[colug-432] sadly, my 2012 vintage HP laptop was offered as a sacrifice

[R P Herrold]

On Tue, 6 Oct 2015, Chris Clonch wrote:

> On Mon, 2015-10-05 at 14:21 -0400, R P Herrold wrote:
> > to the Delta Airline gods.  Not intended for such, and for the 
> > life of me I cannot see how they got to it, but, there you are
> > 
> > Its display has gone cracked, with a most artistic pattern 
> > displayed
> 
> Was this was checked luggage? 

one of my kids lost a Lenovo / IBM display many years ago to 
the airline laptop munching deities, on a leg from the UK, to 
the US, checked and insufficiently protected (not sure ANY 
protection could work there).  This MAY be archival footage of 
the incident:
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C-e96m4730

So: carry on, in a soft side backpack that I have used for 
many years without incident.  During the travels, it was at my 
feet on two legs of 'commuter jet' to Detroit and from NYC; 
then in the overhead bin (where I suspect something got pushed 
on top of it to close the bin) and torqued the frame of the 
lid, and so the display, on a 'full size' aircraft for two 
legs

Pre-trip, I had looked at a hard side roll-on piece of luggage 
/ backpack combo at MicroCenter for about $150 but decided 
against it, but partly because of bulk.  I'll probably pull 
the trigger and pick one up now (after the barn has burned 
down, and the horses have fled the barn)

A list member points out a morning coffee at Staufs today that 
it may well be in my power to get a repair kit and drop a new 
display in, and I will explore that.  Perhaps we can all 
participate in the dissection and possible revival at a COLUG 
meeting, once I have the parts in

> I ask as I've spent the past few months
> casually researching a laptop for the purpose of traveling.  In the
> past, I've always keep mine as a carry-on and intent to do so going
> forward.  I'm mainly looking at battery life and currently the 13" Dell
> XPS has my eye, which is more svelte and likely more susceptible to
> damage than I'm sure your HP is/was.

There are Toshiba Tough-book's and I see that some Lenovo also 
have a hard rubber cushioning ...
 
> If you had yours as carry-on I may need to look into airline policies on
> damage (if there is such a thing).

Interesting thought -- wonder if they (or a third party) will 
sell such without the unit being in a hard-side Pelican type 
case.  Amazon search term:
	pelican hardback laptop case
shows a pretty wide selection so one could buy one that 'just 
fits'

Actually, as I think of it, I wonder if my Amex covers this.  
They cover a lot of weird 'everyday' traveler annoyances

-- Russ herrold