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Man cooks ThinkPad at 180 degrees - and it survives
While another one is taken up Everest and lives to tell the tale. Next week: IBM makes a baked Alaska using server components...

By Joey Gardiner

Published: Tuesday 23 July 2002

IBM is boasting of the hardiness of its ThinkPad notebook range after it discovered that one customer's machine survived being cooked at gas mark six in a domestic oven.

Another ThinkPad was able to work perfectly well after being taken to the top of Everest, experiencing temperatures below minus 30.

According to IBM, a security conscious German hid his laptop in his oven to avoid theft when he went out.

Unknowingly his wife then came home and heated the oven to 180 degrees Celsius before realising her mistake. Happily for the error-prone German, IBM's heat resistant technology - developed to protect against internal processor heat - saved the day.

The notebook survived with minimal damage and continues to be used to this day without having been sent back for repair.

Although the machine survived it did lose its infrared lens, the hinge cover melted and the back of the display panel twisted. The IBM logo had also shrivelled.

Unfortunately for civil servants at the Ministry of Defence, IBM's impressive protective features don't claim to be able to save the notebooks from being forgotten in the back of a taxi or left on a station platform.