iPod's trip to the airport

[redman71]

Have never taken my iPod to the airport before. Anyone know if X-ray machines, or whatever security scanning equipment they have, will screw up an iPod?

Just wondering

Thanks

[velkr0]

i've taken mine through... just tossed it in a bin, with my keys and stuff.. and no problems...

[yubbie2]

no more than it will screw up a powerbook.... which is not at all.

no worries - its safe.

-j

[mnewman]

I've been asked to turn mine on. I guess that's to prove I haven't replaced the innards with some sort of dangerous device.

[pickle]

Mine was fine too... I also had to turn mine on and they had to do a big inspection on it... but the x-ray wont harm it at all.

[yellow]

X-Rays, no problem. Magnets, BIG problem.

[acme.mail.order]

Magnetic intensity is an inverse square function (meaning the intensity drops with the square of the distance - double the distance, one-fourth the intensity)

To increase the aureal density of a magnetic storage medium you must reduce the coercivity of the medium (make it less sensitive) to make each individual magnetic domain smaller. This in turn requires a more intensive field to change the magnetic domain, which means a magnet can be closer before it damages anything.

Short form: bigger, physically smaller drives are harder to damage with a magnet than smaller ones. An old 400K floppy (or worse, a 160K 5.25 inch one from the Stone Age) is in trouble, but unless the iPod is stuck against the side of the machine and vibrating you don't need to be concerned. The metal case will also help.

If you really want to test the process, take your iPod to the airport on a slow day along with some donuts. Ask them to run it through a dozen or so times (one for each donut, maybe?) at maximum power. Take it home and run a disk check.

Any security employees out there want to try this for us?

[pairaka]

If you really want to test the process, take your iPod to the airport on a slow day along with some donuts. Ask them to run it through a dozen or so times (one for each donut, maybe?) at maximum power. Take it home and run a disk check.

Is there any such thing as a "slow day" at the airport? :rolleyes:

BTW, I had my iPod in my carryon luggage and it went through just fine. The interesting thing that happened to me was on the plane: The attendant on one of the flights asked me if it was a phone. :confused:

[acme.mail.order]

Is there any such thing as a "slow day" at the airport? :rolleyes:
Depends on the airport. I was in Abbotsford, BC on Sept 13, 2001. Extra security there was a matter of pulling a table out of storage and adding one extra guard. Screening all 250 passengers they saw that day didn't tax anyone's patience much.
Don't try it at JFK :rolleyes:

[Virtual1]

Just don't run it thru the machine while it's ON. Last time I flew, I decided to leave my powerbook asleep so I could just wake it up (instead of booting it up) if they asked me to turn it on. MISTAKE. Thru the x-ray it went, while sleeping. On the plane, I pull it out to watch a movie. It doesn't look asleep, it looks off. Won't turn on. Battery was fine, but tried spare, no help. Resetting the PMU had no effect. I was unable to get it working during the flight. When I got to the terminal, I found a power outlet and plugged it in, and as soon as I did, the PMU reset and then it worked fine. Getting hit with x-rays or other em fields can be very disruptive to active electronics.

[Gabriel]

A couple of months ago I took my iPod to DC to attend a conference. The conference was very high security so every time I went between buildings (several times a day) my poor iPod had to either go through the X-Ray or even worse be ogled by some security guard. I probably passed the iPod through the x-ray machine nine or ten times in three days. The good news is that neither the x-rays or the security guards hurt the iPod. The bad news is that it fell out of my pocked in a taxi. :( In a city like DC with 10,000 individual cab owners there was pretty much no chance I'd ever find it again.

My opinion: when traveling don't sweat the x-rays, but be very careful not to leave your iPod lying around.

[acme.mail.order]

D'OH!!!
Marge, it happened again.

[Gabriel]

D'OH!!!
Marge, it happened again.

Yeah it took a couple of weeks before I could bear to look at www.apple.com again :)