Re: Long-lived "lap"-top?

On Feb 15 2006, 4:37 pm, Tim C <cannedm...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'll have been married four years in June. Over that time, my wife has
gone through three laptops; now we're in the market for another.

Let me explain: she works as a realtor, takes some college classes, and
is at home with our pair of toddlers much of the day. She uses the laptop
in her lap, on the bed, on the kids' beds, on the sofa, and so on. It's
plugged in probably 95% of the time, and in active use between 4 and 20
hours a day (perhaps 15 on average), 7 days a week. (Did I mention she's
a very busy person?...)

Her primary form of communication with her (paying) clients is
electronic, so it's a big deal for everyone if she's down even for the
time before I come home from work. She's also very hard on laptops (as
am I) but not in necessarily conventional ways. I'd like to be able to
accomodate her use patterns, since I've not been successful changing
them. :)

* Laptops occasionally (once every few months) dive off the bed, often
accompanied by a child. That's about 3 feet.
* Laptop power cords usually get bent, twisted, and otherwise fall to
pieces after two months or so. I can usually get batches of these on
eBay, though, so that's not the problem. However,
* After a few laptop cords, the power jack will break or come loose on
the mainboard. I've soldered them, but they seem to be much weaker
after the repair.
* The screen gets rotated up and down probably twice or thrice an hour.
This means the hinges tend to break, or the mount point for the
hinge breaks off.
* Stuff gets in the keyboard, but that's easy to fix... when I'm home.
* The screen buttons and/or catches break off. Every time. Usually
within the hour.
* The laptops often get picked up by the LCD.

Speed is not a big deal, our laptops tend to lag a few years anyway. (In
fact, each succeeding laptop below is slower than the one before. :)

By way of history, here is the set of laptops in my basement:
1) Compaq Presario something-like-800MHz, hers before we were married:
power jack broke in half; I worked around that, but then the jack
splintered the PCB where it used to be attached; I put wires from the
power cable to the PCB, but then the screen connector tore out; on
repair, I plugged the hard drive through the mouse cable. Whoops! I
yellow-wired it but it was never quite the same. Diagnosed dead by
the time our son was born (our 1 year anniversary). $1200/2 years =
$600/year, 12 months of wife-use.

2) IBM Thinkpad A20m: this was mine before we were married, but since I
was using another computer for work languished after just a few months
of use. We went through about 6 power cords on this one. The power
jack loosened on the PCB, broke to pieces, and finally came out; I put
on a docking station (which actually worked much better in that
respect!). The (metal) hinge on the right broke the case, and
eventually itself. We duct-taped it together. The hinge on the left
broke. I added duct tape. The (now attached by duct tape) screen
started to white out. I added duct tape over the video connector.
This was pronounced dead just before our daughter was born (our 2.5
year anniversary). $800/4 years = $200/year, 18 months of wife-use.

3) Dell Latitude LS: this was my hope for the longest life. It has
metal hinges, an aluminum-ish case, a rectangular power connector,
etc., and is very light so when it gets picked up by the LCD it's not
awful. Two weeks after purchase (lightly used, it had a bum hard
drive) both the hinge covers had fallen off, the hard drive bay was
loose, and the keyboard was sticking. I fixed the drive and the
keyboard. A few months passed, then a chunk of the case (from the
back) broke off next to the right hinge. The hinge was stable enough
until another chunk broke off. I screwed the hinge through the
bottom of the case - apparently a design point since there were holes
in the bottom of the metal hinge. This worked fine for a while. The
power connector came loose, I tightened the screw, it worked okay
again. (In fact, it's still working fine; I am very impressed by the
rectangular connector.) Finally the back of the case broke behind the
second hinge, which I screwed into the bottom also. The LCD is a bit
wobbly, but now unfortunately also goes white when it rocks, since the
video cable is exposed and probably cracked by now. As far as I know
we're not expecting any babies, but... $200/<1 year ~ $230/year, 10
months of wife-use.

Anyway, I'm now in the market for a new laptop, and I'd like to get
one that lasted longer than, say, a year. :) After my experience with my
hpaq at work, I won't ever buy a Compaq again... but any other
suggestions are welcome. Price over lifetime is the major factor, but
I'd like the entry cost to be fairly low. Is my best bet to buy a Dell
or something with a long warranty, or would I wind up losing it for
negligence or abuse?

New or used (>500MHz) is fine, if you know of any particular tanks... or
should I give up and buy a pallet of laptop lease returns? ;)

Sorry for the long post, if you've read this far thanks.

Thanks,
-Tim

I settled on a hybrid approach, and bought two Toughbooks off eBay
shortly after this post. Both had obviously been used in an office
and didn't
have any travel scars (really any wear at all) when I got them. I
also got
my wife to copy her important data off to my desktop computer with
RAID
drives, so that has spared us a lot of the trauma.

Both Toughbooks came with power bricks, one lasted 8 months and the
other
is still going but getting flaky. It's a lot better than the Dell's
(we went through
5 of those unique little buggers inside the ten-month window) but all
in all about
the same as for the IBM/Compaq.

4) The CF-47 (big one) held up for about 6 months, then started a
crack
around the screen hinge. After 8 months the power connector started
showing signs of being loose, and after 10 it was completely unusable.
Opening this one up, it is very connector-oriented, but the power jack
is soldered onto the mainboard. It wasn't the solder joints that were
broken,
the jack itself was cracked internally. It is an odd size so I left
it, not least
because the screen had become a bit flaky and that connection was
undoubtedly on the way out.

5) I used the CF-27 (little one, "rugged") myself for the 10 months
the
CF-47 worked, but once it became my wife's it lasted 7 months; the
power
connector started getting loose a month or so ago, but what killed it
dramatically and finally was that the PCB on which the hard drive
connector
was mounted started to flex, apparently, and the connector itself
cracked.
The sad part for me is that the CF-27 is actually really nice to work
on, the
power connector is internally plugged and everything is very
compartmentalized. I may still get another one for parts and put it
back
together, but once it's broken and declared dead my wife doesn't trust
it
anymore.

I did rebuild an Itronix GoBook II last year, but it was too bulky for
her
liking so we sold it. I'm not sure how long it would have lasted: it
was well-
built, shock- and crumple-resistant, and so on, but the power
connector was
largely unreinforced, and the hinges seemed tight but a bit dinky; I
was really
worried that they would stop holding in place after a few hundred
screen raises/
lowerings, and I couldn't figure out how to tighten them up when that
happened.

So far the Thinkpad A20m was the longest-lived, so I'll probably wind
up as
JHEM suggested and look for something like that, even though they're
getting a bit rare. I was only half-joking about the pallet of lease
returns, if only
we had a dock and room in the basement! Perhaps I'll make a spot in
the coat
closet, I can put up "in" and "out" baskets with preformatted
laptops...

Anyway, just figured I'd update everyone now that we've had some more
results
from our "testing," thanks to all for the help and suggestions. If
anyone from the
Department of Defense needs a reliability tester before prospective
laptop orders,
let me know. =)

-TC

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