Laptop Security Check

Bill Arnold

1974
Staff member
Messages
8,622
Location
Thomasville, GA
LOML and I are leaving on a cruise Saturday. I took my laptop on our last cruise and had nothing but trouble after getting on the ship. Now, I know people carry laptops and all kinds of other personal electronics on planes, ships, etc., with no problem. It's just an interesting coincidence that my old laptop was working fine, then it went through the scanner as required and gave me nothing but trouble afterward. I had to replace it when we returned home.

So, what say the experts here? Do I take my laptop or leave it at home?
 
I've never had issues when flying with any of my electronic. Just be sure they are powered down (not in stand-by) and they should be fine. I suspect that you were probably going to need a new laptop soon with your last one, just happened to be at the wrong time.

Only thing I'd suggest is make sure things are up to date and to try and mark your network connections as "Public" so that the OS doesn't open up firewalls and allow your computer info to be compromised.

Though, the best policy is to just not use it...just enjoy the vacation. ;)
 
I agree this sounds like an odd coincidence. I have traveled with computers for nearly 30 years and never had security scans or handling result in any type of system failure. Now, me dropping one down the stairs at the airport in front of everybody . . . that was pretty impactive; to the PC and to my pride :D.
 
... Though, the best policy is to just not use it...just enjoy the vacation. ;)

Well, there's that, too! :thumb:

I don't actually do any "work" on it, since I'm retired, but I always have some design drawings I like to work on when on any kind of trip. Also, I make backups of all photos we take each day.
 
My 9 1/2 year old Dell Laptop has been with me for about 50,000 air miles per year and 10,000 land miles, and never a problem other than logging into strange WiFi or wired network configurations in foreign hotels. I have never worried about whether the computer was hibernated or sleep or off.
 
I have never worried about whether the computer was hibernated or sleep or off.

Only reason I turn them off is that they (at least mine) will start itself up from time to time if in standby mode. Having it do any reading/writing while getting jolted could cause the heads to move suddenly and cause data loss/corruption.
 
Years ago I did a lot of traveling lecturing to other doctors. I always carried my up-to-date computer with me. I never had any problems with it.

Disclaimer: My up-to-date computer was made of wood and plastic with about 6 mini rivits---It was called a Slide Rule.

Enjoy,
JimB

The only part of the slide rule that gave me problems was the nut that held it up off of the floor.
Slide_rule_scales_front.jpg
 
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Only reason I turn them off is that they (at least mine) will start itself up from time to time if in standby mode. Having it do any reading/writing while getting jolted could cause the heads to move suddenly and cause data loss/corruption.

I came here to say the same thing. ;)
 
Only reason I turn them off is that they (at least mine) will start itself up from time to time if in standby mode. Having it do any reading/writing while getting jolted could cause the heads to move suddenly and cause data loss/corruption.

Ahem...as far as I know (there's that, for sure)...my laptop was shut down. But......:beer:
 
Years ago I did a lot of traveling lecturing to other doctors. I always carried my up-to-date computer with me. I never had any problems with it....

Back in the mid to late 1980s, I was working on a construction project at the Albuquerque airport. My computer at the time was an early IBM desktop. I don't remember if it was an AT or an XT, but you had to put the 5 1/4" floppy in it to boot it. Old school. At about that same time Kaypro and Compaq were coming out with the first portable PCs. They fit in a box that was about the size of a sewing machine case, and they sported whopping 5" or 6" screens. True modern marvels, lol.

One day I was moving my computer from one office in the airport to another. I was carrying the desktop unit with the monitor on top of it, and the keyboard on top of the monitor, held in place with my chin. It was an armful, to say the least. As I was going down an escalator, surrounded by a bunch of newly arrived passengers, a guy going up the opposite escalator pointed at the stack of gear I was carrying and said "You ought to look into getting one of those portable jobs."
 
I had one of those Compaq portables when I was in Grad school. Was one of the only folks with a computer at that time.

One time when I moved, the movers asked what it was and suggested 'sewing machine'. I said, Yeah, Sewing machine, because that would have been worth more...

I upgraded it with a self installed 20 MEGA byte hard drive and it was the bomb!
 
...I upgraded it with a self installed 20 MEGA byte hard drive and it was the bomb!

I was runnin' with the big dogs when they upgraded my airport PC with a 40 meg hard card. There was no bay for a hard drive, but you could buy a ISA (?) card with a hard drive attached. Sorta amazing to think that back in those days, a terabyte of storage would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. And now it's about a hundred bucks.
 
...At about that same time Kaypro and Compaq were coming out with the first portable PCs. They fit in a box that was about the size of a sewing machine case, and they sported whopping 5" or 6" screens. True modern marvels, lol.
....

You left out my favorite... I had an Osborne before my Compaq.

Those were the days when, to demonstrate applications that ran on a network, we had to put two computers on the plane as baggage - one as a client and one as a server (in the days before laptops were powerful enough to do anything useful). If two of us were traveling each would check one system as baggage, and pray as they came down the baggage carousel. We usually had to carry monitors, too, since each monitor took a different driver. Or we would spend $1000 to rent a projector for the day (before they were small enough to carry) for the presentation.
 
Okay, a bit OT but, we keep a boneyard of interesting items from other eras in the corner of one of our network labs at work. I just walked down the hall, pulled this out from under a table, opened it up and took a picture. This old "luggable" still boots :D:D:D.

PC Luggable.jpg

We also have some old Cisco AGS+ routers from early in the space shuttle program.
 
Jim, it was surprising to see a picture of the slide rule. I still have my K&E slide rule in its "orange" leather case. It was useful at the time & served its purpose, but I cannot remember how to use it now. I remember shelving it when I bought my first hand held calculator. As I recall, it was called the Bowmar Brain & came out around the same time as the TI calculators were popular. Every once in a great while I stumble upon the slide rule & think back how things were & how much things have changed. In many ways, things are so much easier, sometimes too easy.

As for computers, my first was the PC Junior. That was quite the experience at the time.
 
Okay, a bit OT but, we keep a boneyard of interesting items from other eras in the corner of one of our network labs at work. I just walked down the hall, pulled this out from under a table, opened it up and took a picture. This old "luggable" still boots :D:D:D.

wow.... We also call our storage area "the Boneyard"... we also have a bit of a "museum" going.
But Id don't have a camera with me, and there is no *way* I'm going to try doing this with a web cam on my iMac. :doh:

(we've got parts of a PDP 11/03, I saw a closed up Osborne portable (couldn't see a model#), something called a Northstar (wooden sided computer)
Let alone the more "modern" Sun 3/50 back there. We should put them in a display case somewhere...
 
Wow Pdp 11 now there is something i have not heard in a long time. :)

Good old days.

What about times before the computer based slide shows for presentations.

Try going to a communist country during cold war and hiring a carousel projector. Then use your made up at enormous expense graphic slides in English to present a hi tech product to a bunch of factory party comittee workers in the age group of Brezhnev before he retired, and do the presentation in English through a old guard translator....gosh i think i deserve a medal for being stupid enough to try.

Later we lugged those enormous projectors around in carry on bags. Try taking them through customs of some countries. :)

Oh boy those were the days.

I remember a couple of Greek guys i studied with doing a dry cleaning business plan on an old Sinclair. lol.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81




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Back in about 1985, I was part of a start up company in Houston... my partner and I wanted a computer to handle the day to day operation and packing lists etc for our shipments.... we both had worked for and left a local company that ran a pretty sophisticated packing and purchase order system on a Four Phase or Phase Four.(they were based out of Oakland, CA... it was a custom written program, so that wasn't available - plus the owner had objected to his employees leaving and taking a couple of customers with them -- we contacted a local programmer and set up for him to do a similar system for us ... he brought in a Compaq portable computer and tried to sell it to us... plus they were looking for investors at the time and a few dollars would have gotten us a few shares of stock... if I had had the foresight, I might be leisurely retired now instead of just retired. I remember the unit was just about the size of a bread box, with the keyboard being the front of the unit and it had a yellow screen. Back in those days, most computers had either a grey screen like the Four Phase or the green screen CRT's... which always gave me trouble when I worked on them for long periods of time... I worked on one at TWA in SFO and after 4 or 5 hours, when I looked up at the schedule board, which was black with the white letters that pushed into the slots in the black felt board... the letters would always be pink instead of white. I had a friend there that had the same problem... we finally concluded that it had something to do with having blue eyes... another friend with brown eyes thought we were nuts as he had no problems.
 
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