Dogs destroying laptops

Last week’s column about damaged laptop computers inspired many of you to write with your experiences. But before we get to your war stories, I noticed that the most common response was a question like the one from Randa Lynn Smith. She asked, “What are the real rules for laptop owners going through airport security? Can diskettes be erased by the magnetic fields we pass through?”

I can’t spend a lot of time answering her and the many others who inquired about this security issue, since I’ve already covered the subject in several previous articles. So Randa, and all of you out there wondering if your laptop will get zapped by an X-ray machine, here’s the long and the short of it: Your portable is safe going through the airport security checkpoint, but don’t check it in. The scanners for checked-in luggage are more powerful and could harm your computer.

Now for your laptop stories. In journalism school, they tell you that readers favor articles about animals. We begin, then, with an amazing animal tale from Linda Goin. “My laptop died a frightful death at the hands, or paws, of my roommate’s Corgi,” she explains. “The dog is in love with me, and his enthusiasm one night caused him to come bounding into a ‘Do Not Enter’ room, where he wrapped himself in my AC adapter cord, sending the NEC Versa flying up and crashing down on the tiled floor.”

Dean Bruno said while he agreed with the categories of laptop damage that I’d proposed, he would add another – the projectile category. “It would includes items that may fall or be hurled directly at your system, accidentally by you or someone around you,” he wrote. “For example, my friend’s laptop was sitting somewhere out on the range of a cube farm in suburban Chicago. He had the lid shut on his Dell Inspiron 7000 and he was talking on the phone with his back to the computer. A very large hardcover computer reference manual dropped from a shelf above and onto the lid of his system impacting it with the corner of the book. When he opened his system, and turned it on, he found that the screen was never the same again.”

Jay Ansell wrote with his own personal version of the Techno Darwin Awards. I am still chuckling about this one: “Soon after getting my first laptop I was happily working away during its first flight when the computer just went blank,” he explained. “Trying every trick in my computer repair repertoire, I started by banging on all the keys. This didn’t seem to help. Thinking that perhaps the vibrations of the plane were too much for such a delicate piece of high technology I reasoned a good shaking might just do the trick. Shaking the computer right side up and up side down, like an etch-a-sketch, had the desired result, with the machine magically coming back to life.”

The next day Ansell called his company’s IS department to complain. “I was indignant. What good was a portable that I could carry but not turn on. Everyone else on the plane had laptops that seem to work. How could they possibly recommend such a delicate and clearly inappropriate model?”

Turns out that the laptop had locked up after he had removed the battery. He admits, “it was unlikely that either the vibrations on the plane had been the cause nor my shaking the cure.” Jim Nielsen sent a note nominating another damage category that Ansell is sure to like. “My laptop a Dell Latitude CPi — gets really stiff keys in airplanes. Just to make it interesting, it is only some keys not all of them, usually an important key like ‘enter.’ I think the air bags under the keys expand and don’t vent proper as the pressure decreases. Once we land or after about four hours into a long flight, it works fine.”

OK, Jim, consider the ‘in-flight sticky keys’ category added.

Speaking of Dell, Barbara Tilley has a story to tell about an aircraft encounter starring another passenger and her portable, which she says is “billed as the most indestructible” notebook on the market.

“It was in the front compartment of a pull-on piece of luggage. A rushing passenger pushed the case to the ground – computer first, of course – and the computer no longer functioned,” she recalls. “I tried the standard fixes, like removing everything possible and reconnecting, including the hard drive – to no avail. My network administrator was able to salvage the files on the hard drive.”

Last week I also put on my clerical collar for a few minutes. As some of you know, after college it came down to a decision between becoming a wordsmith or a seminarian, so I’m not entirely uncomfortable with being a father confessor.

“I did a dreadful thing and need to get it off my chest,” reader Rory McLoughney e-mailed me. “I subjected my poor Mac 5200 PowerBook to an unrequested glass of wine. I mean, the poor thing no more wanted a drink than the Man in the Moon. It was a nice Burgundy of particularly good vintage. The Mac took a big slug right through the keyboard, and it disappeared of into darkness without so much as a goodbye burp. “Of course, having read about the various courses of action open to me on this one, I hastily removed all power sources, and proceeded to disembowel my listless friend before any alcohol poisoning set in. Keyboard off. Case off. I discovered that my little pal wasn’t really able to hold his drink. There was wine all over the place.”

I will spare you the details of the damage. Suffice it to say that the motherboard and keyboard needed to be replaced, and the Mac spent a good amount of time in the shop.

Rory, my son, you are forgiven.

“Orange soda got one of mine,” writes Don Small. “Another got dropped face-open on the train floor, breaking the screen, the cost of which to replace was greater than getting a new machine and finally, the third got left in Africa as part of a bargaining chip in a negotiation.”

Don, you too are forgiven.

There were plenty of accounts of close calls for which no one asked to be absolved, thank goodness. Larry Yunker reports that he put his laptop in his carrying case at the end of the day and hit the “start” button without knowing it. “Three hours later at home, I opened the case to remove the laptop to do some work,” he recalls. “The laptop was so hot I could hardly touch it. I immediately had the ‘lost wallet’ feeling, thinking that I had lost everything on the laptop.” Fortunately, that’s not what happened. He let the unit cool down for a while, then turned it on. “It booted up fine,” he says.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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