Because we are a somewhat techy household, we seem to have an abundance of computer towers kicking about the place. I’m not entirely sure what all of them do, only that we have them. Only one of them is what would traditionally be associated with a computer, another is a server and a couple of them have something to do with TV tuners and streaming free to air TV. In any case, most of them tend to live in a room that doubles as my gym.

That’s fine, only it looks messy and I don’t like it. So when I saw this particular item on Ikea’s website, I thought it was brilliant and a perfect solution. We could store the towers in there, everything has its place and even though we would leave the door open on the unit, it would at least look a lot tidier. So off we go to Ikea on a Saturday. Now those of you unfamiliar with the land of Ikea shopping won’t understand the significance of going to Ikea on a Saturday. You’ll probably be thinking that’s what most people do.

And that’s exactly the problem with going to Ikea on a Saturday, or even a Sunday. Because that’s when every other Tom, Dick and Harry in a 3hr radius from the store chooses to go to Ikea. Seriously, I once met people who had especially driven down from Gin Gin (about half a day’s drive away) to get their Ikea fix. The place is crawling with bodies and heaven help you if you want to go against the flow of traffic.

But we thought the end justified the means, so off we went to get our cabinet. We did what we usually do and back cut through the food court to get to the self serve area. Only then it dawned on us that we might want to have a look at it and make sure that it would suit our needs. The dimensions seemed fine as displayed on the website and in the photo, there’s clearly a computer tower sitting on the bottom shelf. But for peace of mind, we thought best check it out first.

So about 30mins later, trying to fight our way through the incredibly irritated people going in the correct flow pattern, we found what we were looking for in the show room. It looked fine….until we measured the internal dimensions. Even though the cabinet is 60cm deep, the internal measurements are at least 10cm less than that, allowing for door at the front and room for plugs at the back of the tower. I’d measured the towers at home and thought it would be perfect because it would need to be at least 58cm deep. As it was, the tower would have been hanging out the lip of the cabinet and we’d never be able to shut the door.

Maybe that’s not so much a big deal as we would probably leave it open for ventilation anyway, but for the price, I really would want it to be able to function in the way it is supposed to. At nearly $500, it’s a fairly expensive bit of portable shelving. We had a look at a lot of their other products, even ones that were not closed in – they all have the same problem in that they are too shallow to accommodate even the smallest of our computer towers.

So the search continues. If you’ve seen anything in your travels which might be more suitable, I’d love to hear about it.

January 29th, 2010 | Category: Home and Lifestyle |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL