Hey all,


Any tips on what kind of foam/case on the cheap and thinnest will protect a samsung, 10" tablet from the vibrations of the road?


Riding an Enfield Bullet 350 up the East coast of US this summer and remember problems with cameras and radios in the 'olden times'.


Duffel bag on the rear, a metal, not-waterproof-enough tool box on one side used for spares.


Will be keeping it in the duffel, but will packing it in foam really do anything to protect, or is it just not necessary?

Hi mitchell,
vibrations shouldn`t be a problem if you transport your tablet in a duffel bag between cloth.

Tablets are build compared to laptops with much less sensitive parts like e.g. fans.

Depending on the protection class your tablett is offering it could make sense to use a better case regarding protection against water and dust. Maybe you will use it outdoors while camping?

If you take a look to available rugged tablets you see that these are mostly normal tablets with a good battery capacity in a special protection case. Have you thought about a need of a powerbank if your tablett offers low battery capacity? If you want to buy one, buy a rugged one or soft case for it!

If you want to be on the safe side, look out for a tablett case which offers protection by IP65 class. IP65 means protections against pressure and water. IP67 means short under water time less than 1m deepness and max 30 min won`t damage the device.

Use an additional protective cover made of soft and durable material in a thickness of some millimeters like neopren as a second prevention option against pressure and dust. Costs less, works fine and all together carried in your waterproof duffel bag means don`t have worry anymore even on dirt roads..

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Good advice from Rapax.

Pack it in some kind of light cover, then stuff it in a stuff sack with your spare clothes. This will provide all the protection it needs. Try to orient it in the pannier so it will take impacts in the direction it is padded best.

............shu

Hi Mitchell:

I've carried a laptop computer in the saddlebag of my Honda ST 1100 for over 20 years.

I just put it into a "padded laptop sleeve" - sort of like an envelope that it fits into, it has foam perhaps 1/4 of an inch thick. That has been sufficient protection, I have never had a problem.

I think that there are two concerns you need to pay attention to to avoid damage to your tablet:

1) Store it vertically, so that the screen does not become broken from something else in your luggage pressing down or up on the screen, and,

2) Put something underneath the bottom of the padded sleeve (a pair of socks will do) to provide some shock absorption in case you hit a really bad bump in the road.

The biggest risk of damage comes not from carrying it on a motorcycle and the associated movement of the motorcycle, but from the tablet being squashed and the screen broken by other objects in the same pannier or storage compartment.

Like PanEuropean, I've made only minimal efforts to protect any solid state device--netbooks and laptops went in a cheap foam sleeve, iPads in a case with built-in bluetooth keyboard. Even old hard drive devices survived just fine, up to a point. I'm sure that a lot of bouncing and abrupt impacts are probably a bad idea, but I doubt anyone's thinking of balancing a device on a hard, pointy surface and then stacking weights on top.

Caveat: I did once have to replace a netbook under duress in Panama City. Maybe if I'd treated it better, it would have lasted the 11 months left in my trip...but that's doubtful.

Recently I've taken to wearing a daypack on my back while riding, into which go stuff I want attached to my body at all times--cameras, storage devices, computers of all sorts, certain papers, even some of my cards and cash. I tend to stuff it randomly, without regard for anything frail, but no matter what, my iPad (see above re low-end hard case which includes a keyboard) never misses a beat.

Hope that's helpful.

A cheap neoprene sleeve will help protect it (especially the screen) from scratches as it shifts around in your luggage.

Beyond that? Don't worry about it. There are no moving parts in that tablet, it will be fine.

+1 for everything Michael said. Disk drives with floating heads used to be the most critical area, but tablets and modern notebook PCs are all solid state storage.

[I even carried a full-blown HP 3000 mini computer in my car in the mid 1980s without problems. Must have been around 1985 as I remember also driving a Sinclair C5 in the same period.]

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"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)

Thanks for all the help. Seems I was overthinking things.

Can't wait to get going. Can't wait for it to kick over...