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Hardware

Notebooks for Rough People 106

Posted by Roblimo from the takes-a-licking-and-keeps-on-computing dept.
snack writes "Hey guys, I was surfing around, and somehow I came across Panasonic Tough Book. These things look uber cool, magnesium casings and all. They've also got shock resistant lcd's and hard drives. Water proof, and dust proof. Very very kick ass." Okay. Finally I'm gonna jump on the Slashdot "I gotta have one of these!" bandwagon. (My tongue is hanging out as I type.) Update: Yes, we know hardened laptops aren't new, but this is an exceptionally slim, light, and cute one. -Roblimo
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Notebooks for Rough People More

Notebooks for Rough People

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  • *Definitely* not new.. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I know lots of people have already mentioned it's old news, but...

    I saw one of these things about 4 years ago. A SBE I met had one that he claimed came from a military buddy of his.

    Besides being durable and top-of-the-line (well, for the time period), it had a CD burner built in! Press a button and the entire motorized (no spring-action crap) keyboard raised up and the CD tray slid out from underneath! No BS!

    Pretty damn cool for a laptop 4 years ago! (Any other mfg's doing that today?)
  • I work for a police department and we tested these laptops. Damn things are awesome. Weigh a ton though. One officer turned his on and tossed it across the room, landing on a concrete floor. The thing didn't skip a beat. Any other laptop would have been destroyed.
  • >And then there was a contracted deal between DoD
    >and some PC manufacturer to produce "battle-
    >proof" PC which were used in both "Desert
    >Shield" and later "Desert Storm" Operations.

    That would have been GRiD (http://www.grid.com), as I recall.. they made some pretty nifty notebooks, including some of the earlier consumer-grade pads (GRiDpad).

    Unfortunately, their web page doesn't seem to have a lot of information (listed as under construction, of course).

    I seem to remember Grid going under a few years back... the web page says it's from GSCS, "founded to service and support exiting (sic) GRiD products".

    Anyone have any idea what the real history is?

    -LjM

  • i bought one of these bad boys a while back for a trip to saudi arabia. i knew nothing less would survive the ordeal. for various reasons i never actually went to saudi, so now i have this nice expensive laptop that cant possible live up to its potential.

    thats ok though...it is currently a linux server running mandrake 6.0 with an uptime well over 30 days.

    i love this box. get one. now.

  • These things are not that tough. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The Panasonic is not that rugged. It's not entirely waterproof, the drives can and do break if you drop the unit, and the casings are not that rugged. Truly ruggedized portables can be completely submerged in liquid and can withstand major drops onto concrete. They're also several times more expensive than this unit.

    This unit is a sort of compromise. Sorta ruggedized, and sorta affordable.

    Korhan Tekin
    korhan@damgudesign.com
    This is my .sig file
  • Pure magnesium would suck as a case material, it is way too ductile(soft) and wouldn't hold it's shape. It does work great in various alloys however, and this is what is actually used. These alloys also make good heatsinks.
  • NEC has (or had) an article on their website
    about a fellow at a .gov installation who lost
    his bag (with his laptop in it, foolish man);
    said bag (with the laptop still in it) turned
    up in the parking lot of the facility, was
    deemed "suspicious" and taken out by a bomb
    squad robot with a shotgun. The laptop's screen
    was trashed, but the machine still booted and he
    was able to retrieve his data. Woo.
  • I went to DefCon 7 with my two best friends, and while wandering around the show room, one of them was wearing his red fedora from RedHat and carrying his panasonic ruggidized lap top. We were all expecting people to comment on the hat, which was very noticable, but no one said a thing about it. Conversely, six people walked up to us wanting to touch, feel, and drool on his laptop, which he had been carrying at his side, not paying much attention to. It was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen. But those laptops are worth it, I swear. This particular one once saved my friend from someone who wanted to see just how tough the case was and threw a screwdriver at him without warning. There's a tiny little nick in the case where the sharp end of the screwdriver made impact at high speeds. My instinct would NOT have been to defend myself with an expensive piece of equipment, but it was lucky for him that his was.
  • I've got an Intel Bubble Memory Evaluation Kit thing from the mid 80's. Basically it's a block of Bubble memory mounted on an ISA card, with accompanying docs and software. It's got drivers to make it a 'solid state disk drive' (it has 4 megabits of space in the bubble, so it can make a 512K drive) on an XT or an AT system under DOS. Has anybody written Linux drivers for it yet? I was tempted at one point to make an attempt.

    I should try to sell it on eBay to a collector...
  • The Toughbook has made a certain amount of noise given it's slightly lower target audience and price points. The one that really impresses me, thought is Fieldworks [field-works.com].

    I had read about them in an article on rugged notebooks a couple of years ago. Earlier this year, I had a consulting gig at Rollerblade (handling the data migration off of their IRIX network when the company was shipped out to New Jersey). On my way in to RB one day, something that had been nagging at me for the past couple of weeks finally came to a head; Fieldworks was less than a block down the street from RB.

    I mentioned this, excited, to a couple of the R&D guys there with whom I had become friends. They told me about a former RB R&D guy who had left to go work at Fieldworks, and they asked if I'd like them to try to set up a tour.

    Fun fun, we got to go there later that week. It's an amazing place. Every computer is assembled and tested by hand there in Eden Prarie, Minnesota. They run them overnight in a room hot enough that I only lasted a minute before I fled in fear that I might pass out. And that was only one of the horrors to which these are subjected.

    It gets better. The customer is able to choose a number of different levels of "ruggedness" for the computers they're purchasing. Going up north? They have special measures to make the computer (and the LCD) behave just fine in far colder temperatures than an unshielded human could handle.

    Best of all, these notebooks are upgradable. They have PCMCIA slots, but they also have room for standard ISA cards (I don't remember about VESA or PCI). This allows a number of companies to use these for highly specific purposes.

    Finally, a bit I found amusing. A number of police departments use Fieldworks machines. They'll send one in every once in a while to have it cleaned. Seems the officers with these mounted in their cars often use the keyboard as a nice flat place to set coffee or a donut. Now, this doesn't do any damage or anything, but eventually enough sugar/syrup/spilled coffee/etc accumulated to clog up the keys of the keyboard. They send it in, FW sprays it out with a hose, tests it, ships it back.

    I am not an employee, customer, client, or contractor for or of Fieldworks. I just think they're cool.

  • I havcen't read a magazine since this summer, and I read about that in one this summer... so like you're 4 months old Robin...
  • Hate to burst anyone's bubble, but the hinges on these things are pretty fragile. In my former life as an IT manager in an oilfield company, we had far more trouble with the hinges on those Panasonics than on either the Compaq or IBM laptops we had.

    And the PC itself wasn't all that wonderful.
  • it doesnt come with a modem..well..mine didnt...also for those wondering, i have linux up and running on it just fine..(why arent i in linux now? good question) reboot time
  • Gee, and just when I thought humanity had managed to decouple gender identity from object ownership...guess I'm just naive.

    If you need a black computer made of magnesium to make you feel like a man, you might consider taking that money to your plastic surgeon. They're doing amazing things with penis extensions these days. Me, I'm going to take my gender-secure happy male self, put my iBook in my Miata, and not worry too much about what other people think is "girlie".

    Have a nice day.
  • You forgot Indiana Jones and Quartermain as potential buyers.
  • Yes, we use this model for Mobile Date Terminals at the Pueblo, Colorado Police Department. Running Win95B (yech) with a terminal program by Allinson-Ross to log in to the old Unisys Mainframe, and via secure fiber to the Colorado Criminal Information Computers. Transmission is via a radio modem, seriously encrypted (of course) so the connection is ssslllooooww. But that notebook is DAMN tough. You can spill coffee all over it, and it keeps on tickin!
    --Officer Jeff Pettorino, Pueblo PD
  • Magnesium is found in plant chlorophyll and is necessary in the diet of animals and humans.

    But if you get stranded out in the middle of nowhere you can eat your laptop and survive! :)
  • From what I recall from chemistry, Mg is a highly reactive metal. From Encyclopædia Britannica:

    "At one time, magnesium was used predominantly for photographic flash ribbon and powder, incendiary bombs, and pyrotechnic devices, because in finely divided form it burns in air with an intense white light....It is a very strong reducing agent, reacting with most acids or with boiling water to liberate hydrogen"

    er..Don't pour any boiling water on your 'super tough' laptop I guess.

    ". Because of its low density (only two-thirds that of aluminum) it has found extensive use in the aerospace industry. A part that would weigh 70 pounds (31.8 kilograms) when made of steel weighs only 15 pounds when made from magnesium. Because the pure metal has low structural strength, alloys have been developed--principally with aluminum, zinc, and manganese--to improve its hardness, tensile strength, and ability to be cast, welded, and machined. "

    Perhaps an alloy is more heat resistant and less reactive. But they claim to be using a 'full' magnesium case. I guess it means that the case won't be very strong either.

  • Yeah this is definatly nothing new. I have an 8088 powered Campaq travel computer. It weighs ~28lbs., has a small builtin monochrome screen, and two 360k 5.25" floppy drives.

    Now, I don't know if this is true or not, but I heard that Compaq salespersons were known to drop these beasts to show how rugged they were.

    If I were to throw this thing against a brick wall, it would probably go right through.
  • http://www.husky.co.uk/uk/products/fex21.html

    pretty nice looking pc's dont care for the OS though.
  • I believe they have a fully waterproof model for a bit more $$$. You have to admit they are pretty neat though. They can withstand a much greater shock than normal laptops - mine fell about 6inches and the LCD went haywire for a while. Also these are great for rough, vibration prone environments - ie on a jeep off road, or on a roller coaster. Most laptops will die under any Gs.
  • I saw one of these at PCexpo that had a bullet hole in it.. the bullet had entered through the screen, hit the keyboard and was stopped (!) by the hard drive, or whatever protective material is around the hard drive..

    The rep told me it booted fine with an external keyboard and monitor.. no data was lost and the only things that broke were the screen and the kb.

    Unfortunately he couldn't tell me any details of how the laptop managed to take a bullet, he said the police were still investigating whatever case it was related to.
  • I saw one at a govt. trade show a couple years back. They dropped it from 4 feet in the air, it was fine. They had a 200 pound man stand on it, it was fine. Then the man started jumping about 1 foot in the air, I the LCD got a hair line crack but it really didnt effect it that much.

    What I didnt see was them testing it at weird angles this was all with the laptop close and flat to the ground. Never the less I hope to afford one of these once I get out of school.
  • If it's got a winmodem, (i.e. incompatible software modem with secret spec) don't bother.
  • A few years ago I used to do allot of kiosk development and a company named microyouch made a touchscreen which they installed in a crap 20 inch monitor (the package sold for 2600 or so, even at volume) which could stop a bullet, and keep on ticking... if you were a really big potential customer, they would even demo the bulet-proof issue for you in their mass factory (isnt that illegal???)
  • MAGNESIUM ALLOY.... you need some sort of ionic form, or maybe a metal hydride to access magnesiums reactive characteristics
  • ya, stop breakage... i can see it now: "we have incorporated inertial dampers into the body and display segments to prevent damage caused by accidental dropping. Infact this takes the machine into a new era, wireless is no-longer important, this product needs no table.. no level surface.. you can ue it in an airplane, and not have to worry about where it rests...." HOVER NOTEBOOK... apple should try to develop this, and call it the h-book.. sell it in fatigue color
  • I am two things: A long-distance backpacker and a geek. So, in 1996, when I headed to hike from Georgia to Maine [waldo.net], I did what came naturally: I brought a laptop.

    And another one. And another one. And so on. Some of them didn't last but a week. The Thinkpad's screen broke, the Compaq Aero's motherboard snapped, several others simply couldn't handle the moisture or the heat/cold.

    Finally, in Maine, Texas Micro [texasmicro.com] gave me a Hardbody [zdnet.com]. This, I was told, was the toughest laptop known to man. It was created to MILSPEC, intended to survive the harshest conditions, including wild swings of temperature, 6-foot drops onto rock, strong vibrations, and lots of moisture.

    It lasted just under 2 days.

    Am I down on the Toughbook? Kinda.

    Obviously, they didn't make this notebook for me or for other unreasonable freaks. They advertise that broken notebooks cause loss of work time and money for corporations. These are created to withstand the rigors, of, say, the Beltway. I think that by most of our standards, this system is nothing special. It sure doesn't look like anything that you or I couldn't do with a Toshiba Satellite, some caulking and a little duct tape.

    Anyhow, I found my ideal trail computer. It worked perfectly at all times, ran for days at a time on very few batteries, even with those pesky cell-phone data uploads, was nearly waterproof, didn't give a damn about jolts or drops. The system? A Newton. :)
  • Actually, getting a coffee-resistant crotch is not so hard. Simply start out with water slightly above lukewarm, and tip a cup into your lap first thing every morning. If you make the water about half one degree hotter every day, soon you'll be able to withstand even fresh expresso poured steaming over the family jewels.

    This is a great party trick. Once you are at the balls-of-steel stage, challenge an unpopular manager to an endurance contest. You'll be the life of the party.

  • >You can get a 366mhz laptop but I doubt you'll find a 366mhz ruggedised laptop.

    http://www.pana sonic.com/computer/notebook/products/toughbook71.h tm [panasonic.com]
  • You'd think there would be a considerable market for "tough" personal computing equipment. Given that, I'm really sort of shocked that we haven't seen this sort of thing previously (unless you count the NeXT cubes, which I'm told could be dropped from several stories without the case being damaged).

    Think of the buyers: Military ('natch), campers (not the Quake kind), off-road bikers, heavy-duty business travellers -- just about anyone who gets tossed around enough that their gear has to take a beatin' and keep on tickin'.

    ----

  • i think i saw these things a while ago. didn't news.com do a story on them? their sposed to be able to with-stand fires (the screens are fairly easy to replace, right?) gunshots, car-crashes, scalding coffee (though my crotch can't yet, gotta work on that), etc. etc. etc.
    i think lots - o - cops have these things in their cars...
    pretty fun to see again though..
  • I saw these a few Comdexes ago I believe... I think there was some type of "If you break one, you get one" challenge then. I don' think anyone won, but the contest may have been cut short (Softbank probably didn't take too kindly to people tossing notebook computers across the grounds of the show... Heh).

    And, this would have been at least 2 Comdexes ago. Very old news, and it's been on slashdot before. Doesn't matter though.
  • I remember drooling over the P75 version of the Toughbook. They where a lot more expensive back then also. I'm glad to see that they are still making them. Now, only if it came bundled with one of those nifty solar chargers. . .

  • We don't need to hear about how you want everything you hear about.
  • Ouch, keep away from party sparklers! Mind you, very good for avoiding black hats: Oh oh, here come the MIB... fzzzzFZZZZZZZ. Haha, can't get my data.
  • I worked for a company that modified these units into some kickin' tempest units. Anyways, the website is http://www.hetrasecure.com [hetrasecure.com]. I don't recall what they cost, but if you're a US citizen, it's all you. The advantage of ruggedness and TEMPEST, all in one!!!
  • I think it was on PC Magazine. I remember reading it on their Web site and hardcopy magazine. Again, I could be wrong.

  • Not true at all. I used to get hold of magnesium strips at school (chem class) and light them with a bunsen burner. Way cool. I also used to shave of small chunks from those metal pencil sharpeners (avail here in NZ and AU, don't know about elsewhere) and light those as well. Also, party springlers are mostly magnesium and they shouldn't have any problem lighting a larger chunk of the stuff. I've never dealt with magnesium powder, only solid bits. Are you perhaps thinking of aluminum (or aluminium, depending on your preferred spelling)?
  • Magnesium is only flamable when it is in a powder form. (dont you remember making magnesium fires when you were little? oops that must have just been me). But magnesium is some pretty tough stuff.

  • Cost?? (Score:1)

    by bjk4 ( 885 )
    Those look cool. I should get one for a friend who recently rolled over his laptop with his car!! Neither survived (note I didn't say drove over...)

    I remember finding a site a long time ago that had super rugged laptops. There were a number of problems with those oldies though: They were slow, ugly, and heavy. The Panasonic's look much nicer IMHO.

    However, I wonder how much they would cost! I do wish companies weren't so paranoid about posting prices. It makes it nearly impossible to even consider purchasing something if I cannot see the price when I actually visit the site on a whim.

    -B



  • This "tough 'puter" thingy is definitely not new.

    Someone has produced "tough" carry-ons back in the '386 days. And then there was a contracted deal between DoD and some PC manufacturer to produce "battle-proof" PC which were used in both "Desert Shield" and later "Desert Storm" Operations.

    BTW, can anyone tell me if there is anything new this "toughy", other than a new processor, bigger memory and HDD, and nicer screen ?


  • I don't know about anyone else, but I take care of my laptops. I don't really need tough computers. What we really need are super tough laptop carrying cases. That would mean that you could pay $100 for a really tough carrying bag instead of paying $400 more for the super tough laptop case option. Another nice thing is if your laptop bag breaks you can replace it for $100, if your laptop exterior breaks you have to replace the laptop or buy another case ($400 + $100 for the installation. I'm using estimates here.) even if you have a laptop where the case can be replaced.
  • for large ammounts of magnesium to be flamable an intense heat must be put on it. Magnesium flashbulbs and incendeary bombs are powdered magnesium (extremly flamable). you go buy a brick of magnesium and attempt to light it on fire.
  • Yeap it is, they where showing them off at Brisbane's Big Boys Toys show early this year...
  • I work for a governmental agency that oversees contractors, and the inspectors have to take notes and record time and personnel data on construction sites.

    This has been done for years with Fujitsu Stylistic 500 hand-held Pen-based units. (486/50 with max of about 20MB ram - and whatever size you can get a type 3 PCMCIA hard drive; 340? - although they're grayscale and I haven't tried X on them, they would make a nice little Linux boxen if someone would write the drivers for the pen function. ;)

    We have recently begun to deploy some model of these "tanks". I haven't heard any feedback yet, but it will be interesting. Based on the number of pen units out there, if they were all replaced, there might be a test-bed of several hundred machines... and, lucky me, I'm one of the ones who is going to get to try fix them (or pass along for warranty work) when they break. I'll have a feel for how good they are in 6 months to a year. They've gotta be better than the Compaq Armada 7800's. :)

    BTW, a little off-topic, but I keep seeing this word "administrate". I always thought it was "administer." (I know, I looked it up in the dictionary and they are both verbs and synonyms.) Does this word *sound* dumb to anyone else?

    It's just like "taking one's medication" instead of "taking one's medicine." "Administrate" and "medication" sound so haughty, pompous and self-important. Does it seem that way to anyone else?

    Perhaps CT or Hemos will consider an article on this so I don't get moderated in obscurity for off-topic? I just hate bad Karma. :)

    Russ
  • Actually there has always been a demand for rugged computers. Field workers, scientists, military et al have always had the need to use computers in unfriendly environments. I remember a 286 AT with a small TV-Tube as Monitor in rough metal casing. But this was probably more like carrying a car engine.
  • Road cases rock. Most sound companies make their own, and will make custom ones for customers if asked. If you're looking for an excellent case for anything fragile, it might be worth your while to give those guys a visit.

    Also, many case companies (I can think of Zero and Pelican off the top of my head) sell cases which come full of a big chunk of foam. The foam can be be modified by ripping cubes out it, giving a customised fit for your equipment.

    I bought a cheap model (~$100) for carrying my electronic equipment around. Except my scope of course...

    This one also has divider sections so I can haul out the entire block of foam, put in the dividers, and put my notebook in there and have lots of space for other things.

    I usually carry my notebook around in my Kensington Saddlebag. I searched high and low trying to find a case that allowed me to put my notebook *and* at least two binders or books simultaneously. The only ones I could find locally were too big, designed for putting changes of clothes in there.

    I used to have a job where rugged computers would have been nice to have. I ended up unplugging everything and moving the table away before any physical work was done on the machines. I later replaced it with a regular notebook, because it was easier to move out of the way.
  • I think so as well. I might be wrong but I thought I had read that they had it discontinued... Seems not to be the case.

  • For more of the same (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The company I work for, Opentec [opentec.com.au] have a range of rugged portables, the Australian Military use them, as well as the mining industry and yachties among others.
    Backlit keyboards...lot's of cool stuff. (I want to have one vehicle mounted in my car to play MP3s with, though that's probably not going to happen ;)
    "Warrior has been specially constructed to comply with various industrial and military standards including IEC-68-2 and MIL-STD-810E. these put the Warrior through a series of stiff endurance and environmental tests where, amongst other things, all corners and edges are subjected to a total of 26 drops."
    End gratuitous plug....
  • You don't have to be military or anything to need one of these. I carried the laptop to and from work for half a year, that was enough for the LCD screen to lose one third of the right field and the whole thing to get generally loose. The cabling and silly plastic connectors for the GSM phone and pcmcia adapter is now kept together with string and rubber band. That toughbook is exactly what I need, I wanted one the moment I saw one advertised some months ago. Did I mention that it has a built-in GSM phone too? Antenna comes out of the top of the LCD screen, no more cabling&connectors to break.
    TA
  • "Administrate" is merely illiterate and pompous.

    "Medication" is more interesting. I am a student of propaganda and I have noticed that through the 90's, there has been a segregation movement going on here. The term "drug" has been shunned by the medical industry; replaced by "medication".

    "Drug" is becoming ghettoized to mean "illegal drug". Furthermore, instead of referring to a specific illegal drug, the tendency now is to conflate narcotics, stimulants, and cannabis into the generic term of opprobrium, "drugs".

    This category error serves the promoters of the War on Drugs by hyping up the problem. Instead of a few thousand users of heroin and speed, and 20 million cannabis smokers, you now have 20 million "drug users". This helps sell the budget ($17 billion this year in the U.S.).

  • Vibration-resistant LCDs

    To prevent costly damage to the LCD display, internal dampeners absorb impact and prevent damage from shock and sudden impact.


    Anybody else misread that as inertial dampeners? Heh, it's all star trek's fault.

    Still, that would surely reduce drop damage :)
  • Where have you guys been? Here's your SUV of notebook computers:
    http://www.dolch.com/html/portables.html

    I don't think any more needs to be said about it, do you?
  • Ever see someone light an old VW engine block? With enough heat to start it, magnesium burns quite nicely even solid in an alloy...
  • You've never had the urge to treat your equipment poorly? I'd much rather have a machine that I don't have to worry about spilling stuff on, that I can drop, that I can punch or throw across the room in a fit of rage.

    It'd kick much ass to have a party-proof laptop. Besides, Quake3 is best on the desktop.

  • I've been supporting these POS for about 6 months now and they are the most problematic, NON-DURABLE machines I have ever seen. They certainly don not justify the $6,000 plus pricetag for the P166 MMX version.
  • I have a small hardshell case from sampsonite. I got it at a mall luggage shop for $70

    If came with the half the case filled with the foam cube treatment, and with a soft bag that attaches inside the top cover.

    This is cool because I can put the computer in the foam, and stick accesories in the bag, and just use the case, or if I need to haul more stuff, I put the computer in the soft bag and pack it in my mombo-hauling indigo bag.
  • Does anyone here remember the old Tandy/RadioShack laptops? Now there is a truly indestructable computer. My mother owned one, and let me play with it as a toddler. Talk about durable... I'm pretty sure it still works today. In fact, I'm planning on bringing it back to school with me after my next break.
  • I'm missing something here, did you get a Toughbook? I thought you were talking about the Hardbody, which is a different box.

  • I've got one, a CF-25 (Score:3)

    by ratchet69 ( 6474 ) on Wednesday October 13, 1999 @10:03AM (#1619148)
    I got an older CF-25 (the full mill-style one.) It's the first model, with plastic(!) doors over the PCMCIA slots. I understand that they went to Aluminum with the CF-27. Also, this one is only waterproof from the top, as there are some non-sealed holes on the bottom for the floppy release, etc. There is a very heavy handle on mine, which I use to tie the Eithernet cable to so it doesn't pull out when I trip over it. There's a plastic glare shield over the screen that seems to protect it ok.

    I have the 12" dstn, which works well and uses a CT 65550 with 2MB ram, and works ok with Xfree. I understand the TFT CF-25's used a neomagic chip with one meg.

    I've yet to get the cardbus to work with a 2.2 kernel, I'm using pcmcia-cs-2.9.12 with kernel 2.0.37. Oh, yah, and the serial port drops bytes, and I've read (on deja) that it drops bytes in some dos apps, too.

    Also, the bios didn't understand my Linux partition, kept prompting me to stick in my Windblows cd, so I now boot a tiny dos partition, which runs loadlin. Poo!

    I've opened mine up, and all the internals say "(c)IBM" all over them. It's pretty heavy duty inside. It's not just a mag case, the main body is a very heavy casting, with a mag cover that covers the disk and batt. compartment on the bottom, and a cover on the top deck that might be plastic. The HD sits in a jelly-like molded compartment, and is not screwed to anything. It took three minuts to stick in a bigger drive. There's a spot in the bottom for a SO-DIMM, which Panasonic claims is proprietory, but a generic worked for me.

    On the good side, I've so far spilled coffee on it, carried it in a duffel with lots of other junk, dropped it down the stairs, stepped on it, dropped it off my desk while running, and dropped it from five feet a bunch of times to scare my co-workers, all without damage (although the black paint does scratch off eventually.) I'm kinda hard on laptops, and this one is holding up much better so far than any other one I've owned. The big benifit to me so far is that I just don't worry about breaking it, or bumping my bag into walls, or whatever.

  • Hey! (Score:1)

    by cr0sh ( 43134 )
    This sounds similar to my Compaq SLT/386 (my little slut) - damn thing weighs about 14 lbs (no, not as mighty as yours, but still damn heavy) - causes shoulder pain after carrying it for awhile.

    Why do I keep it? Well, it has a nice monochrome screen - and get this: A detachable keyboard. Put it on a desk, remove the keyboard, and kick back!
  • It may be old news, but a Slashdot Product Endorsement must be worth something these days. Perhaps the Geeks In Space each get a free one for it being an article on the site.
  • I remember a year ago, maybe a bit longer when these debuted at around P233MMX mobiles or so. I saw them at an expo and for the demonstration they had 10 toughbooks, a 10 foot ladder, an anvil on a slab of concrete, hot plate, icebox, and lots of drinks. For the entire duration of the show they would drop, if not throw them (open and closed) onto the anvil, while it was running mind you! In addition they would be doused with coffee, heated, chilled, and put through other torture tests.

    They wouldn't replace one in a test until it broke. It took about 7 hours for the first one to go, the display was annihilated. The other failed right before the expo ended. Considering they dropped it every minute or so . . .

    Meets my standards for "tough", that's for sure!
  • I work for the government, and we have a number of the toughbooks around. Some of our work involves getting pretty dirty, and being exposed to the elements quite a bit so they've been pretty handy. They're rock hard - they have waterproof plugs for all the external ports, and are just generally hardcore, not to mention satisfyingly clunky.

    Only problem is, everyone in the district uses Windows, which lessens the effect. Try and picture a hardass black tough-guy notebook with the Utopia sound scheme on it...

    -lx
  • Do they come in Blueberry?

    How about Tangerine?

    As an ordinary college student, I don't have much need to take a laptop underwater or have the ability to throw it off tall buildings.

    I'd much rather have a new iBook that I can play wireless Quake 3 on.
  • I wonder if this might start a trend for a whole class of machines like Sport-Utility Notebooks, like we have SUVs in automobile land now.

    The overwhelming majority of those SUV owners never actually engage the Sport-Utility part of their Sport-Utility Vehicle i.e. these wimps never take their trucks OFF ROAD! And in fact you look at SUVs like the Lexus RX300 (adapted from the Toyota Camry of all things!) and you realize that SUVs are getting less Sportier and more Utilitier.

    Personally, I think they sell so well simply because they are as functional as a station wagon for a family, but without the wussy-stigma. ^_^

    So we may see a parallel in notebooks: the ruggedized rigs are the Manly Machines. You wouldn't want to be caught on a plane with the station wagon of computers now, would you?

  • Try this:

    magnesium (Mg), metallic element, discovered as an oxide by Sir Humphry DAVY in 1808. A ductile, silver-white, chemically active ALKALINE-EARTH METAL, it is the eighth most abundant element in the earth's crust. Its commercial uses include lightweight alloys in aircraft fuselages, jet-engine parts, rockets and missiles, cameras, and optical instruments. The metal is used in pyrotechnics. Magnesium is found in plant chlorophyll and is necessary in the diet of animals and humans. See CHEMICAL ELEMENTS (table).

    From www.encyclopedia.com [encyclopedia.com]

    Not so flammable in jet-engine parts I would guess ;-)

  • Hey, this is a notebook that may save your life someday.

    Imagine if your San Francisco-to-Las Vegas plane crashes somewhere in the Sierra Nevadas in the middle of winter, you could become a hero by starting a fire with shavings from your notebook casing!

  • These toughbooks have been around for a long time. I remember reading a review of a similar notebook (I believe by Panasonic) about two to three years ago.
  • That would mean that you could pay $100 for a really tough carrying bag...

    I was in the luggage store at the Mall the other day. I did not get the brand, but, perhaps foolishly, I asked to see "better quality" cases for portable computers. Guess what? They have them upwards of $600.00.

    That's Six Hundred Dollars. For a leather bag. Equipment cases can run even higher, like the stuff for professional audio/video gear.

    The $600.00 laptop bag had a (PATENTED!) cradle for the computer. If you dropped the bag, the computer would not hit the cement floor because of the way it was suspended. I actually liked it. But there's no way I'd pay that much for a piece of luggage, much less a briefcase. It's just not my style.

    Anyway, I'm just posting to let everybody know that $100.00 does not buy you a carrying bag that is considered high end.

    I just thought about this, and realized I paid almost this much for my guitar case. If you want to be very damned sure that your $4000.00 guitar arrives at the airport in one piece, the price of a pro road case does not seem outrageous at all. I'm sure professional photographers have the same issues. Even more so. I can only imagine the stress engendered by travelling with a Panaflex lens worth $16000.00, and the rest of the equipment increasing in value from there.
  • er, d'oh!

    specifically:
    http://www.dolch.com/html/notepac.html
  • I rember using Husky Hunters back in the late 80's. Those things were indestructible. My one had been driven over a few times by trucks and suck. They were waterproof, shockproof, carproof, and made a convenient club if you were attacked.
    Husky are at husky.co.uk.
    Can't remember what OS the came with, but it was almost certainly something odd. I remember we used Psion IIs at the same time (64k RAM!).

    dave "banging two rocks to get ones and zeros"
  • and I have one. Used to use it a lot, but now I play Age of Empires on it against my girlf friend. She's a tcatical genius, just kick my sorry ass.
  • Our old system admin, showed me some titanium
    notebooks, with Alpha processors, a few years
    back. This is much more interesting to me.
    What is the brand? I can't remember at all.
  • Tom Case, at Debco Computers [debco.com] in Cincinnati, has had them for a little under $2K. I recommended one to a friend who was going to be trekking through Nepal and Thailand for three months. They're cute, but the keyboard, imo, is too small for serious work. Amazingly good screen display, tho - a little screen, little pixels, but full 800x600 display, quite bright and readable.
  • They ARE out there, but they are incredibly expensive. At one time I had a system called a 'TechPad' It was the same thing, but a little smaller, but also with an integrated Radio Modem. My favorite thing was the show it to people, and DROP it on purpose. Then say 'Oh, wait, this is dirty, lemme WASH IT OFF!'.. ;-P You should see the people wince as I dropped it, never mind ran it under a hose, while running..

    Problem is, it was like 6,000$...
  • I think Popular Science did something on this a while back. The notebook didn't succumb to defeat until they hit it with an axe (it survived the Mac truck running over it). It was later determined that the axe didn't break the computer, it only broke the LCD screen. I would gladly accept any extra of these laying around as a donation.
  • I worked for somewhere that had GRiD Compasses and GRiD Cases in a past life. We had quite a few of them, and they all ran DOS. If you drop it on a corner, you'll break the plasma screen (we broke a few like that, but give our "normal" treatment they were amazingly rugged.)

    The was a TEMPEST rated version, and in fact I had one of each that I kept in the trunk of my car. I actually came across a power brick for one of these last time I moved. My "rationale" for one of each was that I had to be able to "test programs on the TEMPEST version as well." I guess management's clue level over the years hasn't changed much ;)

    The TEMPEST ones also had a pretty cool encryption option. Bubble memory helped with not having to rely on magnetic media as well. The only problem with the Crypto option was that you weren't allowed to leave them in the trunk of your car :)

    GRiD used to run over them with jeeps and drop them from helicopters in sales demos back then. Nothing else would stand up to it.

    I think I seriously hurt the TEMPEST version of a Compaq Luggable that I had in for testing once. The GRiD's would take a heck of a lot more abuse.

    New GRiDs were somwhere between $17,000 and $27,000 if I recall correctly. CryptoGRiDs might have been more.

    GRiDCase's had better and bigger screens than the Compass, but weren't TEMPESTable AIR.

    Paul
  • Okay, sure, guys, fine, it's a rock, but come on - it's got the same lines as 1997 Toshiba Tecra. Boxy. Ugly ugly ugly. Heavy.
  • A couple years ago when I worked for a LARGE company, I was asked to test one out to see how tough it was. In the manual it stated that it could be dropped from a height of six feet. Curiosity got the best of me and I held it upto my eyes (only 5' 8" +/-) and dropped it. I then picked all of the pieces up, put them in the box and informed my manager that it wasn't so tough. I wonder if they ever took that statement out of the manual?
  • This kind of stuff has been around for years. I know of a New Zealand power company that have been using panasonic toughbooks for the last couple of years (their faultman use them as a map viewer - field GIS).

    also check out the Fujitsu Stylistic series of pen based machines. These are based on mobile pentiums and are also solid as a rock. Mine has been for a swim in the goldfish pond with no problems. Dropped off the roof of the house (3.5 metres) with no problems.

    There isn't a very market because of the cost. And that the tech lags behind standard laptops. You can get a 366mhz laptop but I doubt you'll find a 366mhz ruggedised laptop.

    In New Zealand a good off the shelf laptop costs about NZ$4000 (US$2000), but a 266mhz toughbook costs about NZ$7000 (US$3500). The price difference is such that many organisations buy normal laptops for their field staff as even though they replace them more often than the ruggedised versions it still works out cheaper.

    Cheers,
    Adam.
  • I scored a GRiD Compass 1101 sometime ago at the Dallas Sidewalk Sale. Still have the thing too. It's big and heavy compared to anything made in the last 8 years, though for a '81 vintage machine it's at least briefcase-crammable, compared to a Compaq Luggable. It had an 8086 for brains, (I think) 384k RAM, GPIB for an I/O bus (this is where the external disk hung), a dinky little plasma display, and, get this, bubble memory for nonvolatile storage. That means your data is (so 'they' say) EMP-proof. There was no batteries. You had to jam an AC cord into this thing.

    The truly striking feature has to be the cast magnesium case. (Alloy, kids, not pure magnesium, that would be stupid. First person to suggest that this machine is flammable gets GUN!!!) Usually when I show this machine off to someone I'll plug it in, turn it on, start it doing something, set the thing on the floor, jump up and down on it like a madman, and then show the screen. It's taken ritual torture and doesn't yet have a scar to prove it.

    The thing is fscking amazing. I hear that there was a TEMPEST rated version out there. With the bubble memory and the freaky OS these things ran (DOS 2.x was an option, but wasn't popular) I could see this machine as being popular with the CIA and the like.
  • Oh, and, uh... forgive my grammar. It's late and I have an emag exam tomorrow.
  • I remember hearing of bubble memory, but not much.. The most I heard was that it was extremely expensive, fast, but small. Not something for industrial usage. Of course.. that was back in the 80s when I heard anything about it, and that info was from my father.. who I'm not sure where/when he heard it.

    What exactly is bubble memory?
  • >Those look cool. I should get one for a friend
    >who recently rolled over his laptop with his
    >car!! Neither survived (note I didn't say drove
    >over...)

    Neither as in the car + PC, or as in the *friend* + PC?

    Just a little morbid humor...

    -Smitty

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