Travel Technology - Moving a desktop TA via luggage

Anyone have tips for moving a desktop box and monitor using my luggage on a TA flight?

My thoughts are to pack the box in a suitcase surrounded by blankets or something and take the LCD monitor in my carry on. I assume I'd have to take the LCD out at security? Any experiences with that?

I just bought this thing and am moving to UK, I don't want to have pay to ship it or buy another over there.

Thanks!

if you have the original boxes w/ original styrofoam, i would consider checking those.

No originals or styrofoam unfortunately. I could of course work that out if I had to, but just want to see if anyone has succesfuly done this in their luggage.

Shipping would probably be less risky. Both from a theft and damage perspective.

Since the airlines won't cover checked electronics, I would recommend finding the original/similar packaging material and pay to have it shipped.

If moving for a job this should easily be a covered expense. If it isn't then think of it as insurance.

In '93 I successfully took a Macintosh LC520 w/built-in CRT from PIT to TLV in the original box with foam in a dufflebag. As you mention I surrounded it with lots and lots of clothes and soft stuff.

I moved my system a couple years ago TA, although the bought the case over here to both save on space and because I wanted a new case (Thermaltake Tsunami). Anyway, I just disassembled the thing down to parts and packed them in whatever material I could find (styrofoam blocks, towels, original packaging) and sort of spread them through the couple bags that I had. Then found a 19" LCD box and wrapped the monitor up again in towels and clothes and tried to take it carry-on. It ended up getting checked because I already had too much carry-on, but everything made it over here relatively safely. Had a few RAM issues later on, which may have been attributable to the flight, but replacing it fixed all the problems right up. Anyway, that seemed to work fairly well for moving it, although all that extra material could add a lot of extra space/weight to your luggage.

I had considered just opening one side of the case and absolutely filling the case with clothes, towels, whatever, but when not taking a case that wasn't an option. Either way, I'd recommend considering what you need and seeing if there isn't anything you can't get over here.

Also, power cords can be found for relatively cheap. I ended up getting them for about EUR2.50

BAGGAGE is sort of toss-ed from one spot to the other ... i.e. from the cart to the carrousel ... etc.:td: :td:

Carefully filling the area inside the tower/case with clothing will help in preventing components from coming loose while in transit. I used rolled up t-shirts and socks to pad the inside of my desktop on a few flights and had no problems checking it. Just be careful of static electricity! I had the original box and foam, but still filled the empty spaces in the box with clothing - then wrapped the box in blankets and finally placed it inside a large suitcase. Good luck!

2 thoughts:

1- Shipping (Fedex, DHL etc) has worked very well for me in the past with proper packaging.
Of course this is speculation, but I get the feeling that a big fedex box is actually treated a little more carefully than a suitcase would be. More automated, maybe... dunno.. just a thought.

2- If you're feeling ambitious, you could take it apart. Meaning remove the motherboard, memory chips and drives. Wrap those much more carefully (e.g. bubble wrap) and either ditch your case and buy a new one for $30 when you get there, or take that as well.

I recently packed a suitcase with a 22" widescreen monitor, motherboard, cpu, 2 gigs of ram, 250mg hdd and a video card. Locally I bought a case, mouse, keyboard and DVD+RW for about $90. Got a top end desktop for 30-40% less than it would have been where I was going...
Of course much of that was original packaging (from Newegg), but you could do just as well with most of it.

if you don't have the original carton use lots, and I mean lots of bubble wrap! just buy a big roll of it.
it worked for me.