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)."

drop test seems pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

They should not be dropped flat or on their spine to simulate drop damage. I've seen plenty of notebooks survive that. Pick a corner.

The Six Year Old Test

[Bananatree3]

Nothing is better than the six year old test. The Beeb ran a test a few years ago [bbc.co.uk] on rugged testing CF cards. They nailed them to a tree, given to a six year old with simply instructions to "destroy" and put in a strainer and stove top boiled. now THAT is what I call ruggedized testing.

Re:Missed one

[joshv]

Huh, seems like it's be easy enough to add a temperature sensitive battery warmer - granted it would lower battery life a bit, but not as much as the temperature would.

Problem with Rugged Notebooks ... False Security

[piltdownman84]

The company I work for has had trouble with toughbooks because people think they are alot more rugged than they really are. Employees have a real false sense of security with them. With the big macho 'Rugged Notebook' they expect it to be able to take abuse. What has happened in out experience is they still break when dropped from four feet onto pavement, and with a 'Rugged Notebook' they are more likely to be dropped because of the false sense of security. We have found that we are far better of with a really well built non-rugged notebook, like a t-series.

Re:Print link - avoid 6 pages of ads

[element-o.p.]

I'm [sic] also think it is morally wrong to let them enjoy ad-income.

Great thesis. Now support it.

To put my money where my mouth is, I will attempt to support the opposing view (disclaimer: yes, I run Google AdSense on my web pages). Web pages such as the one in TFA are information that you, at your option, may find useful. Generating the content, and acquiring the bandwidth to provide it to you, costs money -- sometimes just a little bit (as in my case), and sometimes a lot (as, I suspect, in the case of TFA above -- destroying laptops in an abuse test can't be cheap). The content provider is providing that information to you completely free (as in beer). How then, if you do not charge for access to the content, do you pay for the bandwidth, hardware and, well, content required to provide interesting, relevant content? One way is to serve ads on the web page. Provided that the ads aren't the annoying, overly garish, flash-based crap that seriously detracts from the host web page, I don't believe this is too much to ask. As I said above, I put Google AdSense on my web pages because I don't think a simple text-based ad on the border of a web page is too intrusive. While other web hosts might disagree, I don't really give a rip if you want to run ad blockers, NoScript or edit your host files to block ads on my server. My web sites are primarily a hobby; I would just like to generate a little extra income to help offset the costs of bandwidth and servers. FWIW, I am a long way from breaking even on costs. My sites are pretty low volume (and ironically OTA right now; gotta call my upstream and find out what's going on...sigh).

And if they can't exist without the money from ads, well, they are free to remove their website.

On the flip side, if you are so morally opposed to ads on a web page, you are free to not visit my web sites ;)

My Experiences

[BigDork1001]

I'm a net admin in the Air Force currently deployed to Baghdad. Here on base we have various models of the Panasonic Toughbook and the Itronix.

When I first got here someone who worked flight line brought in an Panasonic that had fallout out of an airborn helicopter and onto the tarmac. It was all dented up and I could actually see the internal components. I plugged it in and the damn thing powered right up! I was shocked because this thing was beat up.

Oh Itronix... we seriously thought these things were made here in Iraq. What hunks of crap! I've had my share of experiences with them, all bad. They are slow, buggy, bulky, ugly... If price is not an issue definitely go with the Panasonic over Itronix. If I ever get a choice, I choose Panasonic over Itronix.