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Comments: 225 +- Hardware: Dell Rugged Laptops Not Quite Tough Enough on Tuesday November 03, @10:40AM
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An anonymous reader writes "Trusted Reviews has put the new Dell XFR rugged laptop through the grinder and it hasn't fared as well as expected. Considering that these guys drove a car over a Panasonic Toughbook, they went pretty easy on the Dell, but it still couldn't take the punishment. It looks like Dell still has a way to go to steal the ball from Panasonic when it comes to all terrain computing."
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Submission: Dell rugged laptops not quite tough enough! by Anonymous Coward
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I see... (Score:5, Funny)
So the Dell blends after all!
Does anyone use these? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've seen Panasonic Toughbooks in police cars, fire trucks, and in the vehicles of industrial companies, but I guess I don't get why; the laptops are well protected in the car or truck, and it's not like a cop is going to use it as a shield in a shoot out, or a fireman is going to be typing something inside a burning building. When a plumber came over to fix some pipes, he brought with him a battered Compaq laptop that was missing several keys, looked like it'd gone through hell, but was still working and wasn't "ruggedized" in any way I could tell.
This is pure ignorance on my part...I can appreciate there is very likely a need, or they wouldn't make them, but I really don't know what that need is; especially, under what circumstances would it be possible to get my laptop run over by a truck as part of a normal day?
That said, they definitely *look* cool and wouldn't mind having one myself, especially if I thought I'd need to check my email outside, in a snowstorm, in the Sierra Madre. :)
Re:Does anyone use these? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
In my case, temperature tolerance... (Score:5, Interesting)
A regular laptop won't start up at -40 after a North Dakota night. The toughbook says "Please wait, warming up" on the BIOS screen while it pre-warms the hard drive. It also works just fine when it's baking in the sun at 150, whereas the old Dell I had would crash at those temperatures.
Parent
Re:In my case, temperature tolerance... (Score:5, Informative)
That's pretty much spot on. They need the hardware to work in temperature extremes. And even then I would assume they would by the semi-rugged model. The Panasonic Toughbook is a great machine. They still make them by hand in Kyoto. Panasonic doesn't trust the quality of factories in other parts of Asia, part of the price premium means you're getting a laptop built by a highly skilled workforce with a keen eye on tolerances.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Were it not that we had to pay a premium for this...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well, you have a right to use an idiosyncratic unit of temperature, but please at least specify it, ok ?
Re:In my case, temperature tolerance... (Score:5, Funny)
My home town nearly went to zero Kevins back in 1978.
It was a particularly cold winter, and we were already down to 3 Kevins (due to their low popularity at the time).
Kevin Thomas had flown out to be with his son's family for a wedding and got stuck in Boston for a whole week due to the weather. 2 Kevins left.
Kevin Lemmer was rushed to the hospital during my shift. I still remember the call from the EMTs as the ambulance was rushing toward us. "It's Lemmer. He's in bad shape. Drove right into the fucking ditch." We called the time of death at 6:15 PM.
At 6:16, all eyes turned to room 2217. Kevin Spencer was 82 and on his death bed with leukemia. His family being Catholic, he had already been given his last rights. If he couldn't hold out until Kevin Thomas returned, we would be at zero Kevins. Sure, we had 4 perfectly healthy Calvins, but they're just not the same.
It was 7:15 when Carla Brooks and her husband James burst through the main entrance. "She's not due for 2 weeks!", James exclaimed. As the staff bustled around getting the Brookses settled, they exchanged darting glances with each other. This was their first child, and they wanted to keep the baby's sex a secret. Of course, in a small town, secrets don't get kept. Nearly all of the hospital staff new that the child about to rip open Mrs. Brooks was indeed a boy.
The delivery was routine, and Kevin Brooks was born healthy, if a tad underweight, at 10:52 PM. Kevin Spencer was pronounced dead at 10:54.
It was, as they say, a close one. Kevin Thomas arrived two days later, the weather having finally cleared up. To this day, we still rib him about it.
Cedar Falls is currently at 5 Kevins.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's fair to assume that if he didn't specify a unit then he's the kind of person who isn't aware of more than one unit.
So, Fahrenheit it is.
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Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, they're useful (Score:2)
This is pure ignorance on my part...I can appreciate there is very likely a need, or they wouldn't make them, but I really don't know what that need is; especially, under what circumstances would it be possible to get my laptop run over by a truck as part of a normal day?
Not so much run over by a car but and decent sized IT dept will probably tell you that people abuse the hell out of laptops. Most of them quickly accumulate a veritable junkyard of spare parts from laptops that have been killed through various acts of neglect, malfeasance and random accidents. I've personally seen laptops get destroyed in countless ways. It's a fairly safe bet that a field service technician or traveling consultant is probably going to beat his laptop up pretty quickly. I've had a few cl
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
While they're not your every day laptop, there are some people out there who have a use for them. Once, while working in a computer repair shop back in 2002, a customer came in with a very battered old Toughbook. As it turned out, it really had been through a warzone, as he'd been a journalist in Afghanistan during the invasion and it'd been his companion for the last year or two.
Despite its appearance, the hardware was working perfectly - more than can be said for the Windows install on it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I would add that those that say you don't need a Toughbook for "just being mounted in the police car" has never actually been in a ride along. I have a HS buddy that was a county cop for several years and the amount of abuse and beating you get in those cars chasing a bad guy is just unreal.
Lets not forget that trying to evade the law many bad guys will try to make their own roads, cut through ditches, medians, etc and the amount of beating and bouncing around you get in a police car during a chase is ju
Re: They're still making them (Score:2)
But for other uses, like firemen or refinery maintenance technicians, who need to refer to building schematics and hazardous material contents before they decide how to attack a fire, or need to see maintenance documents to repair a piece of equipment keeping the refinery down at a cost over $100,000/hour, only a T
Why the Toughbooks (Score:2, Interesting)
I worked for the county sheriff's office for several years as an IT / network guy and can tell you that the more durable laptops are DEFINITELY useful in the police context. No matter how often you tell them to be careful or even discipline them, cops will be cops, and most of them are pretty rough around the edges. They toss their notebooks around, drop them, spill coffee on them, you name it. We had one notebook in for updates and servicing that looked like it had fallen into a threshing machine. My cow
Re:Does anyone use these? (Score:5, Insightful)
At my job, we use these toughbooks in extreme conditions -- think arctic/antarctic desert and Middle Eastern deserts. Especially in the latter, the toughbook excels because all of the ports are blocked against FOD [foreign objects and debris] -- namely, if there's a sandstorm that kicks up, the sand can't enter the unit in any way.
In addition, try using a regular laptop while riding on a humvee through rocky terrain. No way that disk lasts, whereas the toughbook disks are made to absorb the shock and vibration.
Parent
Did the submitter even RTFA? (Score:2, Informative)
Er, what? This Slashdot summary does not jive with the article at all. The laptop was perfectly functional after all of their tests. The only problems they had were a minor cosmetic issue of the adhesive coming off around the trackpad (which they just called "fit and finish") and that some of the doors might pop open during drops since they weren't double locked. Their conclusion was that it was indeed quite rugged.
Re:Did the submitter even RTFA? (Score:5, Informative)
Did *you* RTFA? They stated quite clearly that the Dell had issues with water ingress, including water getting into a battery compartment that isn't isolated from the mainboard.
Yes, it worked again after they let it dry out for a day... but that's bad.
I volunteer somewhere that bought one of these Dells, and honestly I have no idea why they needed a ruggedized laptop.
Parent
What about Thinkpads? (Score:2)
Did they compare the Dells to regular Thinkpads? They're not officially ruggedized, but they can take an awful lot of punishment.
Incidentally, I just had a book shelf collapse under its load of books (apparently I wasn't supposed to stack them that high) and fall on my open Macbook. Huge dent next to the keyboard, but everything works fine.
Re: (Score:2)
FWIW, somebody picked up my MacBook to see how heavy it was, and managed to drop it off the desk. Roughly 3 feet. Still works fine, though there is a hefty dent in corner of the metal body that impacted the floor.
I probably just got lucky on this, though; I don't think the MacBook is any more rugged than a regular laptop.
Re:What about Thinkpads? (Score:5, Funny)
FWIW, somebody picked up my MacBook to see how heavy it was, and managed to drop it off the desk.
How long did it take you to remove your hands from their throat?
Parent
Re:What about Thinkpads? (Score:5, Funny)
No need - a little red light comes on somewhere in Cupertino and Steve picks up a phone and calls a team of highly trained ninjas to deal with it.
Steve: Hello ninjas?
Ninjas: Yes?
Steve: A non-Apple user just dropped one of our brethren's Macbooks.
Ninjas: Again?
Steve: Yup.
Ninjas: We're on it. You want the head in a jar again for your collection?
Steve: Sure, can you maybe grab his liver too... you never know...
Disclaimer: I am an Apple user, so this is probably not accurate. I'll bet Phil Schiller handles the ninja calls.
Parent
Re:What about iBooks (Score:3, Funny)
some years ago, my backpack's zipper failed and thus unloaded my 15" iBook down a whole flight of stairs; my heart stopped as I watched it bounce up and down every couple of steps (on its edges), all the way to the ground floor!
Once I unbent the hook that would normally lock it when closed, it worked just like new!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You may find that with such a blemish, any AppleCare warranty support is now void.
My brother's MBP had a video card with a known issue where some times the video card would not output any video (either to the LCD or to the display port). He had the exact model number which experiences this problem, and supposedly every MBP with that model video card is affected and eligible for free repair even out of warranty.
He took them up on it (he was still under AppleCare, having bought the extended version), but bec
Laptops should be able to defend themselves (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
As well as loganberries, grapes, cherries (both red and black), passion fruit, oranges, apples, grapefruit (whole and segmented), pomegranates, greengages, lemons, plums, mangoes in syrup, bananas and of course, a raspberry.
Notsotoughbooks (Score:4, Informative)
We used to believe that the ToughBooks were the end all be all of ruggedized computers; that is until the day someone actually managed to break one!
If you read the warranty statement from Panasonic you will see the following under Section 3 - Limited Warranty Exclusions [panasonic.com]
"Failures which result from alteration, accident, misuse, introduction of liquid or other foreign matter into the unit, abuse, neglect, installation, maladjustment of consumer controls, improper maintenance or modification, use not in accordance with product use instructions"
That means that if your coffee somehow spills on the laptop and fries the motherboard Panasonic will not repair it under warranty!
On the other hand if you purchase a Dell or an HP ruggedized notebook with the accidental damage protection the notebook will be repaired with no questions asked.
Considering the cost of the Panasonic ToughBooks, I would take a Dell XFR + CompleteCare any day!
Besides, regardless of what notebook you own, if you roll over it with your vehicle (by accident) and it happens to break, would you not rather be covered?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Panasonic, just like Dell and HP, has an accidental damage plan.
Consider this. What's worth more the laptop or the data on the laptop? You're in a rugged location, you're off the grid and can't back up your data until you get back to civilization, which laptop would you want? I'm going to opt for the one that doesn't let moisture seep inside.
Re:Notsotoughbooks (Score:5, Informative)
You are comparing a base limited warranty with an ADP warranty, apples an oranges.
Panasonic has ADP warranty as well which like the rest of the brands has to be purchased, I am not aware of any company that has accidental damage protection as there baseline warranty for a laptop.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm at a loss to understand why anyone would
1. Leave a valuable possession on the ground
2. Promptly forget about it
3. And then drive over it with their car
4. ?
5. Profit !
If that is their attitude to their posessions and life in general, seems like they'd be better just getting an insurance policy for being a "accident-prone forgetful dumbass".
The point of ruggedized (Score:4, Interesting)
Considering the cost of the Panasonic ToughBooks, I would take a Dell XFR + CompleteCare any day!
You are missing the point. If you happen to work in any sort of extreme environment (very hot, very cold, very dusty, etc) your Dell is going to die pretty quickly if it even works at all. Furthermore there are jobs where equipment failure has serious consequences. The point is that it doesn't die in the first place, not that you can replace it. Take a standard laptop on a polar expedition or into the middle of a desert and getting your laptop serviced isn't exactly going to be an option you can exercise. And thanks to our good friend Murphy odds are it will break at the least convenient time possible.
Ruggedized laptops aren't for office workers. They are for people who work very far from climate controlled offices.
Parent
Toughbooks live up to the name. (Score:5, Interesting)
Before actually mounting these computers in our cruisers, I dropped the Toughbook while holding it above my head (I'm about 5'10"), I punched the back of the screen (only succeeded in giving myself a bloody knuckle), poured hot coffee on the keys, and generally did things you would REALLY not want to do to your laptop. They took it with just little scratches here and there, but no issue other than cosmetic.
One thing I did find is was that, of course, the screen is tough but it's still a laptop screen. The clamps used to mount the laptops on a swing arm in the cars goes slightly over the sides of the Toughbook. If the screen is slammed hard, that can actually cause a crack. Fortunately I'd paid the extra dosh for a better warranty covering such things, and was able to remind the officers that they need to be aware of that issue.
Dells offerings are really GOOD laptops, and not bad if you need rugged, but not insanely durable. I finally settled on the Toughbook not just because of the abuse I put them through, or just from asking other local PDs what they used. One of my users, a recent hire only a year or so out of the Army Rangers, told me that the Toughbook are what they jumped out of aircraft with. The abuse a grizzled old geek like myself can throw at a computer is pretty much NOTHING like what an Army Ranger could do.
So far, the TBs have been worth every penny we spent.
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
However, this is the special OMG-MIL-SPEC, super durable, extra rugged, no-expense-spared model. If Dell wants to sell a machine in that segment, this sort of testing is perfectly appropriate.
Parent
Re:Interesting... (Score:4, Informative)
This isn't a uber traveler laptop. It's for people working in harsh environments. Do you work on an oil rig, war zone or the middle of the amazon? If you answer no, then you don't need a rugged laptop.
Parent
Re:Interesting... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Or someone like myself, who wants to buy exactly ONE laptop that will last forever, and which I do not wish to have to protect like a newborn infant.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
...and my aging cat urinated on the keyboard...
Some years ago my cat urinated on my Apple powerbook. It never worked again. There were no Apple stores then so I had to take it to CompUSA, again and again and again.
It was Toast!
Looks like Dell wins the pissing contest!
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
my aging cat, may he rest in peace, urinated on the keyboard
That is how that line should have read.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, if you look at the OP's history, his posts are always followed by an AC message asking it to be modded up. Either a big coincidence, or Trisexualpuppy is trying to draw attention and upmods to his own posts.
Re:Interesting... (Score:4, Informative)
They've typically got a metal case
Not just generic steel or aluminum, Toughbooks have titanium cases, to keep them light, stiff, and strong. Now you can get a Toughbook with a solid state drive, and the biggest weakness to the system is eliminated. With an SSD on board, it becomes extremely difficult to damage the laptop. You have to hit something so hard you literally tear the components off the motherboard (very hard to do) or overcome the strength of the titanium (which is not thin, btw) to crush it. Even then you're more likely to damage the LCD than anything, and destroying the hard drive would be nearly impossible.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Not just generic steel or aluminum, Toughbooks have titanium cases, to keep them light, stiff, and strong.
Magnesium, actually. Just as tough, half the price. Titanium would have to be machined, which would double the price of the toughbook just in machine time. Magnesium can be formed and stamped.
Re:Interesting... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Verdict: Faster than Toughbook, but less rugged (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm at a loss as to why your post was modded insightful.
- "It's no surprise that the military customers would require a lower ruggedness spec than civilian users. "
- "Civilian usage, OTOH, requires a device that is durable and lasts for years and can be used in any environment. They don't need great processing power, they just need something that can run their dedicated apps well enough."
I'm guessing your perception of military laptop usage to be something out of "Hackers?"
Parent
Re:Verdict: Faster than Toughbook, but less rugged (Score:4, Insightful)
A Vet turned History teacher had a saying on his door...
A computer with a bullet hole in it is a paperweight.
A map with a bullet hole in it is still a map.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
After telling them about the tests they did, etc, one of the officers asks if he can try something with the demo model they brought, to see if he could break it. The sales guy tells him to go a
Re:Verdict: Faster than Toughbook, but less rugged (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless it's an IBM mainframe, in which case a mainframe with a bullet hole is still a mainframe, just with one CPU showing a fault condition. Redundancy is a virtue whenever bullets are involved, whether you're the shooter or the owner of the target.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's no surprise that the military customers would require a lower ruggedness spec than civilian users.
And then there's this story that utterly contradicts you: http://www.toughbookuniverse.com/?p=16 [toughbookuniverse.com]