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I have laptops and electronics that i carry around daily. I use trains and cars as my means of transportation. Then a question popped out;

'is it OK to just leave my computer (or tablet, smartphone, etc) on the passenger seat when the seat has vibrations?? '

I'm pretty sure this depends on the type of computer, the amount of vibration, and etc...

I'm so much obssessed with this doubt that i always put cloth around my electronics and etc, to decrease the vibration!

Danny Han
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  • Most people don't worry about it and nothing bad happens to their electronics. So you shouldn't worry about it either. Heavy vibration can make some things fail. Larger through-hole components, or wires soldered directly to PCB. But small or thin and flat surface mount components on FR4 substrate are basically immune to normal levels of vibration. I would be more concerned if you were putting your electronics on a bicycle rack. –  Feb 25 '17 at 04:51
  • So you mean that my macbook will be ok? Man! Thanx alot!! Now i dont have to be constantly obssessed about this issue! –  Feb 25 '17 at 04:55
  • People worry about laptops as they have hard drives, whose read/write pin can move around and scratch it because of vibrations/bumps, damaging it. Most hard drives nowadays have special lockers in them which only allow the pin to move while the computer is on, so turning it off would definitely prevent any damage to it due to vibrations. Solid state drives don't have this problem as they don't have any moving parts. Since MacBooks are relatively new, they should have hard drives with such mechanisms, or the most recent ones even come with SSD's. – user606377 Feb 25 '17 at 05:08
  • Agh.. thats the weird thing... apple computers are not turned off, but are put to sleep mode.... does this mean that i should completely shut down the computer when driving? (By the way, i have a 2013early macbook pro15' just in case this information is needed) – Danny Han Feb 25 '17 at 05:27
  • As we've already said, don't worry about it. – Hari Feb 26 '17 at 04:14

1 Answers1

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Short Answer: No

The vibrations from most peoples' daily lives are inconsequential to consumer electronics.

Longer Answer: Depends, but Highly Unlikely

Sudden shocks or large dynamic loads can cause strong enough vibrations to hurt your laptop. That said, this would typically be the result of dropping your laptop or having it fly off the seat into a wall if the train very suddenly stopped.

The only other concern would be for a mechanical hard drive. Most newer computers have solid state drives that are largely immune to vibration, but older hard drives could be damaged if they were exposed to large vibrations while in use. Again, these vibrations would need to be fairly severe. HDD manufacturers are pretty good at isolating their drives from small external vibrations.

Hari
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