Comment Re:Reliability (Score 1) 216
I met a well known mountain climber recently who mentioned that he has been bringing laptops to Mt Everest for years now, but they all stop working above a certain altitude due to the air pressure drop (and, to a lesser extent, the temperature). Apparently it has been a big problem for the work they do for years now.
At altitude, the hard drives basically seize up, and the LCD displays develop a faint spiderweb pattern that makes the picture difficult to discern. Once they come back down, things start working normally again -- the hard drive starts spinning again and the LCD goes back to normal. Above a certain level though, the traditional laptop technology just doesn't work right.
He mentioned that they used to use original hard drive based iPods for data collection they do at the summits, but the flash based Nanos are much more reliable for their needs (not to mention smaller, lighter, and longer battery life...). Once the laptops start shipping with some kind of reliable solid state storage, they'll migrate to those also.
At altitude, the hard drives basically seize up, and the LCD displays develop a faint spiderweb pattern that makes the picture difficult to discern. Once they come back down, things start working normally again -- the hard drive starts spinning again and the LCD goes back to normal. Above a certain level though, the traditional laptop technology just doesn't work right.
He mentioned that they used to use original hard drive based iPods for data collection they do at the summits, but the flash based Nanos are much more reliable for their needs (not to mention smaller, lighter, and longer battery life...). Once the laptops start shipping with some kind of reliable solid state storage, they'll migrate to those also.
