Moving to Santa Cruz... Airport/computer parts question

NYHoustonman

Platinum Member
Dec 8, 2002
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Aight, basically I'll be attending UCSC this year, so I'm flying out tomorrow... Basically, I took the entire rig apart and have it packed for carry on, and the case in luggage, just to be safe. I had visions of some idiot smearing his hands all over the innards of my computer :\...

So,
Will the metal detectors or x-ray machines or whatever do anything to my computer parts?

And,
Is my case/motherboard likely to survive the flight without being touched by an inspector?
 

CVSiN

Diamond Member
Jul 19, 2004
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You lucky bastard =p
Santa Cruz area is one of my favorite places on earth..
wish I could afford to live in cali...
but 40k a year in Cali is poverty specially northern cali.
you shouldnt have any problems with your HD.. if you dismantled the PC take your drives in your carry on.. Xrays do not hurt data... laptops go through them all the time..
what you do have to worry about is abuse from baggage handlers.. as they cannot spell or know what fragile means..
 

Red Dawn

Elite Member
Jun 4, 2001
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Originally posted by: CVSiN
You lucky bastard =p
Santa Cruz area is one of my favorite places on earth..
..
Yep, it will be a great change from the North East!
 

Cruisin1

Golden Member
Oct 10, 1999
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Originally posted by: Red Dawn
Originally posted by: CVSiN
You lucky bastard =p
Santa Cruz area is one of my favorite places on earth..
..
Yep, it will be a great change from the North East!



What little you know abou Santa Cruz. I hate living in this town. Too many fricken hippies, and housing is rediculously expensive. Wouldn't mind the housing that much if the people in this town weren't so god damn annoying.
 

Cruisin1

Golden Member
Oct 10, 1999
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Oh yeah. NYHoustonman might I ask what you are going to study at UCSC? I graduated last year in Computer Engineering.
 

Red Dawn

Elite Member
Jun 4, 2001
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Originally posted by: Cruisin1
Originally posted by: Red Dawn
Originally posted by: CVSiN
You lucky bastard =p
Santa Cruz area is one of my favorite places on earth..
..
Yep, it will be a great change from the North East!



What little you know abou Santa Cruz. I hate living in this town. Too many fricken hippies, and housing is rediculously expensive. Wouldn't mind the housing that much if the people in this town weren't so god damn annoying.
Having grown up on the other side of the Hill I spent a lot of time in the Santa Cruz Area. While in College I spent almost every day there during the Summer break enjoying the Beach, the Babes and the Weather(when it isn't fogged in). Yeah the Town of Santa Cruz is almost as Liberal as Bezerkley but theres more to that area than just Santa Cruz. As a young man NYHoustonman should have the time of his life there.
 

CVSiN

Diamond Member
Jul 19, 2004
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Originally posted by: Cruisin1
Originally posted by: Red Dawn
Originally posted by: CVSiN
You lucky bastard =p
Santa Cruz area is one of my favorite places on earth..
..
Yep, it will be a great change from the North East!



What little you know abou Santa Cruz. I hate living in this town. Too many fricken hippies, and housing is rediculously expensive. Wouldn't mind the housing that much if the people in this town weren't so god damn annoying.

I grew up there my friend...
my grandmother still lives in Watsonville.. and if you want to talk about expensive.. my mom lives at the top of skyline in woodside Ca.. above Stanford and Palo Alto... small home up there 5 mil easy...

I used to ride the bus into SC to skateboard and go to the boardwalk in the summers...
as I got older I got a motorcycle and fell in love with the roads and highway 1.. sorry man but there are alot worse places to live than SC.. move away and you will miss it..
 

simms

Diamond Member
Sep 21, 2001
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You'll be fine. I have a flight to Toronto and I shipped my case in special luggage, and the HDD's and opticals, CPU, RAM and Vid cards went carry on with me. They scanned my bag, they asked to open it, and I said computer parts. I showed them some RAM, and they let me through.

Then again it was a national flight, from Vancouver to Toronto.

Simon
 

NYHoustonman

Platinum Member
Dec 8, 2002
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Originally posted by: Cruisin1
Oh yeah. NYHoustonman might I ask what you are going to study at UCSC? I graduated last year in Computer Engineering.

Same :)...

And, yes, I'm taking all the hardware in carry on, and I love the Santa Cruz area. I go there every summer, as my dad has lived there for the past 8 or so years.

And now my friend, who just yesterday bought a 6800 GT because all the Ultra orders he made were on out of stock items, finds out an Ultra is shipping. I'll probably be buying the GT from him, my only concern is that makes two of the worst bottlenecks I've ever had (a 6800GT on an XP 2400+, and a 9800 Pro on an Athlon 1.3Ghz for my brother here in NY)... Looks like some of my laptop money is going back into my desktop, and possibly my brother's.
 

Rkonster

Golden Member
Feb 16, 2000
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I've taken my hard drive through the scanners without any problems. Laptops go through them all the time, so I do not see why it would be any different for normal computer parts.
 

ActuaryTm

Diamond Member
Mar 30, 2003
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Have taken literally every conceivable type of component on a plane and through airport security. Shouldn't prove any difficulty for your equipment or your data. Do remember to pack any computer related tools (jeweler's driver set, pliers, etc) - no matter the size - in your packed luggage. Failed to remember this once recently, and of course had to remove them from my carry-on prior to boarding.
 

Wahsapa

Diamond Member
Jul 2, 2001
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my friends going to ucsc this year too. shes living in the dorms however... which sucks. which school are you going to? whats there to do out there?
 

booger711

Platinum Member
Jun 15, 2004
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Originally posted by: Rkonster
I've taken my hard drive through the scanners without any problems. Laptops go through them all the time, so I do not see why it would be any different for normal computer parts.
 

CVSiN

Diamond Member
Jul 19, 2004
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Surf... lay on the beach.. camping.. mountain biking... skiing... rafting.. boating...motorcycling...San Francisco nearby (little more than an Hour..) Monterey 30 mins away... Lake Tahoe = awesome
california is amazing.,.. 1 of the only places in the world where you could Surf and Skii in same day..
Sierras are amazing.. beachs are wonderful... very nice place to live...
 

Cruisin1

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Oct 10, 1999
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Originally posted by: CVSiN
Surf... lay on the beach.. camping.. mountain biking... skiing... rafting.. boating...motorcycling...San Francisco nearby (little more than an Hour..) Monterey 30 mins away... Lake Tahoe = awesome
california is amazing.,.. 1 of the only places in the world where you could Surf and Skii in same day..
Sierras are amazing.. beachs are wonderful... very nice place to live...

Ski... that's stretching it. It's quite far. As for lay on the beach? I suppose you are a Nor Cal person because I grew up in LA and now live in Santa Cruz, and the beaches just suck here. The water is always cold, the sand has kelp EVERYWHERE, and the just isn't that much beach area to go to (especially since santa cruz is the only beach in northern california). I really wish there were more jobs in Southern California for computer engineers because I would much rather live there.

As for what you can "really" do as a student. Be prepared to not have much time as a Computer Engineering student. What little time you do have and assuming you have no car (seeing as you are coming from New York), you can only spend tiime downtown. Without a car there really is nothing to do since you can't go to the "real" entertainment in San Jose or San Francisco. The theatres in Santa Cruz are overpriced and very unconfortable. I suppose I have a very biased opinion of this place, because apparently the other folks loved it (they probably never lived in LA though ;) )
 

Wahsapa

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Jul 2, 2001
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venice beach(which i wouldnt swim in but maybe other beachs) to big bear is only like 3-5 hours if you know how to do it. so yes, a morning swim and some night snowboarding :thumbsup:
 

Cruisin1

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Oct 10, 1999
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Originally posted by: Wahsapa
venice beach(which i wouldnt swim in but maybe other beachs) to big bear is only like 3-5 hours if you know how to do it. so yes, a morning swim and some night snowboarding :thumbsup:



Dude that is Southern California, this guy is going to Santa Cruz!!! Northern California is a completely different area in distance, ideals, and entertainment.
 

CVSiN

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Jul 19, 2004
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See I absolutly detest LA area...
Northern Cali is where its at...
SC the only beach? are you nuts? drive up and down the coast... some of the best beachs in cali are hidden along Highway 1...
They do make wetsuits ya know.. I grew up surfing boogy boarding and skim boarding all those beaches in the summers its beautiful...

LA = the shitz too many peeps over developed gridlocked nothing left of old cali... the reason i Like SC is becasue its cut off from Silicon Valley nonsence.... the mountain range seperates that madness from California beauty.
and yes i know its starting to spread over the mountains I was just out there in June for an MCSE school...
 

0roo0roo

No Lifer
Sep 21, 2002
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Originally posted by: NYHoustonman
Originally posted by: Kelvrick
At most, your hd might have some data problems.

Is this likely, and would it be anything serious?

about as likely as there are aliens in your pants right now.

big metal box of hd and pc case shields it from all sorts of stuff....
 

NYHoustonman

Platinum Member
Dec 8, 2002
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Well, I'm here, and everything got through ok. Amazingly, my PC is idling at around 10-12C lower than it did in NY. Time to OC.

And, as far as free time, at least during my first year, I don't think I'll be having many problems. The 'computer engineering' course I'm taking is extremely basic, as I haven't done any programming and apparently you need some background to take the classes (in HS, too few people signed up for any computer science courses, and as such there were few computer science courses; all I was able to take was HTML). Math is calculus, took that last year, so I should be ok. Other than that, there's not much.

Also-Cruisin1, would you recommend a laptop, PDA, or neither?
 

Wahsapa

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Jul 2, 2001
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Originally posted by: Cruisin1
Originally posted by: Wahsapa
venice beach(which i wouldnt swim in but maybe other beachs) to big bear is only like 3-5 hours if you know how to do it. so yes, a morning swim and some night snowboarding :thumbsup:



Dude that is Southern California, this guy is going to Santa Cruz!!! Northern California is a completely different area in distance, ideals, and entertainment.

i was referring to the the post above that talked about surfing and sking in one day. which you would pretty much have to be in the LA area to do....
 

Kelvrick

Lifer
Feb 14, 2001
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Originally posted by: Wahsapa
Originally posted by: Cruisin1
Originally posted by: Wahsapa
venice beach(which i wouldnt swim in but maybe other beachs) to big bear is only like 3-5 hours if you know how to do it. so yes, a morning swim and some night snowboarding :thumbsup:



Dude that is Southern California, this guy is going to Santa Cruz!!! Northern California is a completely different area in distance, ideals, and entertainment.

i was referring to the the post above that talked about surfing and sking in one day. which you would pretty much have to be in the LA area to do....

No, you can surf and snowboard in one day up here too. I live in Sacrament/Davis.

Wake up, hit the beach until say 11. Hop in the car for the afternoon heat and take a 4.5-5 hour drive up to South Lake Tahoe. Be there at around 4 and do some boarding.
 

Cruisin1

Golden Member
Oct 10, 1999
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Originally posted by: NYHoustonman
Well, I'm here, and everything got through ok. Amazingly, my PC is idling at around 10-12C lower than it did in NY. Time to OC.

And, as far as free time, at least during my first year, I don't think I'll be having many problems. The 'computer engineering' course I'm taking is extremely basic, as I haven't done any programming and apparently you need some background to take the classes (in HS, too few people signed up for any computer science courses, and as such there were few computer science courses; all I was able to take was HTML). Math is calculus, took that last year, so I should be ok. Other than that, there's not much.

Also-Cruisin1, would you recommend a laptop, PDA, or neither?

PDA is a waste of money IMO. Laptops are a good idea. There are hot spots ALL over campus, so you'll have internet just about everywhere. So if you don't mind lugging around the laptop, I'd recommend it, especially since the computers in the lab just aren't cutting it anymore.