A Few Baaaaaad Apples

SONET writes: "Why aren't all laptops made like this? I'm always putting my lappie in my otherwise empty briefcase. Even if it's just Photoshop/GIMP vapor, I really like the idea of a more rugged shell ... and the design is exceptionally clean. I know there are ruggedized laptops for the military and the like, but they really aren't for the average consumer as I envision something like this could be. The page is in Japanese, but the images really speak for themselves." I'm assuming it's just a mockup, the nicer to be proved wrong about ;) For the Exacto knife-and-firesale crowd though, an anonymous reader whispers that "Some guy modded his G4 Cube to have a Propaganda tile mapped inside the case. Looks excellent. That it does.

Comments

Well, they do exist...

[SlowCoder]

Panasonics "ToughBook" series is a _tough_ notebook, made for outdoor and industrial use..
Doesn't look too bad either..

Some features:
* Shock-restistance
* Spill-resistance
* Vibration-resistance
* Dust-restistance
* Magnesium casing

http://www.panasonic.com/computer/notebook/Default .asp

Re:Rugged? Try Titanium

[jchristopher]

Titanium in such minimal thicknesses is actually very flexible. (and also very lightweight). I'm no engineer, but look at the tubes of titanium bike frames. They are always oversized in diameter compared to steel, otherwise the bike would flex like a noodle.

Check out the cool Ti bike stuff at Litespeed

Ti is nice, but there is nothing necessarily indestructable about it.

P.S. If you really ran a TiBook over with a car, it would be completely destroyed. You can flex the screen a scary amount by hand. (not that x86 laptops are any different).

Re:Panasonic Toughbook

[Telek]

I was working at Panasonic when they were developing that beast. The trials were fun. They didn't really tell us (my group, cuz I was in tech support at the time) much about this book (or at least they didn't tell us that this presentation was going to be about this book), and proceeded to do a normal meeting, brought up a simple powerpoint display and then some sort of movie producing sound as well (think it was a music video or something). Then the guy unplugged the notebook, poured the rest of his coffee on it, threw it on the ground, jumped on it a few times, and then plugged it back in just as the video was finishing and the "panasonic toughbook" logo came on (although I think it was called something different back then, but I can't remember, it was like 6 years or so ago). Made for one hell of an attention getter though.