3 Rugged Notebooks Take a Beating

bsk_cw writes "Brian Nadel got a chance to try to destroy three 'fully rugged' notebooks and get paid for it — Computerworld had him drop, spray, drown, bake, shake, and freeze notebooks from General Dynamics Itronix, Getac, and Panasonic. All three suffered some damage, but only the Getac M230 actually died as a result. Brian made videos of the tests (which were apparently done in his home, including his kitchen)."

Print link - avoid 6 pages of ads

[adpsimpson]

To save you having to wade through 6 ad-filled half pages - here's the link [computerworld.com].

Why this link is't published to start with is beyond me.

Missed one

[plopez]

He missed one, battery life at low temps. A few years back for a former employer we looked at ruggedized laptops for field work and battery life at low temps was a major draw back. Our conclusion was that pencil and paper was still the best.

The videos are a joke

[Bazer]

Don't bother clicking through for the videos. All three only show how they dropped the laptops on the floor. Whooping three shots per laptop: falling on the floor on the spine, base from 29 inches and in a bag from 60 inches. Nothing interesting. Just go with the print version [computerworld.com] if you want to read it.

The motorcycle-in-the-rain test

[dtjohnson]

My IBM (nee Lenovo) Thinkpad T40 still works flawlessly after being bungied to the back of a motorcycle in rainstorms. Let's see how those models do in THAT test.

Itronics

[Ceiynt]

I work for an ambulance company. We use the Itronics GoBook III. It's rugged and touted for use by Fire depts, Police, Military and Ambulance people, with some other as well. We have a fleet of about 30 of these books, and have yet to have a problem with the rugged parts. We do have issues with displays getting cracked, ports breaking loose, missing keys, things like that. We've had one run over by an ambulance(they are heavy), and it survived. It was misformed but usable. As for actual performance, good luck. Your top of the line electronics do not match well with survivability in rugged laptops. They do make fine weapons to defend yourself with if need be.

Gobook III

[pdawson]

Watch out for the Itronix Gobooks, we've got some of them deployed in our police cruisers, and the PC card slots are not well attached to the MB. With the celluar data cards installed there (due to needing ext antenna connector) we've destroyed 4 of 6 that way.

The Toughbook CF-27s we had before this survived years w/o a hitch, on the other hand.