Spinning laptop

[VFan]

During these past several months, I've learned some about packing for the office. I have a couple of side bags on my RJ that fits most items I need to haul, but unfortunately they aren't big enough for my office bag. I usually don't need to haul my office bag home from work so I hadn't yet worked out the kinks to my packing methods.

One day a few months ago the Interstate was backed up because of construction so I took the side roads. It's about a 30 mile trek to get home. I had my office bag bungeed to the back part of the seat. All was fine until I crossed some railroad tracks going a little too fast. A few hundred feet after crossing the rails I felt my office bag behind me come off the seat; oh oh, this is bad. Just as I pulled over to the side of the road, I notice my office bag (which has my laptop and cell phone) passing me spinning sideways skipping along the ground on the side of the road. Unfortunately, along the side the road is a creek that is full of running water. You guessed it, before coming to a halt my office bag lands in the creek. Although I moved as quick as possible, the office bag began sinking before I'm able to retrieve it; soaking both my laptop and cell phone.

After I get home, I checked to assess the damage. My bag is torn up with holes.

Laptop – as my office bag was spinning sideways skipping along the ground it knocked off 3 of the four corners of it; exposing the metal frame as well as the pc board inside. It still runs fine (in fact I'm using it now) but it now makes a nice conversation piece.

Cell phone – after spending a few days under a pile of rice (to extract the moisture) it started up again. After a couple more weeks of use it returned to full functionality.

Hopefully, readers to take note to take extra care when packing their valuables. I know I'm now more careful.

VFan

[YellowJacket!]

My story is a bit different.
I have a very nice swissgear laptop backpack - which is by far the best and most durable laptop bag/backpack I have ever owned.  I've had it over 6 years and use it daily for both my books and my laptop.  I regularly use it when I'm riding YJ, in fact it is red and black which was supposed to be YJ's original colors.  If they made a yellow/black one, I'd have it.

Anyway, a few months ago my wife and I packed up to go on a weekend getaway between quarters in school.  I put my trusty HP tablet PC into its neoprene sleeve and then into my backpack along with a few books - yup, even had reading assignmments on my break.  Six hours later we arrive at our destination and I start unolading the car.  I grab my backpack which felt VERY hot but I figured it was just because it was on the side of the trunk above the muffler and carry it up to the room.  Unload a few more things and then open up my pack to take out my tablet and it is extremely hot!  I let it cool down a bit and then turn it on.  What was a fully charged "extended" battery is dead and all I have is a blinking caps lock key.  Uh oh... I've heard about that as I answer a lot of questions on the HP support forum for this particular model.

As it turns out, the switch is on the front of the laptop and is very easy to turn on.  Apparently when I slid it into my bag, the switch got bumped and since it was flipped around in tablet mode and not closed like a regular laptop, it turned itself on and stayed on.  Since it has a multitouch screen, anything touching the screen acted as input so it never went to sleep or hibernate.  The fact that it did not go into thermal shutdown was even more troublesome as it totally cooked itself.

I was able to get all my school docs off the HDD and I also do regular backups but for the most part the tablet was cooked.  However, after a bit of reading, I found out that the main part on this model that gets cooked is usually the ATI GPU rather than the CPU and since it was a "discrete" chip rather than a built in, I was actually able to carefully remove the chip and the heatsink and replace it.  I now - well, my wife now, has a working tablet.  I had to buy a new one since I needed one right away for school and did not have time at the time to make the repairs.  The funny thing now it the replacement which is two models up from the one I have now has a side mounted, spring loaded switch and a GPU fan.  it also has two GPU's and will go into thermal shutdown if it overheats.

David

[Lucky]

You guys need to get some CE armored approved gear for you laptops.  now THAT would be ALL the gear, all the time, lol