Indestructable 2611-472
Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2006 3:12 pm
I just heard a story that I am sure many ThinkPad users will enjoy regarding the durability of ThinkPads... at least the 1472i model.
I had bought my son a 1472i (2611-472) a few years ago when he was in college. As soon as I got it, I had removed Win98 and done a clean install of W2K, and it ran fine with that.
After a couple of years the 6.2 GB hard drive died, so I got a bigger one from Bill at ThinkPads.Com and changed it with his help on directions to get it apart (since that with that model it is not intended by IBM that you can change the hard drive).
Then that hard drive died just after the three year warranty ran out, but Hitachi came through with another one to replace it free in spite of the expired warranty since I explained how it had actually died before the warranty expired by a couple of months but he didn't know what was wrong until I went there for his graduation from college and retrieved the machine to have a look at it.
Finally he finished college and went to flight training for the Air Force in Mississipi, and while he was there it quit working, so when I went to attend his graduation from Flight Training, I brought it back to Hawaii with me to trouble shoot it, and discovered that the keyboard had failed, so I bought a keyboard for him from IBM Parts, and maxed out the RAM at the same time mostly because Norton Ghost Recovery CD wouldn't run with less than with (I think it was 256K of Ram).
Since then, he has been using it with a wireless network card in his cardbus slot for internet access, and carrying it all over the world.... he is flying C-17's for the Air Force now... and he just told me on his last trip he had his ThinkPad just sitting on top of his bag under his seat in the back of the C-17 while he was deadheading back on the last leg of the trip, rather than in his waterproof Pelican computer case where he normally carries it while travelling, and the person who was landing made a kind of rough one unexpectedly and his Thinkpad went flying out from under his seat, across the cargo bay, bounced off a container, then flew all the way up to the front of the cargo bay and slammed against the cockpit bulkhead and came to rest.
The loadmaster picked it up and brought it back to him, and...... it turned on and it works perfectly and was completely undamaged!!
I'll bet there is not another brand of notebook that could survive that!
I had bought my son a 1472i (2611-472) a few years ago when he was in college. As soon as I got it, I had removed Win98 and done a clean install of W2K, and it ran fine with that.
After a couple of years the 6.2 GB hard drive died, so I got a bigger one from Bill at ThinkPads.Com and changed it with his help on directions to get it apart (since that with that model it is not intended by IBM that you can change the hard drive).
Then that hard drive died just after the three year warranty ran out, but Hitachi came through with another one to replace it free in spite of the expired warranty since I explained how it had actually died before the warranty expired by a couple of months but he didn't know what was wrong until I went there for his graduation from college and retrieved the machine to have a look at it.
Finally he finished college and went to flight training for the Air Force in Mississipi, and while he was there it quit working, so when I went to attend his graduation from Flight Training, I brought it back to Hawaii with me to trouble shoot it, and discovered that the keyboard had failed, so I bought a keyboard for him from IBM Parts, and maxed out the RAM at the same time mostly because Norton Ghost Recovery CD wouldn't run with less than with (I think it was 256K of Ram).
Since then, he has been using it with a wireless network card in his cardbus slot for internet access, and carrying it all over the world.... he is flying C-17's for the Air Force now... and he just told me on his last trip he had his ThinkPad just sitting on top of his bag under his seat in the back of the C-17 while he was deadheading back on the last leg of the trip, rather than in his waterproof Pelican computer case where he normally carries it while travelling, and the person who was landing made a kind of rough one unexpectedly and his Thinkpad went flying out from under his seat, across the cargo bay, bounced off a container, then flew all the way up to the front of the cargo bay and slammed against the cockpit bulkhead and came to rest.
The loadmaster picked it up and brought it back to him, and...... it turned on and it works perfectly and was completely undamaged!!
I'll bet there is not another brand of notebook that could survive that!
