Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Tom Boucher <trekkie AT nomorestars.com>]

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On Mar 7, 2005, at 12:47 PM, Colleen McCarthy wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>
> Do any of you have any particularly good or bad things to say about 
> your
> experience with laptops?

IBM ThinkPad, particularly the X series if you travel at all (super 
light, extreme battery performance with simple upgrade 6 -8 hours on 
one charge), or the T series if you don't travel as much and want a 
larger screen.

I'm biased in that I work for them, but I'm not nice to my laptops over 
the last 7 years of using IBM equipment.  I've stepped on one dead 
center (I'm about 290 on a 'light' day and it was 3AM and I was trying 
to close a window in a KS thunderstorm  in my crowded with equipment 
office) opened a hatchback to have it spill out of my bag and bounce on 
the pavement, was talking to a customer when putting one away and 
forgot to zip bag/secure the 'air cushion' thing in my port bag and 
dumped it right back onto the floor from waist high (floor was a tiled 
floore), punched one (yes, very bad day) and all sorts of things and 
with most of the incidents resulted in at worse a piece of plastic 
might crack here, or the PCMCIA door went flying there.

Those that didn't survive, didn't with good reason.   My First casualty 
was a ThinkPad 600E that got about 48 oz of unsweetened tea dumped 
right in the middle of it (or, as in the midwest it's known 'Iced 
Tea').  This one was my favorite because I was quick and yanked the 
power cord and went 'yes' just as I realized laptops have batteries and 
then it shut off, a water pipe leaking over the top of a T21 (well, to 
be fair LCD didn't work but the laptop did), and last, but not least 
knocking over a freshly opened bottle of Jones Soda Company sugar free 
black cherry, and then smacking it right over the keyboard on a X30.   
I've been told that the X31 and X40 (I now have an X40) have a system 
in the keyboard that will accept & divert out the size up to 8 oz of 
water.  I'm sure with my luck of dumping a liquid in a laptop at the 
worst moment possible moment (the black cherry was right in front of a 
presentation, the thing smelled of stale black cherry artificial smell 
for about 2 months, but they fixed it)  I'll see how well it works but 
I'm not about to test it out.  Though the hard drive vibration airbag 
thing is pretty cool and makes a difference that I can tell.  The fun 
thing about working for IBM is in those situations it's 'covered' and 
it is amusing to call and explain 'what kind of problem are you having' 
to the guy on the other ends reaction.

However, all that being said when it is my money at home, I like Macs 
and I have a Powerbook and iBook at home.  For durability I'd probably 
go with a Powerbook because of the metal and yes, I've managed to yank 
one of those off a table and while it dented the case, it kept running 
and still does almost a year after I did that one.   That one was 
'funny ha ha' after the fact but I was being oh so careful to route the 
power cord through the couch so I could charge it as it was running 
out/low and then flipped up the foot thing only to launch it off the 
end table.  Fortunately the wife has the PowerBook and I have since 
moved my main workload to my iMac G5 and it's well out of reach of my 
hands and hopefully I won't ever have to report on how it takes a fall 
- - though I tried when I pushed the back of my desk out and my desk 
started to tip backwards.  I managed to grab it and stop the desk from 
completely falling over with my elbows while I screamed for my wife to 
come help me stop everything I owned from falling through the window 
behind it.

Prior to going to IBM I worked for Entex in KS and they used Toshibas 
and HPs.   Toshibas always seemed to loose the hard drive on the people 
that had those, and the HPs were 'plasticy' for my taste.  To be fair 
I've not looked at either brand in years because I like my ThinkPad so 
much.   Dell I just don't buy on principle, twisted as it may be.
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