A funny thing happened

I was working on a new system last week. Its a water filtering system. I had my laptop online and was working next to the control panel. We were testing the drain part of the logic. This is the part where we pump water at a high volumn from one tank to another. The project engineer was supposed to be watching the hose, it was only tied down with tie wraps at the moment. I imagine most of you can already guess what happened next. The hose came loose, blew straight up in the air and created a nice arc of water that headed straight at me. I was monitoring the program and was not watching when this little surprise happened. This huge stream of water landed straight on my laptop striking it right on the keyboard. Needless to say, me and the laptop got soaked. Luckily for me, it also soaked the project engineer and a couple of bystanders. I felt bad for the bystanders. I thought my laptop was a goner (when was the last time I backed up those programs). After blowing the laptop out with an air hose, taking it apart and drying it out with a heat gun, it started working again. I took a little longer to dry out. I have gotten a little teasing in the last week, seems the story got around to most of the other plant personal.

P.S. Note to myself, back up those programs tommorrow.

Hi Mark,

Got to ask…What was the brand on the laptop, I dropped my Sony from 4ft…it did not fair well, I’m beta testing a Dell…just looking for the next one to try, it sounds like you gave it the water test…

All I can say is I'm glad for you that it was only water you got sprayed with and not the any of the chemicals that get pumped in to maintain pH or to disinfect the water.

Mark
Its a Dell Inspiron 6000. Anyone remember that little joke on computers about 20 years ago, "Water detected in Drive A:".

Steve
Its a new system, still using clean city water for testing. Later
on, there will be caustics, chemicals and other nasty critters.
Sprayed is kind of an understatement, it was more like a 2" stream of water .

That happened to me except it was hydraulic oil. Fortunately my company supplies the laptops. That thing self destructed in a matter of weeks after all the plastic got "eaten alive" by the oil.

You need this:

http://www.gd-computing.com/index.cfm?page=Products:XR-1

http://www.gd-computing.com/upload/videos/Storm-Warning_GoBook-XR-1_2.wmv

Although I'm using our company standard IBM, I picked up one of THESE a little while back for our maintenance techs on the floor. Works great, and is supposed to be proof against up to four inches of water(rain) per hour.... Which I guess can equate to a couple of blasts from a low pressure hose when an operator is cleaning their machine off.

Previously, we'd used a Toughbook, but had some issues with the power connector to the motherboard. After sending the notebook out for repair for the same exact problem half a dozen times, I decided to try a different line...

I had a couple of panasonic tough books that were pretty good, I think they still make them.


I just got a Lenovo (IBM) T60. This thing can actually sense when it is being dropped and park the heads on the hard drive before it hits the ground. It must have some accelerometers in it I guess. It has a little display screen showing the orientation of the machine and when you tip it on the desk, the picture of the laptop tips. How cool is that?

Anyway so far so good. I have always liked IBM laptops, the keyboard is excellent and it still has a pointer in the middle for a mouse along with a touchpad. I have always hated touch pads and I think that Lenovo is the only company still putting pointers on their machines. Also I am getting about 4 hours battery life while using wireless. I can actually go on the floor and figure something out before the machine dies!! If the problem lasts longer than that I am in trouble anyway.

I will try to avoid the water test as I know the company paid a lot of $$$$ for this thing.

Also, be careful with the heat gun, they can get hot enough to fry electrons.

I have look into the rugged laptop’s they are very good but…I can’t justify the cost, I can get a Dell for 1/4 of the cost, to me (Marks point) backup your drive (regularly) maybe even ghost-it, then if something happens…get another.

You sure that laptop was a DELL and not a TIMEX?

John Camron Buskell

You have to old to put that one together

Look at the bright side, you now have a clean laptop. Good as new.