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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?"
Dropped clamshell ibook from 6 feet and made a pathetic attempt to catch it that sent it flying in cartwheels. Hit concrete. No damage. None.
Lifted my Dell by the front gripping it gently on both sides with the display open. Cracked the motherboard inside the cheap flexible plastic case. Few rows of keys stopped working. While troubleshooting I smelled electrical fire. Dell replaced it saying that was "common".
Acer one year old, negligible abuse. Hard drive slid back in it's slot and shorted against motherboard. Acer told me to go fly a kite.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
I've had a nice DEC Ultra 2000 for a few years, and it's held up to all sorts of abuses. Currently, I usually carry about a Dell Inspiron.
In practice, I can stack three large upper division mechanical engineering related textbooks on this thing and carry it around for 14 hours a day. This system is only a year old, and has minimal damage. The corner with the fan outlet is mashed in a bit, and there is one small stress fracture on the top of the display back. Other than that, you should expect an average system to hold up to two years of general usage. One thing you'll almost always have to deal with is the damn rubber feet coming off all the time. I don't expect my system to stay put on a desk anymore, and I haven't been able to find an adhesive powerful enough to keep those stupid things attached.
If you're really paranoid, find a big aluminum breifcase to carry your system in. You can find them for under $50 on E-bay if you have the time to waste.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
>> I cancelled my sub when they dropped Penn Jillette in like 1994.
From what height was he dropped? And was he still working afterwards?
Political Correctness is doubleplusungood.
As someone who has owned and travelled with a Toshiba 3500, Libretto L50, Gateway 2500, Dell i5000, and now a Dell i8000, it all depends on the model, not the vendor.
Thee 3500 (i386) was fairly solid, being old. (And expensive as new.) The Libretto was also okay, in that is small. If you are really worried about how much your laptop has to withstand, smaller (less mass) is definetly better. The Gateway was average, no glaring issues but it was plastic-y and flexed too much.
By far the best was the Dell i5000. This thing was big, but for its size it was solid, and it was built really well. Quality in design and manufature was the hallmark of this one, and it is still my favourite for use, asthetics, and ruggedness.
When I upgraded to the Dell i8000, I was SO dissapointed. The i8k is a low quality piece of creaking plastic-y junk compared to the i5000. Now dont get me wrong, the i8k blows everything else away WRT speed, graphics, expandability, etc. Its a worthwhile upgrade to the i5k on paper, but in use, I am dissapointed with the low build quality. They could have done a lot better on this one.
BTW, I always wanted one of these, but it just didnt seem quite worth it, seeing as my system is insured anyway, and I treat it carefully. Maybe for next time I fly, I will get one.
Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random numbers is, of course, in a state of sin.-John von Neumann
...unless you want to permanently damage your screen.
Most of the consumer-level laptops (e.g. Satelites, Presarios, etc) are made with very flimsy plastic. That's nothing new, however, that is a very important issue if you even THINK that your laptop might have to withstand any kind of abuse. And the biggest problem I've seen is with the screen lid. On the cheap laptops, the plastic is so thin and so fragile that the screen can be damaged by simply applying pressure with your finger to the outer screen casing. Nevermind putting a couple of books on top of it while jumping around.
By no means do I encourage this, but next time you're in you favourite mega pc store (FutureShop in Canada, I guess Circuit City or Staples in US), touch one of their cheaper laptops. With your palm holding the outer edge of the screen, apply some pressure to the OUTSIDE or the screen cover with one of your fingers. See how much it takes untill you can see a discoloured blob on the inside of the screen, right in the place where you're pushing.
Stop as soon as you see the discoloration. Any more pressure and you can permanently damage the LCD. Oh, and the notebook should be turned on while doing this, otherwise nothing shows.
Now if they have some corporate level notebooks, do the same. Try something like a Tecra, Armada, or the T series. I can guarantee you that you will not be able to do it. Well, if you're very strong, you might, but the amount of pressure you have to apply is much, much higher than on the consumer level notebooks.
This fact alone goes a long way to show (IMHO) how much better built some notebooks are when compared to others. And that's a general sign, it does not only relate to the screen side. A cheap notebook will have crappy components everywhere, while the more expensive ones are significantly better built.
BTW, one of the reasons I bought an Armada M700 is because of its very slim, rugged construction. Magnezium lid (short of cracking it open, nothing will damage the screed), and very high quality plastic everywhere else.
Well, that's my 2c worth...
Get a pansonic toughbook, these things rock! If you want a laptop that can reliably survive being dropped, kicked, and generally bashed around then these things are hard to beat ;)
The "demonstration" model was brought in and the salesman just gets it out of the bag and throws in onto the desk as you might a normal book, then he picks it up by the narrow end and hits the desk with it. The laptop still powered up and worked fine with no damage or screen problems.
I wish I could afford one - they are expensive, but if you are prone to droping things, it might save you money in the long run.
If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let'em go, because, man, they're gone.
I work For a local college who has a substanial laptop program. 50% of my job deals with fixing them. A few Points to remember
-Structral integrity exists only in the laptops completed form, them bend and flex quite abit unless they are all togeather.
-Putting your stuff on the keyborad is a bad idea. you forget its there, and close the unit, or drop it, Cracked case, cracked lcd, broken keyboard, eask $2k dammage (and you may think who does something that stupid, i see it atleast once a month.
-Drop survivability, good on carpet, not so good on floor. lucky damage is a cracked case (relatively cheap to replace, or can be crazy glued if small) ulucky is a cracked lcd
-laptops will take a fairamount of small bumps, and stacking, but keep in mind hard disk platters dont like alot of motion, so remember to backup regularly.
-Peter
I've already gradauted college and I've been carrying laptops since high school. That makes you a young whipper snapper, who is less 'l33t than I, young poster. ;)
;)
I have had the best results with a nice Kensington backpack case. It's got a little padding -- it's mostly the G's that kill a dropped laptop, so unless you are using a toughbook or have a massively padded case, the relitive amount of padding doesn't do a damn bit of good. Plus, it's on your back, which makes it hard to bang into things.
Sometimes you can drop a laptop and have it all survive, sometimes you can't. My old laptop was dropped twice. Once it killed the hard drive, once it didn't. Both were from the same height, more or less.
Your laptop will last quite a while if you treat it right. It's best to err on the side of cautiousness. Keep it in a laptop bag when you aren't using it, don't stack more than a book or two on top of it, etc. My last one lasted 5 years before the IDE controller died.
The main statistic that you can get is the number of g's that the hard disk can take. It'll be some number like 3,000 or 5,000 or maybe even more when the drive is powered down. This translates into varying numbers of feet that you can drop it before the drive is useless. In most laptops, either you or the serviceperson can replace the drive, however, and it's usually economically sound to do so.
There are, AFAIK, no statistics about the LCD screens. If your LCD dies, you just got yourself a desktop with a built-in battery backup. It'll die if you drop it, kick it, stack too many books on top of it, or any other form of abuse.
I will say that I rather like the latest Sony laptops. Sony is nice and posts the drivers for their stuff, so you can rebuild your system without getting all of the Sony crap with it.
You can always pay more and get a protection plan, although they try to keep costs down by making it hard to get repairs unless there's clearly a hardware problem.
Don't plan on the machine lasting more than 4-5 years, max.
Oh, and BTW... For chrissakes, take the fscking laptop out of your dorm room. I know far too many college kids who have laptops that just sit on their desks. Which means you paid a premium for the same grade of hardware and created a theft risk, basicly for convenience you didn't use. I *used* my laptop in college, took notes on it, wrote papers on it, etc.
Gentoo Sucks
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
Most severe laptop damage involves broken LCDs. Plastic case components seem the second most common point of failure, and hard drives actually seem to be relatively uncommon victims of laptop castastrophes.
Common ways of breaking the LCD included:
* leaving a pencil on the keyboard and closing the lid
* dropping something on top of the laptop screen with the screen closed, breaking the screen from behind
* otherwise putting pressure on top of the screen such that the screen breaks from behind (such as putting it in a briefcase with a mouse, and setting the briefcase upside so the closed laptop is sitting screen-down on top of the mouse pressure point)
* dropping the laptop
Contrary to popular belief, hard drives will usually survive fairly severe drops as long as they aren't running when they fall. They're also often suspended on anti-shock mounts in modern laptops. I never saw a signifcantly higher rate of failure in laptop drives than desktop drives.
Some laptops don't even survive themselves, let alone physical abuse. Laptop screen hinges are particularly a point of stress and must be well engineered. There was a time when PowerBook 5300 screens would spontaneously snap off, along with most the rest of the plastic parts on those computers; it turned out to be a design flaw in the plastics, and they were repaired for free with updated plastic parts.
Right now I'm using a 2001 iBook, and it lives in my backpack with 15+ pounds of books, etc. To prevent damage I put it in the middle of the books so that when I throw the backpack down the stress is distributed across the entire laptop evenly. So far the iBook's high gloss finish has been scuffed to hell, and all the little feet have rubbed off, but there have been no mechanical failures despite almost a year of such abuse. I treat my backpack with the laptop exactly as I did before I carried the laptop in it.