Retro Friday: The Monitor Stand Power Center

During the days of the CRT monitor, many a computer geek would place their monitor on a stand which usually had five rocker switches in the front, with labels COMPUTER, MONITOR, PRINTER, AUX 1 and AUX 2. The sixth switch, POWER, was usually in the back. These switches lit up in green, orange or red, and the power outlets were on the rear. Basically speaking, this was a stand with a built-in power strip, with the advantage that each outlet could be manually powered on or off from the appropriate rocker switch.

I tried to find an image of one of these because at one point they seemed to be everywhere, but couldn’t find a single image of one on the internet, so if you have one in your possession, please feel free to snap a photo of it, post to Imgur and then post a comment here with the link showing it. They were almost universally beige-colored with a black front panel. I don’t care how beat-up yours may be, because a photo is really needed here.

It is amazing to me how these things vanished off the face of the planet, even though so many people had them.

I could find only two modernized examples of this type of power center.

The first is the Logisys PE101, which is actually a riser that can fit a keyboard under it, but it has the outlets plus USB ports:

Don’t jump for joy with this product however as some have said the construction is fair at best.

Then there’s the Bosonic Monitor Stand Power Center:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nte4BCp6XwQ]

This is basically perfect as far as this type of stand is concerned. Proper height, proper construction, has a very convenient card reader and 4-port USB hub built right in, and also has a surge protector for the power outlets.

Can you buy it? Nope. Sorry to dash your hopes there. This stand made an appearance at the 2010 CES, but doesn’t appear that it ever made it into production. That’s a pity, because a bunch of people would have bought it.

I tried in vain to find any other type of stand by any other manufacturer that’s currently for sale which is like the Bosonic stand or even close to it, but could find none. This type of stand may be considered retro, but like I said above, many would love to get one.

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4 thoughts on “Retro Friday: The Monitor Stand Power Center”

Tom says:

January 29, 2015 at 8:58 pm

I have one of the old ones and would very dearly love to find a new one. The computer rocker switch is giving me trouble, and I do not want to force it. Wondering about having someone replace the rocker switches. Need to learn to soldier and do it myself.

quartet-man says:

May 9, 2012 at 11:10 am

Sorry that the cell phone pic is poor. I knew we had one of these at church, but the computer was replaced. However, I came across either the one that had been part of that computer (and I might have done this) or another that was already around in our library on a computer cobbled there.

Bob says:

May 7, 2012 at 8:36 pm

Here’s a link to the monitor stand I use on my desk to make switching on/off of some hardware easier to do. It’s main power source comes from the UPS, and the rocker switches control the computer, monitor, speakers, and two external hard drives that are used infrequently.

Here’s the link: http://imgur.com/xPpzz

Rich says:

May 7, 2012 at 10:21 pm

Yep, that’s it – that’s the one I remember, right down to the “putty” colored body, black-face and red/orange rocker switches. Hang on to that, because those things are impossible to find now. Valueless to most people probably, but hey, I wouldn’t part with it. :)

edfair says:

April 20, 2012 at 3:59 pm

Having one under the monitor isn’t a help to me. But here is the link to a picture of my two under the monitor shelf, identical 4 position boxes with push button switches. At the time they were mounted I used them with 2 computers on a KVM, the monitor, a scanner, a modem, and a set of powered speakers.
http://imgur.com/VUyoG