Having worked at the campus computer store at UNC-Chapel Hill for four years, I've seen a lot of bags come and go. As of 2000, all incoming freshman are required to own a wintel laptops, so as of now there are ~13,000 floating around our campus.
By far, the most consisten bags we've sold are Jansports. They're not fancy, but they have two advantages that you can't beat for the money:
One, a padded foam brick with a bowed plastic "spring" in the bottom of the bag, important because that bottom edge of your bag takes a hit *every time* you set the bag down. Sounds like common sense, but most laptop bags (even the high-dollar ones) have about 1/4" of padding around ALL edges.
Two, a lifetime warranty. Straight up, something great to have.
So, for the money, I'd go with Jansport. Particularly The Optimizer, though this is beyond your pricepoint.
However, what you're asking for is a bag you can really beat the hell out of, and the lifetime warranty on the Jansport bags doesn't mean that the things won't break, it just means you can get them repaired if you do. If you want something tougher, you're going to spend a lot more money - probably twice the dollar amount. I've been impressed with the design of Crumpler bags, as they have large YKK zippers, ripstop nylon, and other materials that you look for in good camping gear. That said, I haven't seen how they actually perform.
The only bags I would recommend against are the Targus bags. In particular, the Sport Deluxe model. The thing looks coo, but it has a lot of absolutely useless mesh, tassles, rivets, and other bag design gie-gahs that do nothing but snag and tear. I have seen a lot of customers' Targus backpacks go to pieces. This is a brand built on marketting to the business executive type, and they have failed at building a bag for the "urban adventurer."
A final word on your choice of a $50 price point: when your bag fails, you're 1,000 miles from a repair center, and you now have a $2,000 4.9lb paperweight that you must drag around with you, you'll wish you had spent another $50. I don't think you need an exotic $200 bag, but understand that with Jansport, Crumpler, and perhaps a few other bags, you get what you pay for.
Notice that there's no spec for weight. It should be about two, maybe three pounds, just enough to stay firmly anchored to your desk. I use one at my part-time job all the time, and it's absolutely one of the finest keyboard I've ever used. It feels just like the keyboard on T40 and T41. Only a slight variation on the keyboard from my laptop, an old 600x. It feels excellent.
Of course, I imagine you know how good IBM Thinkpad keyboards feel, given that you're trying to mod this one into a desktop kbd.
As several readers have mentioned, this is a clear case of form over function. It reminds me of the initial performance reviews of Windows XP, which showed it to be considerably slower than Windows 2000 on a variety of office software benchmarks. However, all the initial product reviews (in e-zines such as eWeek) claimed that it was faster. In a/. story I cannot locate, there was mention of research that showed a strong correlation between visual appeal and perceived OS performance. This is, sadly, not terribly surprising.
Does anyone know of hard research on this topic? It would be fascinating to read up on.
A relative of mine is a special assistant to the state prosecutor of a New England state which I will not mention here. He works in a pedophile unit. One of their more interesting/disturbing cases involved a fellow in a dense residential neighborhood who was setting up a wireless (I assume X10) video camera to keep an eye on his infant while he was on the other side of the house. He turns on the video receiver, and is rather surprised when he starts receiving video from his neighbor's daughter's bedroom. (We'll say he is in house 100, his neighbor is in house 102). He walks next door, and asks the man of the house why there's a camera running in his (teenage) daughter's bedroom. As it turns out, the next neighbor over (house 104) had given the girl a lava lamp for her birthday... with (you guessed it) an embedded X10 cam. As it turns out, he had a camera running in another neighbor's house as well. Today, he is still in jail.
Did no one else wonder if this might happen after seeing X10 popups, month after month, featuring candid shots of scantily clad women?
I am a psychology undergrad, and though I have no serious experience with the study or treatment of ADHD, I can recommend some starting points for gaining the facts on this condition. Where I in your position, I would head to the nearest university, put some cash on a copy card, and start using their online article databases. In particular, MedLine and PsycInfo have the most expansive databases on psychology research. Start simple - run some basic searches using keywords like ADHD and Neural Feedback Training. When you find an article or two that nail the topic you're exploring, move from those databses to the ISI (Web of Science) database. The most powerful feature of this database is its reverse-searching feature, where you can enter in an article, and retrieve a list of articles that have been published citing the one you have. This is a literature search (the first major task in designing a study). Moving back and forth between these databases, narrowing your keywords, following citations, and even searching for authors publishing pertinent studies, is going to return a massive quantity of data.
Unfortunately, links to these databases are going to be useless, because you need a subscription to search them. This is why you need to run your searches from a university library. Once you've got some promising references, start pulling articles, and educating yourself.
I hope this helps. I'm a firm believer in the power of psychology and medicine to improve the human condition. Your daughter doesn't have a disease, but she does have the physiological deck stacked against her. Being a fan of psychology over psychiatry, I'm happy to hear that you're persuing a non-drug-based treatment in addition to her medication regimine. I hope that this is where you'll find true long-term improvement.
Best of luck to you, your family, and your daughter.
My father is a physician, and I used to hang out in the radiology dep. while he did rounds. One of the techs told me about how they had given a patient an injection of a radioactive isotope for a radioacive imaging of his heart (I can't remember the exact name of this technique). Three weeks later, he walks into the White House on a tour, sets off the alarms, and is pulled out of the crowd and questioned by the Secret Service. This isotope had a half-life of eight hours. Now, I understand the chemomtherapy dose setting off alarms, as that has to have some punch. But eight hours for something that just has to be detected with an insturment three feet away? You do that math, that's some senstive equipment they have in the White House.
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Having worked at the campus computer store at UNC-Chapel Hill for four years, I've seen a lot of bags come and go. As of 2000, all incoming freshman are required to own a wintel laptops, so as of now there are ~13,000 floating around our campus.
By far, the most consisten bags we've sold are Jansports. They're not fancy, but they have two advantages that you can't beat for the money: One, a padded foam brick with a bowed plastic "spring" in the bottom of the bag, important because that bottom edge of your bag takes a hit *every time* you set the bag down. Sounds like common sense, but most laptop bags (even the high-dollar ones) have about 1/4" of padding around ALL edges. Two, a lifetime warranty. Straight up, something great to have.
So, for the money, I'd go with Jansport. Particularly The Optimizer, though this is beyond your pricepoint.
However, what you're asking for is a bag you can really beat the hell out of, and the lifetime warranty on the Jansport bags doesn't mean that the things won't break, it just means you can get them repaired if you do. If you want something tougher, you're going to spend a lot more money - probably twice the dollar amount. I've been impressed with the design of Crumpler bags, as they have large YKK zippers, ripstop nylon, and other materials that you look for in good camping gear. That said, I haven't seen how they actually perform.
The only bags I would recommend against are the Targus bags. In particular, the Sport Deluxe model. The thing looks coo, but it has a lot of absolutely useless mesh, tassles, rivets, and other bag design gie-gahs that do nothing but snag and tear. I have seen a lot of customers' Targus backpacks go to pieces. This is a brand built on marketting to the business executive type, and they have failed at building a bag for the "urban adventurer."
A final word on your choice of a $50 price point: when your bag fails, you're 1,000 miles from a repair center, and you now have a $2,000 4.9lb paperweight that you must drag around with you, you'll wish you had spent another $50. I don't think you need an exotic $200 bag, but understand that with Jansport, Crumpler, and perhaps a few other bags, you get what you pay for.
Try this link; it's the same as the CDW link, but for a few bucks less (not sure about shipping $$), and it's straight from IBM:
IBM UltraNav Kbd.
Notice that there's no spec for weight. It should be about two, maybe three pounds, just enough to stay firmly anchored to your desk. I use one at my part-time job all the time, and it's absolutely one of the finest keyboard I've ever used. It feels just like the keyboard on T40 and T41. Only a slight variation on the keyboard from my laptop, an old 600x. It feels excellent.
Of course, I imagine you know how good IBM Thinkpad keyboards feel, given that you're trying to mod this one into a desktop kbd.
As several readers have mentioned, this is a clear case of form over function. It reminds me of the initial performance reviews of Windows XP, which showed it to be considerably slower than Windows 2000 on a variety of office software benchmarks. However, all the initial product reviews (in e-zines such as eWeek) claimed that it was faster. In a /. story I cannot locate, there was mention of research that showed a strong correlation between visual appeal and perceived OS performance. This is, sadly, not terribly surprising.
Does anyone know of hard research on this topic? It would be fascinating to read up on.
A relative of mine is a special assistant to the state prosecutor of a New England state which I will not mention here. He works in a pedophile unit. One of their more interesting/disturbing cases involved a fellow in a dense residential neighborhood who was setting up a wireless (I assume X10) video camera to keep an eye on his infant while he was on the other side of the house. He turns on the video receiver, and is rather surprised when he starts receiving video from his neighbor's daughter's bedroom. (We'll say he is in house 100, his neighbor is in house 102). He walks next door, and asks the man of the house why there's a camera running in his (teenage) daughter's bedroom. As it turns out, the next neighbor over (house 104) had given the girl a lava lamp for her birthday... with (you guessed it) an embedded X10 cam. As it turns out, he had a camera running in another neighbor's house as well. Today, he is still in jail.
Did no one else wonder if this might happen after seeing X10 popups, month after month, featuring candid shots of scantily clad women?
I am a psychology undergrad, and though I have no serious experience with the study or treatment of ADHD, I can recommend some starting points for gaining the facts on this condition. Where I in your position, I would head to the nearest university, put some cash on a copy card, and start using their online article databases. In particular, MedLine and PsycInfo have the most expansive databases on psychology research. Start simple - run some basic searches using keywords like ADHD and Neural Feedback Training. When you find an article or two that nail the topic you're exploring, move from those databses to the ISI (Web of Science) database. The most powerful feature of this database is its reverse-searching feature, where you can enter in an article, and retrieve a list of articles that have been published citing the one you have. This is a literature search (the first major task in designing a study). Moving back and forth between these databases, narrowing your keywords, following citations, and even searching for authors publishing pertinent studies, is going to return a massive quantity of data.
Unfortunately, links to these databases are going to be useless, because you need a subscription to search them. This is why you need to run your searches from a university library. Once you've got some promising references, start pulling articles, and educating yourself.
I hope this helps. I'm a firm believer in the power of psychology and medicine to improve the human condition. Your daughter doesn't have a disease, but she does have the physiological deck stacked against her. Being a fan of psychology over psychiatry, I'm happy to hear that you're persuing a non-drug-based treatment in addition to her medication regimine. I hope that this is where you'll find true long-term improvement.
Best of luck to you, your family, and your daughter.
Another good story:
My father is a physician, and I used to hang out in the radiology dep. while he did rounds. One of the techs told me about how they had given a patient an injection of a radioactive isotope for a radioacive imaging of his heart (I can't remember the exact name of this technique). Three weeks later, he walks into the White House on a tour, sets off the alarms, and is pulled out of the crowd and questioned by the Secret Service. This isotope had a half-life of eight hours. Now, I understand the chemomtherapy dose setting off alarms, as that has to have some punch. But eight hours for something that just has to be detected with an insturment three feet away? You do that math, that's some senstive equipment they have in the White House.