingZone doesn't support ThunderBolt, so it won't be the powerhouse laptop-to-desktop conversion tool that is the ThunderBolt Display, but if all you want is an easy way to add your notebook into your existing setup, without constantly plugging cables or losing them as they fall behind the desk, it looks good.
Like so many clever new ideas, the LandingZone is a Kickstarter project, currently just over 20% of the way to its $50,000 goal. $140 is the pledge that will get you one of the first off the production lines, with the price rising to $200 when things get officially official.
LandingZone - The Docking Station for the MacBook Air [Kickstarter. Thanks, Kitae!]
LandingZone product page [LandingZone]
