News Laptops incorporate drop-protection 'airbags'

From New Scientist:

The world's first laptops incorporating automatic protection against the damage caused by a drop have been launched by US computer maker IBM.

The new ThinkPad systems use an onboard accelerometer to detect a sudden fall. If an impact seems imminent, then within a tenth of a second the computer's hard drive stops writing data and the read/write head is retracted to a safe position.

This is to protect the drive from damage that can result from jarring. An impact can cause the drive's heads to skid across the magnetic disks used to store information inside a hard drive, creating unusable sectors and erasing data.

More here

Damn. I was disapointed to learn that it doesn't involve an airbag at all - I had visions of students using their notebooks as pillows in boring lectures....

 

I was thinking the same thing.

Airbags would rock, if they didn't have to be re-manufactured in order to be retracted back in.

(Modding idea anyone?)

 

Great, except the only problem is that whenever one of the guys here drops a laptop the one single thing I've never had a problem with is the HDD.

Screens, which cost 500 quid a pop to replace always seem to be the things that go.

 

Agreed, it would be better to protect the screen - somehow. ThinkPad's are horrably expensive to get service done one them with the screen being the single most expensive and most often busted part.

 

Well ate least they are trying, hopefully they will discover a way to portect the screen.

 

pretty cool idea anyway