During the December 2006 Annual Convention of the Computing Society of the Philippines at Regency Hotel in Boracay, Aklan, a colleague dropped his laptop on the concrete floor of the Regency Convention Center. The laptop was in its protective computer bag, but the bag slipped from his shoulder and dropped onto the floor. When he tried using the laptop, it could be turned on, but the screen does not light up, even if there is not a single crack on the LCD screen. By connecting the laptop to an external monitor, he was able to copy his Powerpoint presentation to a USB flashdrive, but his laptop was unusable during the entire convention. The laptop was still under warranty, and so even if repairs cost PHP25,000.00, my colleague did not spend anything for the repair.
The moral of this story is: provide adequate protection for your expensive laptop, by carrying it in a properly padded computer bag. The padding must be thick on all sides (front and back), and even at the edges (top, bottom, left, right) since the bottom edge is usually the first to hit the floor when the laptop is accidentally dropped. Such a laptop bag can be very expensive. I use a cheap laptop bag that is sufficiently padded front and back, but not at the edges. To provide additional padding, I use bubble wrap as shown in the pictures. I wrap the laptop using two layers of bubble wrap, before putting it in its bag. This is primitive but inexpensive "failsafe". A third-world solution? See http://360.yahoo.com/prmanalastas for the pictures referred to here.
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