Fellowes Flex Arm Weighted Base

...read.

The Fellowes Flex Arm Weighted Base does a great job of this. I have used this product for approximately 3 years now and it has proved ever so helpful.

For me, I'd say it comes in 3 parts:
-The base
-The arm
-The 'paper holder' (i cannot think of a better description)

Its pretty simple to operate, so here is a quick breakdown on what it does and how it works:

The base is ...
...weighted. It has to be to stop this contraption falling over when you load a document onto the paper holder.

The base is approximately 10cm x 20cm in area. It has rubber 'stops' on the bottom to stop it sliding.

On the base there is a useful compartment where you can stow a notepad of post-it notes and possibly even a pen or two.

As for the arm, it is inserted into a rotable joint in the base so it can swivel ... more

As someone who does a lot of data input as part of my job, I really need something to hold the document I'm typing up at the right height to make it easier to read.

The Fellowes Flex Arm Weighted Base does a great job of this. I have used this product for approximately 3 years now and it has proved ever so helpful.

For me, I'd say it comes in 3 parts:
-The base
-The arm
-The 'paper holder' (i cannot think of a better description)

Its pretty simple to operate, so here is a quick breakdown on what it does and how it works:

The base is sat on the desk, and as per the name is weighted. It has to be to stop this contraption falling over when you load a document onto the paper holder.

The base is approximately 10cm x 20cm in area. It has rubber 'stops' on the bottom to stop it sliding.

On the base there is a useful compartment where you can stow a notepad of post-it notes and possibly even a pen or two.

As for the arm, it is inserted into a rotable joint in the base so it can swivel on the horizontal plane. So you can twist the arm left or right with respect to the base.

The arm has two more hinged joints in the lateral plane. These enable you to alter the height at which the 'paper holder' sits. The hinges are tightened by large plastic screws at their ends to enable the arm to stay in place when the desired height for the paper holder is selected.

A plastic rectangle (approximately 130% the size of A4) makes up the paper holder. On one edge of the landscape side and on one edge of the portrait side is a lip that folds down out of the plastic and enables a document to sit in it and against the paper holder.

There is one final hinge at the back of the paper holder which joins to the arm. This allows you to alter the inclination of the paper holder. This can be useful if you want the paper/document you are holding up to stay in place, or stop a particular page from falling over under its own weight. The paper holder can also swivel about this hinge in a manner so that the document/paper can be held either portrait or landscape orientation/

To prevent this there is also plastic clip similar to that found on a clipboard. The problem I find with this method of holding paper/documents up is that if you are working with a multipage document and need to keep going back and forth through the document, constantly having to unclip the document from the paper holder can become tiresome and time-consuming. It's much easier to incline the paper holder and then just flip pages and replace the document.

There is also a transparent straight edge that you can clip on to the paper holder but this again holds the document in, and if you are constantly changing pages it is not very useful. (In fact I cannot think of any situation where during data input a transparent straight edge would be of any use).

My only quibble is the material its made does not appear very durable and I've had the lip on the paper holder snap off. (its now secured with tape). Its only a minor annoyance and am sure you can order replacement parts if necessary.

Aside the fact of the somewhat questionable durability, I'd say it does its job really well and is simple to use. An excellent tool for any data inputter. 

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