ThinkPads on the job

[bobcardone]

Hi all,
I started a new gig working on the ground crew for an aerial photography team.
We do most LPGA and PGA golf tourneys, so our "season" is just beginning.
Here's some shots of a couple of ThinkPads "in the field" at the LPGA ANA inspirational, held two weeks ago at the Mission Hills Country Club in Palm Springs, CA.

First, a W520 doing real time RF spectrum analysis of the signal from the camera in the air.
This machine was built from spares, a T520 lid with 1920 x 1080 display. Quad i7 with 16 gig of ram, 256 gb mSATA ssd and 1 tb data drive.



Next, the W520 and an X61 tablet that monitors a hex antenna array. The gear on the left is the receiver and the mpeg4 encoder.



Last, me hard at work (not). a real fun gig.



I'm off today for the LPGA LOTTE Championship at Ko Olina Golf Club in Kapolei, Hawaii. Should be a good trip.
Got some great comments from the network crew about the ThinkPads. There's still a lotta love for them out there.

[Tasurinchi]

Nice!

I like to see ThinkPads doing work. A thread like this was long due...

[Temetka]

Nice shots of some 'pads in action!

Secondly, this thread needs to be stickied.

Here's a shot of my new to me T430's



I work in IT. Tomorrow I'll have it hooked up to a rack at clients site while I troubleshoot their SDI/HDMI encoder (Granicus setup). I'm having to trick the AJA HA5-PLUS by feeding an HDMI signal to it from a dvd player because we don't have a DV camera that outputs over HDMI yet. Just one that outputs over RCA. So the audio signal gets embedded in the HDMI stream on its way over to the encoder box. The biggest problem is that the DVD player shuts off if there's no disc. But I don't want the DVD unit to output audio which will interfere with the audio stream that's coming over the RCA jacks.

Solution: create a 2 hour "movie" that consists of the clients logo on a black background. Burn to disc. Thought of it on the way home today. Created the movie on my T430s and I'll burn it tomorrow morning then go on-site and test my theory.

[RealBlackStuff]

Bit late, but this may help: http://www.tomsguide.com/answers/id-230 ... -hdmi.html

[FryPpy]

Other hint - may be DisplayPort to HDMI adapter can help your Thinkpad stream different audio and video sources to debugging devices....

[Omineca]

I just found out that my T430 will be my last work ThinkPad. We've been supplied with ThinkPads at work since I started, back in 2003. Lenovo's prices have been rising significantly in Canada (probably the result of the sliding dollar), so the IT department made the decision to change brands, and the replacement (coming in June) will be a Dell. It's the end of an era, but to be honest, the T430 wasn't my favourite ThinkPad. 16:9 screens don't have enough vertical real estate.

I may have to put together my own machine for work if I can't handle the Dell keyboard. If so, it will likely be a T410 ... for the 16:10 LCD.

[aptivaboy]

I still use my A30 occasionally to do typing at work. We have Dells at work with crappy keyboards and overly sensitive touchpads, so when I need to do some heavy laptop typing, I will sometimes bring out the Pad. It's gotten a raised eyebrow here and there from my students. They have no idea what a Trackpad is!

Bob

[bobcardone]

Aloha Mahalo!
Just finished the LPGA tournament at Ko Olina Golf Club Oahu, Hawaii.
We had a lot of rain and some frequency interference problems, but everything got worked out.
I brought one W520 and one T520 this time, the extra screen real estate was really helpful.
Gotta love ThinkPads, they worked hard 12 hours a day in inclement conditions without skipping a beat.
I'll be posting some pics after I get home to Florida this week.
Again, Aloha..

[bobcardone]

Aloha,
This trip was to Oahu, Hawaii for the LPGA Lotte Championship at the Ko Olina Golf Club. Everything went well, our aerial video came out great. Got some shots of breaching whales, nice boats and even a beachfront wedding! Even though we were on the leeward side of the island, it rained every day. A real test of the gear, especially the ThinkPads.

On this gig, in addition to the W520 running signal analysis I decided to use a T520 to monitor the hex antenna array. Originally, I was using my trusty X61 tablet, but the CCFL display was too hard to read outdoors. We also were able to watch the broadcast feed and monitor NOAA radar for weather conditions on the T520.

Here's the ground station...


Here's the antenna array


Here are the ThinkPads. The one on the right is a T520 i5 with 8g, 128g SSD, Intel graphics and a 1920 x 1080 hi gamut display.


Here's me hard at work


The next couple of trips are on the US east coast, so the travel won't be as brutal. We usually ship 6 to 8 crates of gear, and load in and load out can be a pain when you're exhausted from a long plane ride.

I'm sorry my trusty X61 tablet couldn't cut it. Really, it worked great except for the display, which is fine indoors but is unreadable outside. I may look into an LED backlight upgrade, but this X61 has the rare multitouch display. I'm afraid of screwing it up. A shame, as I've used this one as my main daily driver through 5 years of school and many other tasks.

I'm currently building up a T220 tablet to add to the setup. Specs are i5, 80g SSD, 8g, BT, and multitouch. We'll use this one to monitor the broadcast feed and local weather.

Mahalo for the interest and comments on this thread!
Each trip, I learn more about field deployment. The ThinkPad battalion is growing and becoming more battle hardened.

[RealBlackStuff]

Nice job to get such trips thrown in!
And also nice to hear that your ThinkPads are performing the way they should.

We have user xiphmont on the forum, who is really adept with LED-kits for the X61.
See this: viewtopic.php?f=30&t=114881
If you ask nicely, he may be even willing to help you out!

I would like to ask you though to keep the pictures a bit smaller on the forum, preferably something like 800x600.
And you can always post a link to bigger versions of your pictures.
There are lots of people who don't have such wide screens (or check the forum on their phone)...

[bobcardone]

I resized the images to 800, and will do so in the future. Sorry about that!
If the X220 doesn't fill the bill, I'll look into this...thanks!

We have user xiphmont on the forum, who is really adept with LED-kits for the X61.
See this: viewtopic.php?f=30&t=114881
If you ask nicely, he may be even willing to help you out!

Yeah, there are some perks...

Nice job to get such trips thrown in!

[theterminator93]

Here's one I snapped the other day while working on an image for an HP Stream (yuck!!) for one of my clients. Only 240 of them coming in over summer...

The trusty T601F FrankenPad still my weapon of choice in the field.