IBM is adding chips to park heads when the laptop senses an acceleration that could represent falling off a table, etc.
The crash chips are found in IBM's new ThinkPad R50 and T41 models, which start at $1,529 and $1,649 respectively.
Commentary:
So, does this strike anyone else as potentially hilarious?
Imagine, your late, the project is not done, you run out of the office laptop under your arm, hop onto the subway, bus, taxi, train, airplane sit down, open your laptop and jump back in where you left off. All the sudden bump, thump... A pot hole, rough railroad bed, or air turbulence and your staring at a blank screen because your laptop just shutdown. Restart, hopefully no data was lost, or worse yet the whole file wasn't corrupted. Back to work and again bump, thump and another shutdown.
I can see it now:
Standing in front of the board of directors explaining that no, your dog did not eat the report, it was devoured by turbulence on your flight...
If you're a road warrior I'd avoid these models until a few thousand get into regular use and the sensitivity of the new detection circuits is proven.
When it comes to new engineering ideas:
"Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."
Feature announcement from Yahoo news
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=528&e=3&u=/ap/20031011/ap_on_hi_te/ibm_laptops
By BRIAN BERGSTEIN, AP Technology Writer
The crash chips are found in IBM's new ThinkPad R50 and T41 models, which start at $1,529 and $1,649 respectively.
Commentary:
So, does this strike anyone else as potentially hilarious?
Imagine, your late, the project is not done, you run out of the office laptop under your arm, hop onto the subway, bus, taxi, train, airplane sit down, open your laptop and jump back in where you left off. All the sudden bump, thump... A pot hole, rough railroad bed, or air turbulence and your staring at a blank screen because your laptop just shutdown. Restart, hopefully no data was lost, or worse yet the whole file wasn't corrupted. Back to work and again bump, thump and another shutdown.
I can see it now:
Standing in front of the board of directors explaining that no, your dog did not eat the report, it was devoured by turbulence on your flight...
If you're a road warrior I'd avoid these models until a few thousand get into regular use and the sensitivity of the new detection circuits is proven.
When it comes to new engineering ideas:
"Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."
Feature announcement from Yahoo news
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=528&e=3&u=/ap/20031011/ap_on_hi_te/ibm_laptops
By BRIAN BERGSTEIN, AP Technology Writer