The more devices you own, the more your life tends to get cluttered up with accessories. Just ask any journalist here in Las Vegas covering CES. Whether traveling across the country or commuting to the office, it's tough to avoid a bag full of tangled wires and disparate devices.
Lenovo's ThinkPad Stack aims to fix that by making a few common accessories --a Bluetooth conference speaker, hard drive, battery pack, and pocket router for sharing your phone's data connection—modular. The four devices in the Stack line click together atop one another with magnets. And power and data pass through each device, so you only need one power cable to run them all.
More interestingly, the devices share both power and data through pin connectors on the top and bottom of each device. This lets the abilities of one to work with the other: Snap the Bluetooth speaker to the 10,000mAh battery, and get nearly a full day's worth of music (or a lethally lengthy conference call). Snap the router to the hard drive, and your files can be accessed from your own personal cloud. A maximum of five devices can be stacked together, but the current kit contains only four. Lenovo says they're considering adding additional devices to the Stacks lineup. A compact projector would be a nice addition, as would an AC adapter for ThinkPad laptops.
Lenovo will sell the Stack as a kit of the four devices for $319. But if you don't want them all, you'll be able to pick up the battery for $49, the speaker for $89, and the hard drive and router together for $199.
They should be available sometime in April.
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