[Macworld]

Post your comments for Climbing Mount Everest with a MacBook Pro and iPod here

[pbassham]

batteries??

[Rugby]

...there are solar powered re chargers + at base camp they have generators

[fieldenlundy]

I was reading a column and watching video at backpacker.com yesterday and saw the piece where the climbers were discussing their entertainment packs. Pretty impressive how much Apple stuff is on this climb. Thanks for the macworld.com article as well.

[ToddBradley]

I'm surprised the hard drive works at that altitude. I believe Apple considers use above 10,000 feet altitude to be outside the warranty, so good luck getting Apple Care up there! :-)

[scaryfastandrew]

Most Likely it's not a harddrive, but a ssd. I don't think a standard harddrive will work up there. an ssd is really the only option

[ToddBradley]

That's what I assumed, too, but the article specifically said it's a MacBook Pro and not an Air.

[ARM]

The article says: "All of the footage is shot on a solid state cards on the mountain."

[ToddBradley]

Yes, the article says they are shooting on solid state cards, probably P2 cards, so they're probably shooting on a Panasonic HVX200a or something like that. But then it says they're transferring the footage to a MacBook Pro, which Apple doesn't sell with a solid state storage option.

[frankowen]

Swapping in an SSD drive for the MBP stock drive would be a pretty simple mod.

[natmusak]

ToddBradley said:

Yes, the article says they are shooting on solid state cards, probably P2 cards, so they're probably shooting on a Panasonic HVX200a or something like that. But then it says they're transferring the footage to a MacBook Pro, which Apple doesn't sell with a solid state storage option.

...uh, yes they do:
http://store.apple.c...?mco=MTkzOTI0Mg

I think they've been selling MacBooks/Pros with optional SSDs since last Fall.

[steviesteveo]

It'd be interesting to know for sure. Hard drives don't break the instant you take them out of the range of situations where the manufacturer will replace it for free so, although the laptop's at a base camp 17,000 ft up, it could well be a hard drive based model.

Properly seated, well made mechanical drives work in places you wouldn't expect. Even quite modern aeroplanes use hard drives - the P-8A project uses spinning hard drives for recording. You'd think the military would splash out on an SSD but apparently in 2006 they thought it was fine.

Am I saying Apple use "military spec" hard drives? No. But it doesn't have to be an SSD just because it's on a mountain.

[rileymorton]

i spent 2 months in each 2001 and 2002 editing video on Hard Drives at Everest Base Camp. never had any hard drive problems at all, and i know of other climbers who take their laptops up as high as camp 4 at 26,000 feet. never heard of a failure or anything.

[Martian]

Prhaps Rather than instant failure at high altitude, perhaps it?s just the statistical reliability (MTBF) and vibration resistance that suffer. To the extent that drives use air bearings, it?s only reasonable to expect some consequences from exceeding the design altitude.