Psion Releases A Rugged, Water-Tight PDA

Moghedien writes: "This time a sturdy PDA, without a keyboard, but a big hi-res screen and it's designed for work in the field. Still runs the EPOC OS, 8 hour battery life time, probably a 200MHz StrongARM, 64MB RAM and MMC. It measures 215x85x28 mm. It has an IP rate of 67, meaning it's capable of lying under water for hours, and it can put up with a fall of 1.5 meters against concrete. According to Psion, its purpose is to fill the gap between powerful PDAs for the industry and handheld machines for the professional consumer market." There's a blurb describing this device on Psion's site -- but does anyone see pictures? Update: 10/01 13:35 GMT by T : An anonymous reader says: "Here is the page for the NetPad. It has a small picture, but it's better than nothing."

Comments

caffine rush

[spacefem]

PDA's don't need to take water, just coffee. They should really be tested that way: just fire-hosed with gallons of boiling expresso or something. I'm sure this one could take it.

Toilet Savior

[MrNovember]

Handy for when you have your PDA in your shirt pocket and bend over the john to pull your pants off -- plop.

specs & small photo

[jamner]

This appears to be Psion Teklogix NetPad(r) Main Page. A small photo is included.
Here is the spec sheet (96.6Kb.pdf)

Heise article had a picture

[mbyte]

See the c't article from heise:

Heise

Your comment violated the postercomment compression filter. Comment aborted

Netpad

[smaughster]

Here's a picture of netpad. (http://www.fieldworker.com/HPC_Pics/netpad.jpg for those not interested in goatse.cx) Finally safely browsing from the bathtub.

Droppables

[mmaddox]

Having owned droppable computers for some time, I'm really about ready for a computer that's capable of portability without the awful fragility. If this computer has some reasonable I/O method available (say, some form of attachable mini-keyboard, a la Targus), it might be usable, but it seems like just another data-collection device from its description.

Why doesn't the ruggedized PC hit the mainstream market? Walkabout has made a few nice PC's in tablet form, but their prices generally put off the buyer that has no specialized application in mind. I'd absolutely love a nice, sturdy, portable 'nix box like their HH3. Why haven't at least SOME of these ideas made it into the consumer models of laptops and the like?

Re:Droppables

[Snowfox]

Why doesn't the ruggedized PC hit the mainstream market?

Panasonic seems pretty mainstream. They have the ToughBook line of computers. My girlfriend stumbled across one at a bargain price, and I've been drooling over it ever since.

IP Rate and Ruggedization.

[Sawbones]

It has an IP rate of 67, meaning it's capable of lying under water for hours, and it can put up with a fall of 1.5 meters against concrete.

Does anyone remember the Panasonic Toughbook - they had similar toughness (though I don't think they could sit underwater). You get a whole real computer and some of the models even have built in wireless/GPS capabilities. Granted they cost upwards of 5 grand and probably only have about 4 hours of battery life (though 8 hours doesn't seem like much for a PDA to me), but still sweet.

I'd be interested to see what an IP Rate of 100 (or zero, whichever is better, also assuming a 100 point scale) could handle. Elephants can sit on it while you work maybe?

BTW, whats with the random "number of physicial machines hosted on windows" bit at the end of the post there? Do all slashdot articles now automatically include a little MSFT bashing - hidden in the PERL soup somewhere? :)

Re:IP Rate and Ruggedization.

[Howie]

(and another thing...)

The first ruggedised machines I can remember are the Husky portables and the GRiD Compass (not waterproof or anything but solid!).

The Husky series were Z80-based, and ran CP/M I think. I believe the US Army had some.
Old Pic of that, and it seems they are still going.

Going further back, the original IMPs used on ARPANet were ruggedized Honeywell DDP-516 - designed to be dropped from the cargo bay of aircraft.

i'm not so sure about this...

[turbine216]

1.5 meters, if you think about it, is not that much of a drop. I've dropped a Palm M100 from a fifteen-foot ladder before, and it kept ticking. That's the beauty of solid-state electronics. No moving parts means nothing to get jarred loose or broken off. Now if these guys can put something together with a TOTALLY scratch-resistant screen, I'll really be impressed.

Casio has been there, done that....

[cyborg_munkee]

Casio has offered these type of devices for quite some time now.

Note: this is from Psion Teklogix

[biglig2]

This division of Psion is seperate from the division behind the series 3 and 5 - it makes industrial PDA's. You see their very sucessful Walkabout device in shops over here in the UK a lot - mostly the models a barcode scanner is used in stock control.

They do quite well. For all Compaq's adverts of someone walking thru a factory with an iPaq, there are places where the environment is just too nasty - freezers for example.

I always fancied their netbook, which is a corporate variant on the Psion series 7 (the one that's an EPOC handheld in notebook form-factor, with a full size color screen etc.)

Re:Note: this is from Psion Teklogix

[biglig2]

BTW, to answer the poster's question:
here is a small photo and a spec sheet

How IP ratings work

[dingbat_hp]

I'd be interested to see what an IP Rate of 100 (or zero, whichever is better, also assuming a 100 point scale) could handle.

IP ratings don't work quite like that. Rather than a 0..100 scale, they're actually a string concatenation of three 0+ scales. High numbers are better. First number is dust rating (0..6), second fluids (0..8), third mechanical impact (0..9). IP67 means "no ingress of dust", "short-term water immersion to 1m" and no description of mechanical impact strength.

There's a few on-line resources around with the full list.

Re:it's all a question of price, isn't it

[Troed]

Well, it's brothers run Linux ...

http://www.yipton.demon.co.uk/

Re:you forgot.. [pasty faced 100 lb geeks]

[ackthpt]

I don't resemble that remark. Not in the least, here's why:

I hacked 6502 assembler for a few hours this weekend, to make M.U.L.E. play for whatever number of months I want it to, in CCS64 running on my laptop THEN

I went out to cheer on a friend competing in the Santa Cruz Sentinel Triathalon THEN

I went out for a 36 mile ride on my road bike, between searing heat and blasting wind, around Monterey Penninsula THEN

I went out and had a few beers and watched the Final Time Trials of La Vuelta (which Levi Leipheimer placed 2nd in and 3rd overall G.C. First American to stand on the final podium for the final Grand Tour of the season, but don't tell fscking american media outlets about it, sheesh!)

Tech geeks are increasingly athletic, many even compete in cycle racing (the most grueling sport there is) and combination events like triathlons. I'm actually in the market for rugged devices such as this, as I want to take them hiking or biking. My primary interest, atm, is one of these. So I can profile hikes and bike climbs. That is, when I'm not hacking or reading slashdot.