This computer could save your life

[dfumento]

http://cnet.nytimes.com/Lenovo_ThinkPad ... &tag=uolst

this little review is on the thinkpad's LCD lid quality ONLY.
the protection of the titanium plating on the back of the thinkpad's lid is a first. i am very convinced that it is the best screen protection any notebook can have. my cousin is in the US military and has been using this thinkpad in iraq ever since he was deployed there. the back of his screen, the titanium side, was shot twice by a 9mm pistol from enemy fire. concerned as he was, he attempted to turn on his computer back at basecamp and surpisingly the computer fired up normally and loaded windows. through what he says, the screen was slightly warped and there was a cluster of stuck and dead pixels. i am amazed that the screen even functions let alone the backlight even functioning. i am convinced that there is no other "test" that can beat this one. i rate this thinkpad 10/10 only based on the screen protection. i do not own this thinkpad so i cannot speak for any other part of the notebook other than the screen "test" ironically played upon my cousin fighting in the middle east.

[christopher_wolf]

Wow. Impressive if that story checks out. I wonder what the trajectory of the bullet and the incident angle upon impact were.

Way back, I heard that IBM/Lenovo was actually investigating a story like that. A Z Series with a Titanium lid got hit with several rounds from, what I think, was a 9mm pistol. It still worked when booted up. This is probably the same story.

I forgot what thread that was, but it was in the Z Series Forum as well.

The thread topic also reminds me of a scene from the James Bond movie, "Youy Only Live Twice" where "Tiger" Tanaka finished introduced the GyroJet guns and Rocket Cigarette to Bond.

Tiger: "It could save your life this cigarette could"

Bond: "You sound like a commercial"

[smek]

Just the shockwave from the bullet hitting the side of the thinkpad would brake or damage some of the more sensite parts on the thinkpad. And the heat thats generate would almost surely damage more than just the screen. Things like the CPU/HD/ and the mobo socket are pretty sensitive to shock, so even if the bullet didnt go through the cover it would do damage to one of those parts.

[christopher_wolf]

Just the shockwave from the bullet hitting the side of the thinkpad would brake or damage some of the more sensite parts on the thinkpad. And the heat thats generate would almost surely damage more than just the screen. Things like the CPU/HD/ and the mobo socket are pretty sensitive to shock, so even if the bullet didnt go through the cover it would do damage to one of those parts.

Well, it depends on the materials. The shockwave of the bullet wouldn't do something like that unless the material was *extremely*stiff and the waves propagated through as well as the target material being able to fully absorb and transmit the energy in an extremely short period of time. Given that the casing is not idealized as such, it wouldn't do that; especially if the bullet came through at an oblique angle, this seriously reduces the energy transfered per unit time since there is no "big" impulse to start with but just a hit-and-slide, to the point of contact. Head on, the bullet would have had a chance of going straight through and the engery would have been nearly completely transfered minus the energy of the bullet if, indeed, it left after a direct hit and penetration. Although that doesn't sound as if it was the case here.

The HDDs are also rated to around 300Gs operating shock when not on and ~1000G shocks when off, so it would take quite a force to move the local fixities around the HDD case to generate such high accelerations in a movement restricted situation (bag, computer case, etc).

[smek]

If the laptop was not somehow secured it would almost surely get off the ground, which would imply that the shock got to the ground and back into the laptop. I remember seeing a small steel plate getting shot on top of concrete and it went up into the air by several inches. That shock would almost surely go into the motherboard and its components. Looking at my z60t I have even more doubts on all of this, TP is a solid laptop, but its no match for a bullet.

Of course the person does a poor job of describing the situation, if the bullet did hit at an angle and the laptop being in less dense material like sand could make it a bit more believble. But as Lenovo said they are looking into it a while ago, and still having no results kind of puts more doubt into the story. I suspect that if it was true we would defently see some commercials or advertismnts about a bullet stopping thinkpad.

[christopher_wolf]

Yeah, we would see it in the "Thinkpad Legends" portion of their site where they show what certain Thinkpads have been through and survived.

Although I am pretty sure that a shockwave of that magnitude would imply that the bullet not only had enough force to do so, in which case it would have rather penetrated then transfer most of its energy to the rest of the Thinkpad, but would also occur through a direct impact. Now, if the Thinkpad was a solid slate of steel or a rather hard, but not brittle, material then, yes, the shock would get through because the material has the ability to stop the bullet in a shorter period, because it is far harder, of time and not lose *any* of the energy to the bullet exiting out the back; just physics.

Having the bullet go through something like a, relatively, fragile system like a laptop, as compared to a slab of metal of course, would still not generate anything like the great magnitudes of shockwaves you would see if you were to fire a bullet at the same sized replic of the laptop, but made out of steel. You would get some, but they would be minor given that the bullet would pass right through the laptop. This assumes a direct hit, and not what was probably an oblique impact which would generate an even smaller impulse to begin with.