Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

Cupholders have been a standard feature in cars for years now but I have to wonder when manufacturers will start including a better place to put cellphones and PDAs. Sure there’s nothing stopping you from sticking them in the cupholders but it’s going to bang around in there and if you’re like me you hate to see your toys get scratched and dinged. So for the time being there’s a wide selection of automotive accessories designed to hold your gear while driving but this Magnetic Dashboard Mount from Proporta is the first one I’ve seen that doesn’t look like some garish plastic monstrosity.

The mount attaches to your dashboard via a strong 3M adhesive pad and it includes two magnetic sticky pads that get attached to your phone, PDA or whatever else you don’t want banging around in the car. The magnets make it extremely easy to mount and remove your device while in the car since you don’t have to fumble with clasps or hinges. But since the mount does rely on magnets you’re going to want to be careful of which devices you actually use with it. In fact the following note is included on the Proporta website:

This product uses strong magnets. Direct contact between any magnetic storage medium (such as computer hard disks, hard disks used in 5G iPods and PDAs with large storage) and strong magnets may result in data loss. This does *not* affect PDAs, Smartphones or other devices (including the iPod nano and iPod shuffle) which use flash memory.

But if all your devices rely on flash memory you should be fine and you can order the Magnetic Dashboard Mount from the Proporta website for a reasonable $25.95.

[ Proporta Magnetic Dashboard Mount ]