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How dent "proof" is the unibody?

I never dented my old MBP... a technician bent my case, and it was replaced, but other than that I never had a structural problem. What do you do with it to dent yours?
 
Its as dent proof as the tensile strength of 3mm thick Aluminium. Which is pretty high.

Whereas before people would be dropping things on their Macbook Pro's and permanently killing them, now people are dropping things and denting them, then coming here and whining about the dents.
 
kastenbrust said:
Its as dent proof as the tensile strength of 3mm thick Aluminium. Which is pretty high.

Whereas before people would be dropping things on their Macbook Pro's and permanently killing them, now people are dropping things and denting them, then coming here and whining about the dents.
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id rather have a dented laptop than a non-functioning one! im with you, people whinge to much these days..
 
kastenbrust said:
Its as dent proof as the tensile strength of 3mm thick Aluminium. Which is pretty high.

Whereas before people would be dropping things on their Macbook Pro's and permanently killing them, now people are dropping things and denting them, then coming here and whining about the dents.
Click to expand...

Tensile strength has nothing to do with dents, which are from impact loads.
 
I've had a glass knocked off a shelf 2 feet above my MacBook onto the area between the spacebar and trackpad. Managed to chip the aluminum up and make a few scratches as it shattered.

It was a shame as it was only 5 days old when it happened, and it'd take an entire new body to repair the damage.
 
Well, the only laptops I know of that advertise themselves as rugged are the Panasonic toughbooks and maybe a couple of thinkpads.

Aluminium macbooks look good, are strong, but being metal, is malleable, and can dent.

Carbon-fibre laptops are more durable and lighter. Havn't seen one break. I'm referring the Vaio-Z.


Regardless, you ought to be really careful with your laptop. Especially if you don't have a SSD drive.
 
bulletproof, yesiree:
 

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I can't comment on how dent proof they are, but this is one of my primary concerns with Apple's design direction. They are going for looks over functionality.
I can drop my iBook and the plastic will flex/bend and pop back into shape. The worst thing that will happen is a crack, but that is unlikely considering it is made of the same stuff as bullittproof glass.
Metal is stronger but not as durable. If you drop it it may bend, and you will not be able to get it back into shape without replacing the casing.

In my opinion the plastic is best design because it will not bend, it will flex. But this won't be stopping me from getting a MBP. I would just recommend you take care of your computer and don't let it get dented.
 
kastenbrust said:
"Tensile strength σUTS, or SU is the stress at which a material breaks or permanently deforms"

i.e.

DENTS :eek:

its a sad sad day when Wikipedia knows more than Mac users.
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No, what's sad is that you are trying to sound like you know what you are talking about. Unfortunately for you I'm a Mechanical Engineer and you, apparently, are not. I mean, YOU know you have no idea what you are talking about...so why pretend that you do? So people on an internet forum can look at your user name and think you're knowledgeable? That's what's sad here.

Tensile strength has to do with stretching or compressing a material where the load is applied over a (relatively speaking) long interval of time and normal to the surface.

There are a plethora of different types of mechanical strengths a material can have, and not all of them are interrelated (in fact, many of them aren't). You can have materials that are amazingly strong in tension but horrible in compression or eccentric loading (think of carbon fiber). You can have materials that are great in tension and compression, but have extremely low shear strengths (think of paper). And you can have extremely brittle materials that have terrific applications outside the realm of simply bearing loads like ceramics.

Your implication that because something plastically deformed means it was subjected to tensile loads is completely revealing of your total lack of understanding of fracture mechanics. You cannot deduce the nature of the stress a material experienced simply because it plastically deformed. It just means the material was subjected to a stress beyond its yield strength.

Denting has more to do with impact loading, where there is a force applied over a much shorter length of time.

You should have looked this up on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charpy_impact_test

That has much more to do with denting an aluminum case than anything you Wikipasted.
 
MBHockey said:
No, what's sad is that you are trying to sound like you know what you are talking about. Unfortunately for you I'm a Mechanical Engineer and you, apparently, are not. I mean, YOU know you have no idea what you are talking about...so why pretend that you do? So people on an internet forum can look at your user name and think you're knowledgeable? That's what's sad here...
Click to expand...

Ouch, heh.
 
I just love it when Mac users fight in public. Aren't we all part of this cool club because we don't use PC's? Aren't we all kind of creative about how we live our lives? Can't we all just get along?

:)
 
I think the onion said it best in their Apple parody,

"... the computer is virtually unbreakable unless dropped or hit."

It'll dent if you drop or hit it, just like you expect it would.
 
MBHockey said:
No, what's sad is that you are trying to sound like you know what you are talking about. Unfortunately for you I'm a Mechanical Engineer and you, apparently, are not. I mean, YOU know you have no idea what you are talking about...so why pretend that you do? So people on an internet forum can look at your user name and think you're knowledgeable? That's what's sad here.

Tensile strength has to do with stretching or compressing a material where the load is applied over a (relatively speaking) long interval of time and normal to the surface.

There are a plethora of different types of mechanical strengths a material can have, and not all of them are interrelated (in fact, many of them aren't). You can have materials that are amazingly strong in tension but horrible in compression or eccentric loading (think of carbon fiber). You can have materials that are great in tension and compression, but have extremely low shear strengths (think of paper). And you can have extremely brittle materials that have terrific applications outside the realm of simply bearing loads like ceramics.

Your implication that because something plastically deformed means it was subjected to tensile loads is completely revealing of your total lack of understanding of fracture mechanics. You cannot deduce the nature of the stress a material experienced simply because it plastically deformed. It just means the material was subjected to a stress beyond its yield strength.

Denting has more to do with impact loading, where there is a force applied over a much shorter length of time.

You should have looked this up on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charpy_impact_test

That has much more to do with denting an aluminum case than anything you Wikipasted.
Click to expand...

i was joking, get a humour check. :D
 
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