Commuting with a laptop

So does anyone do it? Could be moving to different sites for a few weeks at a time, and where I am at the moment has no lockers. Do you pad your pannier or just chuck it in with your clothes?

Hmmzis

Just chuck it in with the clothes. Just remember to power it off before putting it in the bag .

My back pack is waterproof and with a waterproof rain cover, so water ingress is not an issue.

DirkVoodoo

Dónal wrote: »

So does anyone do it? Could be moving to different sites for a few weeks at a time, and where I am at the moment has no lockers. Do you pad your pannier or just chuck it in with your clothes?

I do it every day.

I just use a standard neoprene sleeve, nothing fancy, and pad it out with my clothes. It's in a deuter backpack, which is fairly secure so it doesn't bounce around and has a rain cover.

So far so good.

daragh_

Couple of times a month. Wrapped in a waterproof laptop sleeve, then in a laptop bag strapped to my Topeak Beamrack. Not ideal and I avoid doing it unless I really have to.

kenmc

Big ould clunky HP brick, weighs more than the bike. Pretty sure it was the first ever laptop invented. Wasn't mine, so I just wrapped it in a plastic bag and stuck it in the pannier. Never managed to get a new one

When I used to take mine, I have a Knog messenger bag with a padded laptop compartment, was fine, no issues at all

Run_to_da_hills

My advice is to fit a solid state hard drive. (SSD)

Drop a laptop containing a traditional hard disk drive and you have a very real chance of corrupting your data. But a solid state drive won’t.

I carry mine in a Jansport padded back pack, a bit pricey but I have it almost 7 years now.

Lumen

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Drop a laptop containing a traditional hard disk drive and you have a very real chance of corrupting your data. But a solid state drive won’t.

Disk heads will be parked in a powered-off/on standby laptop, and in that state the I would guess that other components (e.g. screen connectors) would fail before the hard drive.

t'bear

I carry mine when I want to do hard intervals on the way home. It weights a fricking tonne. And yes the sooner it fails the sooner I get a smaller lighter one

ciotog

Cycled lots of times with a chunky Dell Latitude and a MacBook, both on odd occasion. Padded compartment in pannier bag and never had any bother. Usually just hibernated the machine.

trad

Only decent use I can think of for tri-bars.

beazee

Together with clothes in the pannier. When it's lashing rain I wrap it in cling foil

tomasrojo

Lumen wrote: »

Disk heads will be parked in a powered-off/on standby laptop, and in that state the I would guess that other components (e.g. screen connectors) would fail before the hard drive.

In my unwitting experiment in this regard about ten years ago, I can confirm that the screen connectors go first.

ThisRegard

DirkVoodoo wrote: »

I do it every day.

I just use a standard neoprene sleeve, nothing fancy, and pad it out with my clothes. It's in a deuter backpack, which is fairly secure so it doesn't bounce around and has a rain cover.

So far so good.

Same as myself, but I don't bother with a sleeve as I don't have one. I usually just put mine closest to my back, the backpacks padding stops it being an annoyance, and pad around it with clothing. The backpacks rain cover, so far, has stopped it getting a soaking.

But I was caught out one time, I didn't have the cover wrapped around fully as I had just taken something out of it and the water seeped up from the ground into the bag when I put it down. No laptop in it at the time though.

Run_to_da_hills

Lumen wrote: »

Disk heads will be parked in a powered-off/on standby laptop, and in that state the I would guess that other components (e.g. screen connectors) would fail before the hard drive.

I still wouldn't take the chance, I have destroyed two USB 2 1/2" HDD's / caddies over the years from falls and they were both disconnected. One in a back pack when travelling and the other fell on a wooden floor.

bbolger

trad wrote: »

Only decent use I can think of for tri-bars.

You could turn it on and watch some Sufferfest videos on the way in

Just turn the speakers up, no headphones now... cos that would be dangerous!

davidsatelle100

do it the odd time, just use a backpack but i put everything in Drybags anyway so it just goes into an additional one.

Rew

Do it every day witha 15" MBP. Cheap bacpack, waterproof Thule case, padded a bit with clothes. I have waterproof bag liners that I throw my clothes in and if I was worried I can stick the laptop in too.

colm_gti

Done it a few times, in the end bought a laptop to leave in college and opened a dropbox account...

OldBean

Yep, all the time. I have a waterproof Crumpler shoulder bag and a semi solid laptop case. The bag also has a handy holder for my lock and loads of room for Allen keys, puncture kit, wallet, phone, etc.

Only downside to a fully waterproof bag was when a 'sealed' bottle of water leaked on a cycle. Soggy laptop.