28 October, 2009

Foam.

Foam absorbs shock, so it must be good for laptops, right? Not quite.

This is a piece of foam used to pad out my laptop case. Since it's the same size as my laptop, I used it to support my laptop for a while. When my laptop was on the foam, I could feel some vibrations under the wrist rest, maybe from the fan or harddisk.

I just got a widget called "Seismometer", which uses the harddisk accelerometer to measure movements. This is what I measured with my laptop on the foam:

While taking it off and placing it on the table:


The bumps in the middle are me moving the laptop. At the bottom is on the foam, and the top is on the table.
Just on the table:


As you can see, there is a measurable difference between having your laptop on foam and on the table. Vibration is very bad for harddisks, so I don't put my laptop on the foam anymore.

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