
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, September 11, 1994                   TAG: 9409120029
SECTION: TRAVEL                    PAGE: F-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

LAPTOPS ARE SAFE ON SECURITY CONVEYOR BELT

What you don't know about X-ray machines and metal detectors at airports could be hazardous to your laptop, says a computer consultant who's logged more than a million air miles during the last 12 years, toting his equipment through countless terminals.

Some passengers are reluctant to put their laptop on the security conveyer belt, deducing that the computer and disks, like a camera and film, might be damaged by the X-rays.

Not so, says Scott Mueller, author of ``Upgrading and Repairing PCs'' (Que Corporation, $34.95; fourth edition due in October). X-rays, a form of light, might affect film, especially the high-speed kind, but computers and disks, which are written by a magnetic field, aren't sensitive to light, Mueller says.

What they might be sensitive to are the magnetic fields of the metal detector in the security arch and the hand-held wand. So passing the laptop through or by the arch or near a metal-detecting wand is more likely to mess up your files.

``The best way to get through security is to put the computer on the belt,'' he says.

Another laptop travel tip: Always carry a bootable floppy (or upgrade to DOS 6.0, which has a built-in way to bypass configuration files at start-up) so if your computer locks up late at night at the hotel, you're not stuck until morning.

by CNB