Protecting screen from pressure damage

Padded bags and/or sleeves don't protect your display against pressure because they don't distribute the pressure outward, to or beyond the rim of the machine. It takes something rigid to do that.

Think of your home. Its roof is designed to distribute its own weight plus the weight of whatever is on it (roofers and their equipment and supplies, snow, ice, volcanic ash) to the walls that support it and thence down to the foundation. It doesn't rest on the contents of the house at all. If the roof were a flaccid, flexible thing, like a big rectangle of pizza dough, it would just droop and lie on top of whatever's inside the house, including you, and you'd have to push it up over you just to stand up. That's what your MBP has to contend with when you jam it into a carrying case or backpack with a big load of other stuff protected only by limp padding, and especially when you set it down flat with all that other stuff on top of it. But unlike your house, the MBP doesn't have any interior walls or posts to help carry any of the load, so a lot of it just sits there crushing the center of your display.

If you must carry a whole lot of stuff along with the MBP,

a) make sure it isn't jammed in: use a big enough bag so it can all fit loosely.
b) If using a backpack, don't tighten the straps so they tug everything against the MBP, or the MBP against everything else.
c) NEVER pack lumpy objects against the MBP. Keep something relatively stiff, like a hardcover book, between the MBP and anything that's lumpy enough to dent it through its padding (like the wall plug on its AC adapter cord) if your bag gets bumped roughly.
d) to give it the best possible protection against an owner like yourself, consider getting a MacTruck:

http://www.google.com/search?q=MacTruck&sourceid=mozilla2&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Yes, it's expensive, but a replacement display is several times more expensive.

I'd also recommend the MacTruck mine's been around the world several times, handled by idiots (baggage handlers, hotel porters and taxi drivers being the worst) and survived lots of situations where any other case would have failed.

I've been wondering about one of the hardshell covers such as this: http://store.apple.com/us/product/TV327ZM/A?fnode=MTY1NDA2Ng&mco=MTA4MjU0NDQ

I wonder if this might be an adequate compromise... somewhere between a soft case and the MacTruck?

Anyone have experience using one of these?

My screen has mottled blotches on it

99% of the time, those blotches are merely cosmetic and are actually finger oils transferred to the screen, and can be wiped off without too much difficulty. In other words they are usually not permanent scratches. I don't worry about them and wipe 'em off periodically.

If yours is of the rare times where those are actually physical gouges, then man, you really are packin' it tight!

N23: We're not talking here about surface damage to the screen from pressing against the top case's rim around the keyboard, nor superficial deposits of oils transferred onto the screen (or the glass covering it) from the keycaps. There is a specific change in the brightness of some of the pixels in the display that has been reported here between a dozen and two dozen times, always in the same pattern or part of the same pattern, and that is not visible at all when the machine is turned off or when the affected area is displaying something bright — only when it's turned on and the center of the screen is quite dark. Links have been posted to photos of it in a couple of cases, but I can't find them now. It was clear from the photos that it couldn't be caused by light passing through the Apple logo, and the pattern was noticeably brighter than the surrounding dark acreen.

That and similar products will prevent scratches, and that's all they'll do. They add no rigidity worth mentioning to the back of the display bezel — especially not in the middle, where it needs it most.

Of course the MacTruck is expensive, bulky overkill for most people. That's because most people can very easily avoid putting heavy pressure on their MBPs once they understand that it's necessary to do so.

If the MBP's case were the solid block of aluminum that it's carved from, instead of being the thin skin that's left after that solid block has been all but completely carved away, we wouldn't be having this discussion. The inch-thick slab of solid aluminum could take almost anything one might throw at it. But that's not the reality: the display panel in particular is very thin and quite delicate, and the lower case isn't very much stronger. All told, the unibody MBPs are probably stiffer and stronger than their predecessors, but not by a wide margin.

Message was edited by: eww

In fact, in my case, I don't think the damage was caused by the other stuff in the bag pressing against the laptop. I think it was caused by the laptop pressing against my back (the padded enclosure is at the very back of the bag).

You may very well be right. Do you sometimes wear your backpack with a waist strap securely fastened, in addition to the shoulder straps adjusted for a comfortable fit? Depending on how snugly fitted your pack is, all it would take to apply at least 20-50 pounds of pressure to the center of the MBP's case under those conditions would be for you to lean forward to tie your shoe or pick up a dropped pen, arching your back and pulling the corners of the machine toward you while the curve in your back pushed the center away. You might, of course, do that half a dozen times a week without ever thinking about it at all, but just once could be enough to damage your display.

A backpack seems, intuitively, like the safest way to carry a notebook computer, and it's certainly a convenient way (because it leaves both hands free). But my feeling has always been that a briefcase-style bag (with or without a shoulder strap) is less likely to apply damaging stresses to the machine inside it, even though it needs more attention to prevent it from swinging into things. I carry my MBP in a slim ballistic nylon briefcase that contains a thickly padded sleeve and a 1/8" Masonite panel on each side of the MBP. That leaves little room inside for many other objects, and there are exterior pockets for all the lumpy ones. Nothing goes inside with the MBP except papers and file folders. If I also had to carry stacks of books around, I'd carry them under my arm, the same way I did 40-45 years ago in high school and college.

I doubt that your thin Marware keyboard protector had anything to do with the problem.

Dang! For $100 more you can get a nice Halliburton locking aluminum briefcase, cut the foam and place the accessories to the side of the machine....