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Structural Integrity of Laptops?
d_m_i_t_r_i asks: "As a laptop-toting college student, I'm
very interested in just how much abuse my laptop can stand up to.
Just how many pounds of books can I stack on it? How hard can I bang
the corner, before it will cave in? Things like that. Does anyone
review the cases of laptops for their structural integrity? Are
there any sort of statistics out there of things like strength tests,
dropping from a height, etc?"
I managed to drop a cordless phone on my compaq laptop, and broke off the 'g' key. Why they make laptop keys out of so many little plastic pieces, I don't know, but I managed to break all but the little scissorlike things that hold the key up. Compaq support told me I'd need to take it to a service center to get it fixed, for something like $40. A cheap tube of superglue got the key back on instead, but it still types unreliably.
Buy something small, portable, inexpensive (more inexpensive than a laptop, anyway) that has a keyboard.
I used my old Palm Pilot with a keyboard to take notes in class. Worked great, no worries about battery life. Now that I'm working in the corporate world, it's an M105 with the folding Palm keyboard. Small, compact, more rugged than a laptop, easier to carry around.
The other thing to remember is that something like 10% of all laptops get stolen. Or if you look at some of the crap being peddled on eBay and Yahoo, then you know where that stolen stuff is unloaded.
My cousin flys B1 bombers for a living. They use the toughbooks as in-flight navigation. They hook the GPS receiever on the plane up to the laptop (serial cable !) and use off-the-shelf flight planning software. It's really rather slick, since the in-flight control system is based on two 2MHz CPU's with a whopping 32K RAM each.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
I've been tempted to buy the 'Grip it strips' I see in catalogs- anybody tried these?
A good well padded case is worth the extra cost (and weight). My laptop has survived abuse that should have killed it, but for the rigid, padded bag.
Another reason I like Targus products- two years after I bought the bag, I noticed the shoulder strap was failing, the catch that holds the strap to the bag was deformed. Pure user abuse. I emailed Targus about this problem with the strap, and they sent a new, improved shoulder strap by express mail. Free.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
At a past job, half of my users had Armada M700's, and the other half had assorted Dells.
NONE of the Armada's had structural problems. All of the Dell's at least had loose screen hinges, if not worse problems.
The technical staff chose their own equipment, and supported themselves, so I didn't really care what they got. As for everyone else, I pushed for the Armada's so that my life would be easier.
Our local Compaq reseller/service center rocked, and would even sometimes bring replacement parts to me the day after I called and asked for them (for things they had to order). In contrast, I once had a problem with Dell support because I installed Windows 2000 on a machine that originally had Windows 98. It was a hardware problem (bad keyboard), but they still were hesitant about helping me.
I've got a Thinkpad A21p, and I regularily drag it around with me everywhere. It's got the 1600x1200, 15" screen. It's got some special shell over the screen, and the whole thing clamps together rather well. I'm, on the whole, incredibly happy with it. Though, I wish IBM would've omitted the floppy drive or at least, replaced the floppy drive with a zip drive. The screen hinges are tough, much tougher than the PowerBook hinges I've seen - also, the edge of the screen wraps down and catches with the side of the base, so it is less likely to stress the hinges with lateral movement (being jarred around.). I did put a piece of duct tape over the bottom dock-mate port. I felt that the flaps could be moved aside too easily, and didn't want anything getting in there. Oh, my thinkpad doesn't seem to have a fan that I know about, and if you use it for 30 hours straight, it gets warm on the bottom, but, I could easily leave it on my lap, not like some of the powerbooks.
Anyways, about wear and tear. The corners of the laptop are now showing some brassing. Otherwise, I just have a roll of foam in the bottom of my backpack's laptop pouch, to kushion the beast when I set my bag down.
I've had this thing since mid-summer, and it's still fine. I'm confident it could handle a reasonable drop if the lid was shut, but, otherwise, I'd feel safer with one of those iBooks with a polycarbonate shell. I take it everywhere - the law library reading room here at the university of michigan is a great place to study; I lug it there every day. Also, I tend to keep a few sheets of paper caught between the keyboard and the screen - and, no problems yet. The screen, again, is gorgeous. On the whole, I like the machine much better than the competing Dell models. It's definately sturdier and tougher, and, IMHO, a better engineered product.
Btw, I also like the Thinkpad T series, and was considering one - but, I got this A21p used, and was sold on the screen. Now, I'd be keen on a T22 or something with the 1400x1050 14.1", though. At the time, the best was a 1024x768, I believe.
With laptops, I've found that what matters most is the amount of ram, the size of the screen, and the battery life. I personally, couldn't care less if my laptop was 1ghz, 850 mhz, or 400 mhz. I speedstep my processor as slow as it can go. Hell, I use linux vga-console a lot.
The new iBook's tempt me for this reason - great battery life, OSX, decent screen, and industrial case.
I was not impressed with the Inspiron 3500's I worked with this summer. They were being used in the field by pipeline engineers, and were regularly coming back with the shit knocked out of them.I get the feeling my thinkpad would have fared better. Some of our execs were using 8000 series, and they were decent, but might as well have beeen desktop machines - they never left the office. The people with 5000's seemed to take them back and forth from home with enough regularity. (This might be that the people with the more expensiev laptops didn't do work at home, too.)
Someone mentioned that the 8000's had poor build quality - I agree. Though, I liked the 5000's - they were tight. I'd definately recommend T-series IBM replacements though, if I could.
Oh, yeah, I also had the pleasure of using a sony 505JS for a while, and loved it. The screen was small, but, the whole package was tiny. If owned one, I'd be tempted to mill out a box to keep it in, if I could keep it in something roughly the size of my calc text, I'd be happy and confident enough to throw it around recklessly. Granted, putting it in a thick metal box would defeat it's light weight, but I'd have the option between insane ruggedness and portability. If I ever replace my A21, I'd look at these.
In conclusion: Thinkpad's rule, so do iBooks.
fnord.
Two months ago I was riding shotgun heading back to college after Thanksgiving break. I was using my ancient Austin Steplite 486/50. We hit black ice somewhere in the middle of Oregon, slid off the road, flipped the car. The windshield cracked, admitting large quantities of dirt and snow to the car. Snow plus dirt and heat equals mud, which caked my notebook. Excitingly enough, my notebook still functions, once I washed the mud off. The only downside is I lost my spacebar, so I taped on a plastic fork handle, which works better than one would expect. Too bad Austin stopped making notebooks long long ago; looks like the got something right in the crash resiliance part.
I shattered my sternum, ribs and collarbone and suffered internal bruising. My whole chest turned yellow 4 days after the accident. It took about 6 and a half weeks to recover. It was the scariest experience I've ever lived through in my life. I'd say recovering was worse then the accident.
Needless to say, my iBook hit the dash at a force of over 500mph (according to the firefighters that pulled me from the wreckage of my car) Once the ambulance transported me to the emergency room, the CHP officers brought my belongings and my wife met me there. To comfort me, my wife fired up my iBook and to my relief it still worked and booted into OS X without any problems.
It's about 3 months later now, and all the damage my iBook has to show is some leather smear from the case on the corners of the nice polished white plastic. No other problems whatsoever. And yet iBook users complain about their hinges.... *shrug* I love my iBook, glad it made it through it OK.
-Pat
I've hiked the Appalachian Trail carrying a computer with me. Well, actually it was a rotating cast of computers. This was in 1996, so I'm sure that there are better options right now, but the basic structural integrity of laptops doesn't appeal to have changed a great deal since then, at least in my experience. A quick run-down:
:)
Thinkpad: Lasted just over a month. I took it out of my pack in North Carolina and found that it had shattered into thousands of pieces. The screen was responsible for most of the shrapnel, but the butterfly keyboard had pretty much exploded. I have no idea what caused it.
Compaq Aero: IIRC, it snapped in half.
Toshiba Satellite: So damned heavy I nearly threw it off a cliff, but that doesn't count. The case collapsed after some bumps.
Some Army Notebook: Some army contractor had me test out this ruggedized computer. It was an early pen-based laptop, with crude handwriting recognition. It was supposed to be indestructable. By this time I was in northern Maine, in October, and the thing stopped working below about 40 degrees. Needless to say, I didn't get much use out of it. IIRC, the stupid faux-leather-and-plastic case peeled off and the battery door ceased to close.
Apple Newton: The perfect ruggedized computer. I had a keyboard for it. It worked under all conditions, had a battery life of the gods. I kept it in an outside pocket of my pack (for easy accessibility), where it got all kinds of scrapes and bruises. But it was never harmed structurally or in any way had any problems. In fact, I was so convinced of its merits that I bought my very first Apple (horrors!) when I got back from the trail in the fall: a Duo 280c laptop. I've been a Mac user ever since.
-Waldo Jaquith