I love Thinkpad notebooks.  Short of a Panasonic Toughbook, they are the most rugged notebook computers I’ve ever used.  Yesterday, while traveling home from General Assembly, I stopped in the men’s room at the Atlanta airport.  I hung my backpack on the hook on the door, turned away  to do my thing, and heard my pack *crunch* sickeningly onto the floor.  I finished up, then opened my pack and peeked in.  Nothing appeared to be out of place so I closed it up and left.

I sat down in the gate area, took the notebook out, and looked it over.  The back left corner is cracked and the main chassis has a slight arc now along the back edge.  With a deep breath, I opened the lid and watched it come out of sleep mode!  Keyboard and trackpad worked, but it wouldn’t find any wireless networks available at all.  Feeling sick, I packed it up again and got ready to board my flight thinking that I was going to have to repair this laptop or buy a USB wireless dongle just one month before buying a new laptop.   How bad is that.

My flight from Atlanta to Raleigh-Durham went quickly, helped by the new XM radio system available on the flight.  At home, I did a full shutdown/reboot of the laptop and the wireless system came back to life!  This afternoon, I downloaded the hardware service manual, disassembled the main chassis as far as I could, vacuumed out all the cat hair (yeesh!) and reassmbled it.  This removed the curve from the rear of the chassis and everything is working well again.

I’m virtually certain had I been carrying a Dell notebook yesterday I would have found it in parts in my backpack.  They just don’t have the same rugged quality as Thinkpads.  I don’t know about Toshiba or HP notebooks.  I look forward to the new Lenovo ThinkPad T61p I’m planning on buying very soon.