Well it finally happened to me. I was working on my notebook, and was finishing up archiving a directory. So while that was going on, I decided to get up and stretch not knowing that my foot was tangled with the notebook's power chord. Well, all it took was me to move a little, and the next thing I know and to my horror my notebook falls off the table onto the ground.

Now, at this point it wasn't quite finished read/writing to the notebook's hard disk, and as soon as it hits the ground all goes off. Holding my breath, and running through every single expletive in my mind, I pick up my notebook and place it carefully back on the table. Note, the notebook sustained ~3 ft fall, and also the floor is carpeted.

Still running expletives in my head, I reconnect the power chord, made sure it wasn't near my foot anymore, turned it on, and waited with bated breath. It took slightly longer to powerup than before, ~5 seconds before even the HP logo came on the screen, after that I waited. My boot screen (lilo) came up, and I chose Windows, and again I waited for any sudden clicks to come out, none did.

So then I do the usual chkdsk, with a thorough check, and luckily everything checks, no bad writes or even bad sectors. Rebooted, and everything works normally now, sound, peripherals, etc. Plus the way it fell to the ground was lucky, it did not fall on the screen or side, mostly just flat. So after all that, everything is still functional....*phew*

PS: I wonder if my notebook has one of those motion detectors for the drive, where a sudden jolt or drop would immediately stops the hard drive. I can't put my finger on this 'feature' but remember that it was offered on certain dell/ibm notebooks, and wonder if HP has/had something similar. I got my notebook three years ago, and it was even a year or so after this 'technology' was introduced.

PPS: My old desktop has now passed the 10 year mark, and its still kicking.

Luckily, it sounds like a tough little notebook

I dodged something of a fatal bullet myself earlier this evening: while making supper, the main large burner element on our stove decided to fail, by arcing out from its heating core, through whatever material the element is made of, and welded itself to the pot I was cooking with :/

Luckily I wasn't standing in a puddle of water in my bare feet and holding onto the pot with both hands... The burner's toast, anyhow, but supper was pretty good

I'll say! Sounds like some faulty wiring with your kitchen appliances.

Much as I dislike the Apple business model, I have long believed every laptop should have something like magsafe.

notebooks have fall sensors, when they detect they are fallining they park the disk head spin down the cdrom and shut the power off.

Going to fire mine up again; K6-III/450 with 128MB, 2GB + 80GB HD running Slackware12 for server purposes. It had to take a 6 months break due to temporary space constraints.

You should cook on gas Much safer

Man, I was expecting you to throw in there somewhere, "And then BANG! and stuff around me indicated that a high speed piece of metal narrowly avoided my face and/or vital organ"


besides.. on a job I had hooking up cable, I had to climb into the attic via an extension ladder set at about 14 feet. I took my laptop into the attic so I could provision the modem off the homerun while I dropped customs in the rest of the house.

On the way out, I grabbed hold of part of the frame of the attic to support myself on the way down, and the POS broke. I sacrificed my laptop in order to grab onto the ladder and keep from taking that fall myself.

Laptop is fine still. The lid is a little loose, but it'll stay shut when it's held upside down.

Are you sure that isn't supposed to be "waited with baited breath" LOL

I agree that I should cook with gas; I much prefer that over electric. Some years ago, I cooked for a restaurant, and came to appreciate gas at that time, and ever since, electric just doesn't cut it.

As to whether of not it's 'safer', I dunno. It prolly gives us cancer. But, I won't go into that here. I'll save it for the swine flu thread.

PS - this is an old stove, but not ancient, though about a year ago I salvaged some of the small-size elements from a discarded stove because one of our small ones was toast. In retrospect, I should have salvaged ALL of the elements from that discarded stove, since I now need the large one. Lol @ hindsight -- always 20/20

Sasha

Probably. I can't spell as well as I used to.

Just joking! You didn't mention whether this all happened while on a fishing trip...

The other day I narrowly avoided being burnt. Wiped down the worktop, then moved on and started wiping the (electric) cooker top - that I'd been cooking on about ten minutes before! Fortunately I noticed steam come off the cloth before any part of me touched the rings.