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Data Storage Hardware

IBM Introduces 'Air Bags' For Laptop Hard Drives 269

Posted by simoniker from the wam-bang-boom dept.
Ruger writes "Reported in PCWorld this morning, IBM has introduced a technology for their new laptop hard discs which has a similar concept to airbags in cars. Active Protection System (APS) is a microchip put on the system board that senses acceleration. It parks the head of a hard drive inside a tenth of a second, significantly reducing the risk of damage to data. IBM also has a a press release on the new ThinkPad R50 and T41 models that include this technology, for those interested in the company line."
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IBM Introduces 'Air Bags' For Laptop Hard Drives More

IBM Introduces 'Air Bags' For Laptop Hard Drives

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  • What about (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sir Haxalot ( 693401 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @03:49PM (#7147154)
    seatbelts? Bet they hadn't though of that.
    *goes off to patent it*

    • Exploding Drives! (Score:5, Funny)

      by yintercept ( 517362 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @04:23PM (#7147495) Homepage Journal
      Air bags have explosives in them!

      The honorable Senator Orrin Hatch should be interested in the project as it might help realize his dreams of exploding computers. You could use the explosives to save the disk when it is accelerated, or to blow up the computer when a copyright holder presses the self destruct.

      BTW, if they really are like airbags, the devices can only be used once. However, what realy matters with analogies in business press releases is to make investors think of other market successes, and not really about the product.

  • And in other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by stephenisu ( 580105 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @03:50PM (#7147165)
    Fatality rate among children riding in front seat with laptops doubles.

  • I'll be impressed (Score:5, Funny)

    by Transient0 ( 175617 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @03:50PM (#7147167) Homepage
    when it can also detect incoming hammer blows and deflect them aside kung-fu style.

    Also, adding further encouragement for me to throw my notebook across the room is the LAST think they need to do.

  • Portable Audio Players (Score:4, Insightful)

    by coral256 ( 662687 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @03:50PM (#7147172)
    This could be especially useful for, say, an iPod.

  • I think this is great (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BizidyDizidy ( 689383 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @03:51PM (#7147175)
    Improving durability of laptops is more important than kicking up clock speed or what have you, at least to the truly mobile user. Especially good would be if that durability could be made cheaper.

    Something I've always found strange is that laptop carrying cases don't ever seem to advertise how well they PROTECT the laptop, which should be their primary goal, IMO. After having to go through great lengths to repair a new and expensive laptop after a drop, I'd be very appreciative of a carrying case that had this important end in mind.

    • Re:I think this is great (Score:5, Insightful)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @03:55PM (#7147232) Journal
      Spend those bucks on a ruggedized laptop, like the Panasonic toughbooks, or one from dozens of other vendors. I work in the public safety field and use them all the time (ie; laptops in police cruisers). They're out there, and they're friggin indestructable. They also cost more than a comparable machine in a plastic shell, ie; the LCD is behind quarter inch plexi, the case is made out of hardened steel, the internals are mounted on shock absorbing rubber doodads, etc..

      You get what you pay for in the end.

      You can cough up 3 grand for a cute and trendy iBook, or for a virtually indestructable brick.

      Oh yeah, before I forget, they weigh a friggin' ton as a rule. Weight is a big selling point for mobile users.
      • Actually, the iBook only costs about 1600 bucks, with a nice, medium-level setup (640MB ram, 60GB hard drive, extra battery, DVD/CD-R drive). And it has a ruggedized hard disk (rubber mounted) and a polycarbonate shell, with a magnesium frame.

        They're nice. Not as tough as what you're talking about, but then, they are much more powerful.

        And, ruggedized laptops don't let you use iTunes and an iPod to manage your music collection.

        • You're probably wasting your time; I strongly suspect that the grandparent poster is an anti-Mac fanatic. You can show that sort tons o' data to prove that by every reasonable measure of usefulness for a laptop, including toughness, you get more for your money from Apple than from any Wintel vendor, and they still won't believe you.

    • Fix Heat Issues first.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by FileNotFound ( 85933 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @04:14PM (#7147423) Homepage Journal
      I'm not sure if this is still the case with IBM laptops today but my A20m had some really nasty overheating issues.

      The way it cools the CPU is via a tiny horizontaly mounted fan and a heatpipe running through a big aluminum block...which did virtualy nothing.

      Worse yet it was fairly common for that fan system to die. There was a controller card which regulated the fan based on the CPU temptriture. In my laptop that part failed three times during 2 years. Worse yet the ONLY way to fix it is to replace the mothereboard, $400 (the fan itself which can die is $50).

      I personaly find it odd that they're so concerend with HDs. I dropped that very same laptop numerous times and that never resulted in a damaged HD or even damaged plastic. (I can't say the same about Dell laptops)

      10 Hour battery life on the other hand is something I'm curious about.

      Also another HUGE weakness IMO are ports.

      Like keyboard, network, USB etc. On a PC those ports are used maybe 10 times a year, on a laptop several times a day, at times roughly.
      My current laptop can't play any sound because the 'sound out' port is broken (it's all made of plastic, cord got yanked sideways and the plug just shattered). A friend of mine has a useless laptop because the ethernet jack is broken. I have seen plenty of dell and IBM laptops where the powercable refuses to stay in.

      Personaly I'm baffled how the designers didn't see these issues comming.

      Fact is the laptops are NOT used gently for more than the first few days. Then they get tossed about and "ripped out" of networks at the end of a long day.
    • Something I've always found strange is that laptop carrying cases don't ever seem to advertise how well they PROTECT the laptop

      Laptop cases CANNOT protect a laptop at all. Most of the pieces that can be damaged are inside the laptop. Weakly connected pieces, the hard drive's read/write head, the precision laser for your DVD/CD ROM drive, the keys on the keyboard, the LCD screen, etc. are all INSIDE your laptop when it falls. A case will not stop the jarring impact after the fall, though it might keep the
    • Improving durability of laptops is more important than kicking up clock speed or what have you

      Not really... At the company that I work for, we are paying $65k/month in repair fees to IBM's lease return department for aspects of the notebook that are obviously improperly designed. Certainly, the hard drive is important because, if that breaks during the warranty, then they have to pay, but little bits like the monitor bezel and various pieces on the case should be designed as delicately as possible if re
    • "Something I've always found strange is that laptop carrying cases don't ever seem to advertise how well they PROTECT the laptop,"

      If people were more concerned with the protection of hardware than with how it looks, a lot more people would be wearing pocket protectors.

  • But I want.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by adeyadey ( 678765 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @03:51PM (#7147176) Journal
    ..pix of the crash test dummies when they smash the laptops into walls at 40 mph..
  • I had an old laptop (486 33Mhz) once, and the hard drive door on it was broken... and all that held the hard drive in was hard friction pretty much, and a little button that didn't always work.

    Needless to say, a hard jab could disconnect the hard drive, and even have it fall out of the laptop.

    The HD failed eventually... but after many a trips to the floor! Only hit concrete a few times, mostly hit carpet. When it failed it was just sitting there, but I guess it couldn't take the abuse :p

  • What if it misfires? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by IgD ( 232964 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @03:51PM (#7147179)
    You have been playing the latest and greatest video game for a few hours when you make a mistake and pound the keyboard. The hardrives senses it and locks you down without saving. Whoops.
    • You have been playing the latest and greatest video game

      It would be brutal to lose all your hard work at a game, the economic loss would be unrecoverable.

    • Aka "The Sierra Lesson"... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @04:05PM (#7147341) Homepage
      Save early, save often. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're too young.

      Kjella
      • Too young?

        If anything, that's even more pronounced these days when all the game publishers tend to think that customers are GREAT beta testers and deadlines are WAY more important than quality.
      • The reason for that is Sierra games were written by a bunch of professional sadists.

        It wasn't just the cruel timing puzzles. It wasn't just trying to type GIVE CUBE PUZZLE TO LABION TERROR BEAST before being Tasmanian Deviled. It wasn't having to walk treacherous mountain paths or doing arcade sequences. It was not even tripping over a stupid cat and falling 2 steps ... and dying.

        It was the Your Game Is Hopeless and You Don't Know It scenario.

        The one that comes to mind is King's Quest 5. If you don't get

    • Re:What if it misfires? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @04:07PM (#7147352)
      You have been playing the latest and greatest video game for a few hours when you make a mistake and pound the keyboard. The hardrives senses it and locks you down without saving. Whoops.

      These systems have a custom BIOS routine that handles just that case. It blanks the screen and displays:

      TILT
      Game Over

      in 3-inch tall letters.

    • Re:What if it misfires? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Geekenstein ( 199041 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @04:08PM (#7147364)
      I highly doubt IBM would make this technology a "dead stop" measure. More than likely, the drive that parks itself in a 10th of a second also returns itself to operation just as quickly once the conditions return to normal. I'd say it's similar to setting your HD to spin down after inactivity, but the platters don't even have to stop turning, just the read arms move out of the way to prevent a head crash. More than likely you wouldn't notice this protective measure kicking in, which is just how it should be.

    • Re:What if it misfires? (Score:5, Funny)

      by American AC in Paris ( 230456 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @04:11PM (#7147392) Homepage
      You have been playing the latest and greatest video game for a few hours when you make a mistake and pound the keyboard. The hardrives senses it and locks you down without saving. Whoops.

      Dear IgD,

      Yikes! We hadn't even considered a scenario where the laptop might be bumped during a read/write operation! Looks like it's back to the drawing board for us!

      Kisses,
      The IBM engineers who designed APS

    • Re:What if it misfires? (Score:4, Informative)

      by inburito ( 89603 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @04:27PM (#7147532)
      Um. Head parking is not a permanent state requiring a reboot to get out of!

      In fact you can have an unsaved text document open and after some inactivity the head in the laptop drive will get parked automatically. With modern mobile hard drives this is likely to happen in as little as 30sec of idling. This does not in any way mean that your data is lost. Once you have the need to use the hard drive heads (for purposes such as saving data) they will be unparked promptly.

      i/o systems generally have some notion of buffering and can also cope with latencies (just think of a network socket) so that even in the case of a blocking write operation no data is lost even if the said blocking will take any measurable period of time.
    • Any PC (desktop and laptop) made in the last 5 years can set the power saving to spin down the hard drives after inactivity. It's completely harmless to the OS. It'll pause if it's waiting for disk data, but it resumes once the drives spin up. IBM's feature only parks the heads, not spin down the drive, and it'll resume even faster because it's just seeking the head, not stopping and starting the spindle motor.
    • That's what RAM is for. Buffer your interaction with the data until the HDD comes back online. Problem solved.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @03:52PM (#7147190)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Yay! I think... (Score:5, Funny)

      by mnemonic_ ( 164550 ) <jamec.umich@edu> on Monday October 06, 2003 @04:11PM (#7147398) Homepage Journal
      I'm sure IBM's engineers have IQ's that are at least 25.
    • I hope this thing isn't too sensitive - it would be quite annoying if a bumpy car ride or turbulence on an airplane would interrupt any hard drive activity...

      Why? If the plane or car ride is so bumpy that your drive might be damaged, wouldn't you prefer a temporary "drive not ready" message instead of a permanent one? It's not really like an airbag in that it's a one-shot deployment-- it just parks the drive when it senses problems.

  • fsck (Score:2)

    by jnguy ( 683993 )
    Hm, if only there was something where it would switch to a backup battery for the harddrive to spin down, so that you don't have to fsck if you use ext2, That would be something I wouldn't mind purchasing.
    • You would still have to fsck if you turn off your computer without syncing and unmounting you disks.
      Or maybe you were refering to the temporary parking of the head?
      But that only lasts for a short moment.
      If you're in the middle of a read or write, it will be held up for a little and then continue.

  • Antilock Caps has been Activated (Score:5, Funny)

    by use_compress ( 627082 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @03:53PM (#7147210) Journal
    Will soon appear under an LED on the new Thinkpad's keyboard.
  • So you mean that if I cause a traffic accident while coding, this will keep me from losing my data even when my brains splatter across the windshield? Cool...

  • Sure, but what about terminal velocity? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Target Practice ( 79470 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @03:54PM (#7147220)
    I can see how this would help if you dropped it from a table, or your briefcase, but what do they have to help the laptop that reaches its terminal velocity? It's not accelerating, so it'll unlock the drive, and then SLAM! your data's gone! Skydiving with a satellite connection may not be popular at IBM, but hey, think of the rest of us, you insensitive clod!
    • I think you're mistaken - it's going to detect the change in acceleration the instant the laptop hits the ground, then activate the "airbag". It doesn't matter if the laptop was falling at terminal velocity or not.

    • If your laptop reaches terminal velocity, the survival of the hard drive head is going to be the least of the problems with that thing once it decelerates.
    • If it reaches terminal velocity and you expect it to survive, then presumably there is some external mechanism for slowing it back down such that it can survive. I would also presume that if it starts slowing down too fast to keep working, the mechanism would engage during deceleration as well.

  • how many... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by frodo from middle ea ( 602941 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @03:54PM (#7147221) Homepage
    how many Laptop Harddisks have been damaged due this very specific problem of the head not being parked(?).during a deacceleration. Does it add any mechanical stability to the harddisk ? What if the hard disk breaks in two pieces ?
    • I think most damage is done when the head skips down and scratches the platter.

      Of course this won't protect the hdd from a hit strong enough to cause some mechanical damage, but in that case it should at least make sure the data is still on the drive.

    • Re:how many... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SeanTobin ( 138474 ) * <byrdhuntr@hCHEETAHotmail.com minus cat> on Monday October 06, 2003 @04:09PM (#7147367)
      how many Laptop Harddisks have been damaged due this very specific problem of the head not being parked(?).during a deacceleration. Does it add any mechanical stability to the harddisk ? What if the hard disk breaks in two pieces ?
      A good deal more than you would think. Ever have a bad sector on your hard drive? Ever know about bad sectors on your hard drive? Those are two very different questions.

      Modern hard drives have extra space available on them reserved for remapping sectors that fail. The drive can detect these failing as the voltages from the heads fall when reading data. At the first sign of this, the drive logic reads the data, moves it off to a reserved sector, maps it internaly, and goes on about its business. Now, there are a few things that can cause this.

      First off, there is straight manufacturing errors. Less common than they used to be (hdd's used to come with tables of bad sectors printed on thier label) but they do happen.

      Now, they can also occour when a read head is literaly floating microns above a spinning platter revolving at around 3000 rpm's. Whack that drive with a hammer and the head could contact the media, effectively scratching the disk. Depending on the severity there may be no damage, a bad sector could begin to form, the head could be damaged, or the drive could be shattered to bits.

      Moving the head off the platter (or towards the center depending on thier parking mechanics) will almost eliminate problems resulting from the head contacting the media.

      Now, parking the head will not add any stability to the drive, but it will greatly increase the g's a drive can experience before being damaged.

      If your disk breaks into two pieces, you are going to need to call these people [slashdot.org].
      • If your disk breaks into two pieces, you are going to need to call these people.

        If your disk breaks in two pieces you better have a backup or go crying home to mommy. I will bet large sums of money that disks with any significant amounts of physical damage aren't going to be recovered by those clowns, nor any other commercial data recovery service. That means warps, scratches, cracks... If you can't spin it with a head within the original calibrated distance from the surface, those guys and their competit

  • perfect laptop (Score:2, Insightful)

    by SHEENmaster ( 581283 )
    Does anyone know of a laptop that can run while closed (warwalking), has SXGA or better resolution, is reasonable light, and doesn't rely on centrino or other non-Linux garbage?

    On a relevant enote, it might be worthwhile for them to toss solid-state storage on the motherboard through a usb interface. 256mB wouldn't significantly add to costs, but could garuntee that important data would survive.

    I suspect that the majority of damaged files on laptops occurs as a result of power failures rather than as
    • Does anyone know of a laptop that can run while closed (warwalking), has SXGA or better resolution, is reasonable light, and doesn't rely on centrino or other non-Linux garbage?

      I've used older Toshibas while being extremely mobile without any issue. They also have very good Linux support.

      I have a Toshiba Satellite that the hard drive just burned out on, and needs a new keyboard controller. It has a 15" screen, nVidia GeForce 2 go. I'll sell it for parts for $250. I got the keyboard controller priced
    • I think for a good deal of laptops the going into standby mode is software-based. On this IBM T40 I'm typing on, I can open up the power control panel, go to advanced, and change it to "do nothing" when I close the lid (yes, I'm using Windows... I'm required to...). I'm not sure if there's a similar option in Linux, but I'd assume there is. It weighs about 4-5 pounds, and has a good battery life. It's got a Pentium M, and I'm using the Intel 802.11b card, but you can also get it with a Cisco card if you so
    • Centrino ain't so bad. I have a Centrino laptop (the VAIO Z1A, too bad it appears to have been discontinued after a lackluster run this spring/summer), and the 2.6.0 kernel supports it well for most things. There are three things not supported: (1) the built-in wireless [which can be replaced -- it's a miniPCI card], (2) actual ACPI sleep modes, (3) shutdown leaves the machine powered up (kernel crashes instead of powering down). Everything else -- screen brightness, all the gizmoes including the losemod
    • I'm writing this on a Compaq Armada 1750. I upgraded mine to 320MB RAM, PIII 600MHz, and 40GB drive. It's got 2 type-II cardbus slots, your standard PC ports, a trackpad, nice keyboard, and a beautiful 1024x768 14.1" Active LCD. It runs linux REALLY well (just don't use ACPI if you want it to cool itself), and WinXP is actually pretty fast on it as well. You can swap out the hard drive (on it's own removable chassis) quite easily to switch from Linux to Windows to whatever drives. DVD-ROM and floppy at the
    • I use a (now) old IBM Thinkpad T-22, but any of the T-Series can be set to run normally in a "closed" position. They weigh in between 4 and 5 lbs, and can be purchased with very nice 1400x1050 screens. They're not insanely expensive, either, unless you have to have the absolute latest and greatest model. Some do have Centrino, but you can also buy them with IBM's 802.11a/b/g solution. Thinkpads have typically handled Linux extremely well (mine does, anyway).

  • Dammit! That's my idea! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xyote ( 598794 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @03:57PM (#7147252)
    I filed a disclosure at IBM (Kingston, NY) in the early 90's on this exact idea. The problem was during the review it was clear that nobody at Kingston knew anything or was interested in disk drive technology (San Jose did the disk drives then), so it was a no go on the idea. The disclosure is on file, IBM keeps paperwork forever.

    Interestingly enough, Connor came out with a disk drive 6 months later that did something similar, but it just cut write current rather than park the heads.

    • Wow, I thought that all of Connor's drives just parked the heads right in the middle of writing, smack in the middle of the platter.

      *ZZZEEERERRRRRTT*

      "If it's a Connor, It's a goner."

  • Isn't this dangerous? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tbase ( 666607 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @03:59PM (#7147281)
    Even at under a tenth of a second, if it senses acceleration (you drop it) and the heads are in the process of moving across the platter to the park position at impact (it hits the floor), wouldn't that increase the chances of a large scratch as opposed to a small nick?
    • Even worse. Think about the poor unsusptecting souls that attempt to use this in a car/train/bus/airplane/whatever. You will be accelerating quickly quite often while in a vehicle, and the laptop is not actually in any danger, but you are trying to get your work done. Just have to wait untill the next red-light/airport/train-stop I guess Fuzzy The Quantum Duck
    • Assuming a complete release and freefall, .1 seconds is enough time to drop only 5cm. So assuming they use 1G as the acceleration limit to set it off, there's little chance of it still being in the process of parking the head when it hits the ground, unless you only drop it 5cm, in which case it the impact won't likely be enough to do damage anyway. Also, that 0.1 seconds isn't the time it takes the head to park itself, it's the total reaction time. The heads move very fast, and the actual time it takes
    • There's no way that if you drop your computer from five feet that it'll hit the floor faster than 1/10 of a second. By the time it hits the heads have bee parked. 9.8 Meters/Sec ^ 2 Right.....Do the math
  • When my computer crashes, at least I'll have something soft to protect my head from banging it in frustration.

  • Um.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by brsmith4 ( 567390 ) <brsmith4.gmail@com> on Monday October 06, 2003 @04:04PM (#7147319)
    Who gives a shit about the hard drives, did you hear about the battery life that these bitches were supposedly putting out? 10 hours? That's unreal. Granted, the hard drive improvements are great, but you can't beat 10 hour battery life.
    • That's after you've removed your optical drive and fitted a second battery. Then, you get a theoretical maximum of 10 hours battery life. Real world I would only expect 6 hours tops with both batteries (3 hours per battery).
    • My laptop gets 24 hours battery life on 4 AA batterys. Of course, it's a Tandy 102. Of course, it's not my primary laptop. It is still useful when I want to be able to do some writing on the go.

      The point is that we have become accustomed to absurdly short battery life in devices which are supposed to be portable.

  • Does that seem a little slow to anyone else? If, to use the example in the article, I were to trip on the power cord thereby rapidly accelerating the computer, it seems like the damage would be done in less than 1/10th of a second. Also, it would be nice to see what kind of acceleration is needed for this system to activate - if I just drop it, will the relatively low 1G of acceleration cause the system to activate, or will it wait to try to activate until the laptop hits the floor (at which point the la
  • I've already lost 2 Travelstar's and 2 Deskstar's to IBM's poor manufacturing of hard drives..

    Let's hope this will change things for the better.. and create, for once, reliability
  • If you're dropping a laptop, odds are you've more to worry about than just the hard drive. No? ;)
  • Active Protection System (APS) is a microchip put on the system board that senses acceleration.

    What about decceleration? Like the sudden stop of hitting the pavement.

    • yeah, when it hits the floor would be a poor time to START parking the heads.
    • Actually, the accelerometer detectects the normal gravitational force (32 ft/sec2). When you drop it, it goes into free fall and the gravitational force becomes zero. It detects this and the disk drive parks its heads real quick before it very rapidly accelerates again when it hits the floor.
  • What I really need is a microchip in my mouth which detects my foot approaching and can park my tongue in 1/10th of a second.

  • According to this article [techweb.com] at Techweb, the head park time was not "specified" in IDE drives, so they had to get drive manufacturers to meet their 200-300 millisecond requirement...

    Thats a little slower than a 1/10 of a second.

  • Don't bump the computer, I've got a CD burning and if the hard drive locks it'll messup the throughput.
  • It's good that this tech is coming down the line, but why in the hell is it going on the MOTHERBOARD instead of in the hard drive electronics where it belongs?!!?

    The answer, is, of course that if they keep it out of the HDD's then nobody else will be able to easily integrate the feature into their own notebooks.. Great for IBM selling thinkpads. Shitty for the consumer.

    Bah.
  • They didn't really say what's triggering it, but the obvious (and dumb) thing to do would be to trigger when it's experiencing 5G's or somesuch (impact). Yeah, you'd protect yourself against the second bounce, but it's probably too late.

    Much better would be to trigger when it's in freefall. When you're sitting on a desk, you feel 1G acceleration up. (Gravity is indistinguishable from acceleration, according to relativity.) So the laptop can detect when it's in free-fall, and park the heads. A reactio

  • I work providing technical support to at least 1000 people on campus, and lately (over the past two years), I've been seeing a LOT of hard drive failures. Most don't seem to be from people mistreating their laptops by shaking, dropping, banging, etc. Many of the computers never even move away from the desks that they sit on. I fail to understand why they are investing in air bags as opposed to making their hard drives more reliable in the first place. Don't get me wrong...I think this is a great idea, but I
  • This really happened: My girlfriend called me in a panic this morning because she dropped her IBM(!) laptop about 3 feet, and it will no longer turn on. I haven't seen it yet but it doesn't seem promising - the wireless PCMCIA card (with the protruding antenna part) now "looks a little askew". So I guess that's what it landed on, and it was probably crunched into the computer, kind of like when your thigh bones crunch through your hip and into your abdomen if you jump from an airplane into the ocean and l
  • Every now and then IBM manages to pull a trick that places them where they are 'loved' the most and are liked to be seen as being in the right place. Reference grade quality IT engineering and products. Be it the portable PS/2s with plasma screen, the PS/2 Note (iirc the 1st Notebook), the Thinkpad series, the microdrive and now this. They never try to go over the top. There is nothing really exceptionally spectacular about their ideas, but they allways manage to implement them in a way that it becomes a be

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