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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 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.
...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 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.