[ltp] Tightening hinges on Thinkpads

[Noah Dain]

On Sun, Mar 16, 2008 at 11:56 AM, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh
<hmh@hmh.eng.br> wrote:
> On Sun, 16 Mar 2008, Marius Gedminas wrote:
>  > On Sun, Mar 16, 2008 at 12:22:09AM +0000, Ted Frater wrote:
>  > > however you should never open any laptop with one hand. youll eventually
>  > > crack the lcd. always use 2 hands.
>  >
>  > That's interesting.  This is what IBM says (or used to say):
>  >
>  >   ThinkPad notebook covers are engineered with ?smart latches? that make
>  >   the cover easy to open ? even with one hand.  Two latches are
>
>  All new ThinkPad covers were made to be opened one-handed.
>
>  But that doesn't mean you should not excercise care, and open it by applying
>  force to the middle point between the hinges (instead of one of the side
>  corners of the cover), while firmly holding the base at the same point.
>
>  Don't expect a ThinkPad that is treated like so much a piece of junk, tossed
>  around, swinged around one-handed, carried open by a corner... to last five
>  years without breaking.
>
>  I've seen many of the administrative personell do it (and boy, do they get
>  really pissed when you bill them for the repairs, but we do AND give them
>  the ugliest piece of crap we have around as a replacement while their laptop
>  is being repaired).  It is less common among the techies.
>
>  ThinkPads are sturdy, but you still need to take good care of them, if you
>  want them to last.

I'll pipe up here, since I've just gotten a brand new T61.

So far, it is one tight mother.  Two hands are still needed to open
it, but the latching mechanism just requires use of one thumb to free
it.  Thus far it exhibits zero wobble when open.

I just hope they are not over-tightening at the factory to counter
something happening like looseness or wobble down the line, or worse,
to cover up some sort of manufacturing defect.  But, as it has been
said, never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained
by stupidity.

All that said, I'm more than happy with it.  And they've even improved
the design, fixing a pet peeve of mine.  On my old R40 the lid was
loose when closed.  Sometime between now and then they fixed that by
adding two hollow slight bubbled areas on the bottom of the screen
frame.  When 99% closed, the "bubbles" press against the area just
north of the keyboard and give just enough force to keep it firmly in
place when the latch is engaged.

very nice work there, imo.

-- 
Noah Dain
"The beatings will continue, until morale improves" - the Management