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X-Rays Of A TiBook's Interior
A reader writes: "A fine application of expensive medical equipment: producing neat desktop pictures by taking an x-ray of the guts of a PowerBook G4. Guy Mullins has the details." The actual photos are on a separate site.
Generally yes, though some are using prizmatic cell shapes but they are more costly than the good ol' cylindrical cell. If you go with a non standard cell size or shape it costs more per unit due to lack of volume. The standard cell sizes are also available from many different manufacturers. That means you have second and third sources available in case your manufacturer of choice fails to meet your demand for some reason.
Actually its an urban legend that air port xrays will do this. Its the conveyor belts that these things run on that does the demagnitization. Nothing to do with the xray.
These things use electric motors to pull them, which create electromagnets (errr...the electromagnets create the motor). Even so, you'd have to have media almost directly on the belt over top the motor for a while before it came close to damaging anything. A laptop is going to be more isolated because of the casing (yeah yeah, I know most of them are plastic anymore). And still, its been several years since airports had any of these where the strength was strong enough to damage anything.
For the most part, they let folks go with these because of this urban legend to keep the lines moving. Until I got the real scoop on these things, I'd have my powerbook waiting ready to go so I could show them its running and they let me go. Fuck, what if I had molded symtex (or however you spell it) into the second battery port. I'm paranoid as it is...I WANT these guys to stop everyone and run the sucker through the xrays - though in their defense, the xrays also do bomb material sniffing and occasionally they will not only ask to see your machine running, but they will ask for a wipe - they take an alcohol wipe and run a gas chromatography on it right there in seconds. Good job security dudes!