Have you ever accidentally dropped your PDA and had its lovely screen damaged as a result? How about your laptop?
While this has happened to a couple of my friends, I have been fortunate, even though I have not always used a protective case. I’ve dropped several PDAs before but it has generally been when I had them in my shirt pocket and bent over, dropping them only a couple of feet onto soft carpet. After doing this a few times I got smart enough to get cases for them.
I recently became aware that Otterbox is now making a case for the 8800 series BlackBerry. It has some great specs:
- Additional bump, scratch & drop protection
- Light rain protection
- Belt clip is included with purchase of case
- Donaldson Acoustic vents on the top and front speakers
- Fully interactive through the case
- 3 Layers of protection: (1) Thermal formed protective clear membrane protects the screen, (2) Hi-impact polycarbonate, (3) Silicone skin to absorb bump and shock
Drop and shock protection is to Military Standard MIL-STD 810F: 36inches to plywood on concrete.
While they do not yet have a case for my BlackBerry Curve, my understanding is that they are working on one. I suspect I will get it when it becomes available.
While I have owned cases for my PDAs before, I have never gotten one for my laptop or other hardware. How about you? Turns out that Otterbox makes a variety of hardware cases and it looks to me like they are rugged. I’d like to hear your thoughts on hardware protection.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
My Dell X50V is by far the nicest PDA I have owned. Based on prior experiences, I use a rhino-skin aluminum case and a screen protector. Because I take my x50v almost everywhere, the chances of a bad drop are greatly increased.
The only down side – my case isn’t water resistant at all. This means I need to consider the weather. There are times were I will bring a small zip-lock bag if I am going to be outdoors for a day, with a chance of rain.
I have three laptops, two at home and one for work. The only laptop that travels is my work laptop (occasionally one of my other laptops will leave home). My two personal laptops each have there own padded bag. Nothing extravagant. I use to have a nice leather bag for my work laptop, but I bought a backpack instead. The leather bag weighed a fair amount empty, which only added to the overall weight once I packed my laptop and all accessories. My backpack works much nicer, and it is becoming more common in the work place.
Good discussion of how you protect yours, twm. I used rhino-skin for a while, but ultimately went with Sena for my Dell x51v, mostly for aesthetics, but found that it offers adequate protection as well. I suppose that when my x51v croaks I will go for an HP 200, and may get an Otterbox case for it, if they provide one (they seem to provide cases for HP but not Dell). Hopefully I still have a lot of mileage left on the Dell, though.
Although I have had various leather padded cases for my laptops, I tend to use a canvas bag when traveling, because it is lighter. A few associates have done like you and gone the route of a backpack, which is a very functional approach, and as you note is becoming much more common in the work place.
Thanks for sharing.
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