Laptop at altitude

my netbook worked both on the train to Lhasa, Lhasa and Everest Base Camp. Camera batteries got very cold and didnt fully charge but other that that no problems.

3wks in Tibet with SLR , over 2000 photos and not a problem.

it's the ipods that don't seem to appreciate the altitude the most , anything much over 3000 metres...

I think the new iPods are okay now. And my iPhone has been working fine in Tibet for months...

I brought my MacBook last year for the first time to Leh ( same altitude as Lhasa ) without worrying too much. At the end I slept with it inside my sleeping bag , wasn´t comfortable with it going seriously subzero. I´ve also used a portable harddrive up to 4000 meters , but I´ve been very careful not to use it higher : I´ve seen three crashed portable hard drives in Ladakh and Tibet after being used higher than that. I´d say that is way beyond blind chance. Yes , I´ve also seen a few laptops used at 4000+ , but the risk of it crashing is obviously a lot higher. Chogsrags has posted the relevant reasons.

This is a recurring discussion here , and many try to fix the blame on a specific brand or type of drive. My take on this : the issue is moving parts or not , so all solid state memory ( digital cameras, iPhones, mp3 players with solid state memory etc ) is safe. Practically all conventional hard drives comes with a standard 3000 meter warranty , can´t see any any real difference here. Some argue that 3´5 " hard drives are more rugged : I suspect that the real difference is that they are stationary , and thus see very little movement or vibration from the outside. Another point to remember is that the vast majority of the computers we meet in use in Tibet are found below 4000 meters.

Sealed compartments etc on the Lhasa train : fascinating that this idea still gets floated. The train is at ambient air pressure ( tech description and sources here ) , the first clue is the lack of airlocks. I´ve also seen a few mentions of crashed iPods on the train . More than 80 % of the track between Golmud and Lhasa is at 4000 , and a lot ( like the Nakchu station ) is 4500. Only spin the data that you are comfortable losing.

Backup strategies : I left one hard drive clone at home , and brought another with me : with a FireWire cable I can start directly from the external drive , no need to open up the case. I also had a smart folder , all photos imported last month , that I imported to a flash drive now and then. There is software that does this automatically ( Martian Lifeboat on OS X ) every time a specific drive is linked to the lappie , I´ll probably look in to that next time.

probably apple products just not suitable for high altitude as people continue to report crashed ipods (and ipads, iphones?). this company which is so commercially minded overhyping its products and then overcharging for them it really to be avoided.

Show me two reliable reports of a mp3 player with flash memory that crash when started at high altitude , and I´ll eat my groundpad ( with cranberry sauce ) and post a video of it. It´s not a brand issue , it´s solid state vs. moving parts.

I rarely feel the need to use them when I travel , but I´ve brought with me both an iPod Shuffle and a Nano over the last years , and used them a few times between four and five thousand meters as well without problems. The Shuffle also took a spin in my washing machine two years ago : I dried it during a night shift by flushing it with oxygen for a few hours , and it still works fine. This is nice but hardly a unique Apple thing , you´ll easily find a lot of other people mentioning the same thing with USB memory sticks.

(Incidentally two of the portable hard drives with photos I mentioned crashing earlier came from Archos , and Apple don´t make PHD´s with card readers) .

Re # 5 : "I'll be travelling for a year and i'm planning to buy a computer. This issue alone is pushing towards a cheaper netbook as opposed to something like a macbook air..."

The new MacBook Airs are solid state memory only , and thus equally safe at altitude as digital cameras , mp3 players without harddrives , etc.

vistet wrote: "The new MacBook Airs are solid state memory only , and thus equally safe at altitude as digital cameras , mp3 players without harddrives , etc."

what warranty says about Apple products regarding altitude? If 3000 m only you should add to your advertisement disclaimer.

Conventional hard drives is a technology based on air pressure , and leads to crashes at altitude - try the Wikipedia article.

Without the hard drive you have electronics in general : apart from the iPods I´ve used digital cameras and a sound recorder up to 5000+ without problems , including a few cold camps . So have countless others. Again , it´s not a brand issue : solid state is damn hard to kill , and even cheapo point and shoot cameras work a lot higher than the summit of Everest .

If I had to work with a laptop at serious altitude I´d choose the solid state version of the net book you are pushing here over a Mac with standard hard drive- but the Acer warranty* puts down the same limits as Apple and other manufacturers : max 10000 feet operational , for both the standard and SSD version.

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* : http://support.acer.com/acerpanam/netbook/0000/Acer/AspireOneAOA110/AspireOneAOA110sp2.shtml