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More fun with Wifi.


raymac46

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So last week I was helping one of my coffee break friends fix his Vista desktop. Removed 94 pieces of malware in the process.

Later on he called me and said his wife was complaining we had messed up her Internet access for her iPad. I explained that we could not screw up wifi while working on a wired connection to the gateway. So I tried phone troubleshooting their connection to the gateway but they kept saying the password didn't work when they tried to connect.

Went over to her house, rebooted the iPad. Turns out they were trying to connect to a neighbor's network. This was a little hard for me to understand, since the network they should have used was given the lady's first name. I took my own Android tablet along and connected to her network with her password, and the iPad did too after the reboot.

So on Tuesday I asked Bob how it was going. He said the iPad dropped the connection again 10 minutes after I left.

I said maybe the iPad has a problem. He said: "Well, she did drop it on the floor a week or so ago." :'(

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Yeah, I love how people who want help never mention all the facts until after you have spent hours or days trying to troubleshoot something!

Edited by zlim
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iPads can't survive a drop?! I would think tablets would be designed to be durable to drops especially since they don't have handles. Would my KindleHD also have a problem with a drop?

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V.T. Eric Layton

The ability to withstand an impact on a solid surface when dropped from any random height is NOT directly proportional to cost of said item.

 

Murphy's 11th Law of Gravitational Dynamics

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Guest LilBambi

RE: Laptop falls

 

Even if a laptop were to withstand a drop, (and it would depend on the type of surface, the distance, and whether the laptop is capable of auto parking the head quick enough), there is a good chance that the magnetic media drive (SATA OR IDE) will be damaged in an area, and that damage will come back to haunt and that sometimes with devastating results downline. Sometimes within a short period of time.

 

Laptops with SSDs are another story...no moving parts.

 

RE: Phones and tablets falls

 

I would think that the same would be true of the media is magnetic media with a floating head on a phone or tablet. And generally speaking many devices including iPhones, iPads, iPod Touch can withstand some drops as can Android devices and Kindles, etc. A lot of it is the luck of the draw on the type of drop; the distance, the velocity, what area of the device hits the floor, how many bounces, how many times it's survived a fall in the past, and just how lucky the device owner was on that particular fall. ;)

Edited by LilBambi
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RE: Laptop falls

 

Even if a laptop were to withstand a drop, (and it would depend on the type of surface, the distance, and whether the laptop is capable of auto parking the head quick enough), there is a good chance that the magnetic media drive (SATA OR IDE) will be damaged in an area, and that damage will come back to haunt and that sometimes with devastating results downline. Sometimes within a short period of time.

at least in the pc world, being able to survive a drop test was a standard feature for a laptop and expected without reservation. all the major pc magazines had a droptest as part of the basic reviews. As I recall, most of them were from the height of a standard office desk onto basic thin indoor office carpeting. and they did 2 tests - monitor hinge open and hinge closed.
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What about ruggedness?

 

 

Like all Toughbooks, the CF-U1 is built to last and take some punishment. It has a plastic/magnesium case, a sealed all-weather design with an IP65 rating, and it can survive 6-foot drops. It is also rain-, spill-, dust- and vibration- resistant in compliance with MIL-STD-810G testing procedures.

Note that the current Toughbook U1 models are tougher than they already were when they were introduced back in 2008. The ability to survive four-foot drops has now been boosted to surviving six-foot drops. And sealing was increased from IP54 to IP65. What does that mean?

What has come to be known as the "drop spec" is important because mobile computers are likely to be dropped, and one that's being operated in a standing position will likely fall about four feet. Hence, MIL-STD-810G, Method 516.6, Procedure IV describes a testing procedure for a four foot drop. Panasonic managed to increase that to an amazing six feet. More amazingly yet, the test, which mandates 26 drops in total onto 2-inch plywood, was conducted on the same unit that already had been dropped 26 times to four feet and 26 times to five feet. And the device was in "on" position during all those drops.

 

 

 

Looks like there is an official standard for drop tests. Where you would find out such information about a particular make or model I ain't got a clue. :fish:

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Guest LilBambi

Yep. For example:

 

Drop and Shock Resistance - Panasonic - re: Toughbook Extreme Testing

 

Dropped computers are a common cause of hard disk failures and broken LCD displays. Toughbook® mobile computers are tested to ensure they can survive falls as well as sudden high-force impacts to any part of the product's casing.

 

or:

 

Rugged Laptops: Essential to Business and Home? - Notebook Review

 

As any business executive who has had his laptop come crashing down from an overhead compartment at the end of a long flight can attest, a little ruggedness can go a long way. You don't necessarily need a laptop that can operate during a sand storm or in the driving rain, if the most difficult passage you'll face is a layover at O'Hare (no small feat in itself, but far from active duty). Simply adding a spill-resistant keyboard and a shock-mounted hard drive can mean the difference between a travel emergency and a smooth trip. For road warriors, a business-rugged or semi-rugged laptop sits in the sweet spot between a fully rugged model and a consumer-grade laptop. A fully rugged laptop has many features business travelers don't need; they only add to the weight and heft of a laptop, not to mention driving up the price, while offering no real benefit for most scenarios. And in many cases, you'll sacrifice performance with a fully rugged laptop because the sealed, all-weather case necessitates the use of a low-voltage CPU for the simple fact that it's harder to dissipate heat inside a sealed notebook.
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Guest LilBambi

Dropped my laptop - what to watch for ? - Tom's Hardware Forum

 

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops

 

Yesterday I accidentally pushed my HP Pavilion laptop off the table.

It seems to work, but I am wondering what should I watch for ?

Harddrive ? DVD drive ?

 

First response:

 

The HD would likely be the first place to suffer, although the AC

adapter jack, if AC was connected at the time, is the most fragile part

of many laptops. HDs are not nearly as fragile as they once were; most

are designed to protect from g-shock. Watch for file errors, startup

problems. Download the manufacturer's disk health utility to check the

disk. If the laptop works like it did, there is probability than

nothing was damaged at all.

 

 

Q

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Guest LilBambi

The reason I am more sensitive to this than maybe someone else is that I recently replaced a hard drive with an SSD for a client because of the same type of issue. It wasn't even a fall that went far, and they caught it before it hit the floor, but the hard drive was useless. It wouldn't reboot at all.

 

And that was a Toshiba laptop that was only about a year old which has a pretty aggressive hard drive parking mechanism in place.

Edited by LilBambi
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$700 and it can't survive a drop? a laptop would get excoriated for such a performance.

 

What laptop would survive a drop with no damage? Especially on the corner?

 

Adam

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I saw the lady's iPad and the screen looked OK. No signs of damage to the case either. Maybe the wifi chip got banged around or there's a loose connection somewhere. I advised them to have Apple check it out if it keeps happening.

I remember dealing with a similar problem a few years ago on a router that was dropped off a desk onto the floor, only this time the wifi worked OK and the wired switch was broken. Anyway dropping stuff isn't always advisable.

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Right. It is more likely that a software issue is causing the issue. I've ripped several iOS devices apart this year, and the wifi antenna connection is not going to just pop off. It is very secure.

 

Adam

 

PS- also important to set that other network to be "forgotten" by the device... that way, it will not attempt to connect to it anymore.

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Guest LilBambi

Exactly! It can be very annoying for it to be popping up like that. Sometimes in certain parts of people's homes, the neighbor's AP is actually stronger than their own.

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I have a wifi helper app called Wifi Fixer that seems to work OK with Android. I assume the Apple ecosystem wouldn't permit anything like that.

Edited by raymac46
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Guest LilBambi

It's not needed. You can just tell it to forget your neighbor's AP. It's built in on iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch.

Edited by LilBambi
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  • 2 weeks later...

Now today my neighbor behind me called and said his wifi router (a decent enough Linksys N I gave him for free) was giving problems. He kept getting messages saying he could not connect to the Internet, so he removed the router and connected directly to his modem. I asked him how his iPad and iMac laptop were working. No answer.

So I explained that most of the time these issues are caused by external problems and unless you have drop-kicked it, the router is usually very very unlikely to be the source of them. In all my troubleshooting I have never seen the bad connection to be on the LAN.

So he said "Could a cable cause the problem? One of my cables had the end broken and the little clip that snaps into the socket on the router is gone." I sent him home with a new cable to experiment further.

Edited by raymac46
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One of my cables had the end broken and the little clip that snaps into the socket on the router is gone.
I'm curious how he "attached" that cable to the router - duct tape? hysterical.gif
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V.T. Eric Layton

I'll give that Linksys N a nice home should that neighbor decide that he/she doesn't want it any longer. ;)

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