In a previous life, I worked as an IT tech for Westinghouse (now Siemens), where I dealt primarily with IBM ThinkPads. I supported approximately 500 laptop-carrying field engineers, managers and sales persons. Virtually of them carried ThinkPads. The number of different ways these people found to destroy their laptops was astounding. Let me relate a few.
One manager, after a hard day's work, walked out to the parking lot. As he approached his Jeep, he was stopped by a fellow manager and they began to chat. He sat the laptop case down next to the Jeep's rear tire. When the conversation ended, he got into Jeep, obviously forgetting that he once had a laptop with him. When he backed up, he rolled over the laptop. Not believing what he had just done, he pulled back into the parking space--and again drove over the laptop. He delivered a laptop bag to me the next morning and proceeded to pour out his laptop onto my desk. As luck would have it, I was able to recover the hard drive. I became an instant hero when I popped the drive into another laptop shell and had him going again in a couple of minutes. Later that month, when his department received the bill for the damaged laptop, I lost my hero status.
Another manager became irate when her department was charged with the replacement/repair costs for a laptop that she returned "because it stopped working." When the laptop case was opened, it was full of soapy water. When questioned how soapy water could have gotten into her laptop, she recounted how, while retrieving clothes from the dryer, she had placed the laptop on the washing machine. The laptop fell into the washing machine. She stated that she had let the laptop "air out" for a few days and it worked for a "little while" after that so she shouldn't be charged for a laptop that simply "stopped working." I lost my hero status again.
I could relate dozens of other stories of laptops that went swimming or took baths or got baptized with coffee, soft drinks or alcoholic beverages, but they are all pretty much the same.
The one a liked best (and did not charge the user for) was the field engineer who, upon arrival at the Beijing airport, decided to check his notes one last time before contacting his customer. The engineer was standing on a mezzanine deck and went over to a balcony railing, where he proceeded to place his laptop in order to power it up. You can imagine what happened next. He was jostled by other arriving passengers and watched as his laptop tumbled end over end to the floor below. To say that he returned the laptop in a million pieces would be appropriate, but not the truth. In fact, all he returned was the hard drive--and even that was only good for disposal.
The only way that I can imagine laptop manufacturers being able to make laptops as durable as desktops is to make them out of titanium shells and shock-mount all the components.
Rush Montgomery
Oracle Support Services
Orlando, FL
