When you see the flotation device on the screen of the laptop you know something is not right. Finally, after 3 years and 5 months since last Windows install, it happened: our beloved computer got sick in India (like we also did). A few days ago I decided to attempt a disinfection. But the kernel was badly affected so it wouldn’t boot at all. Fortunately, the built-in recovery system helped me backup the data on removable media and then I restored the hard drive to the factory state. Mission accomplished!

What is unusual about this computer is its toughness. You can see the metal frame since the plastic is already ground at the corners. It got covered with mud in Argentina, in dust in Atacama, got wet and dropped on cement countles times! It accompanied us in more than 30 countries on 4 continents. Neither the extreme heat of Mexico, the humidity of Vietnam or the rough roads of Brazil managed to break it and it still works without fault, 9 years since the manufacturing and 6 years since we purchased it.

So after removing the viral infection I was truly happy our Thinkpad X40 didn’t go the way the rest of our electronics (camera, gps, intercom etc) went!