Military Grade Laptops

bllb writes "Slate has an article about the "waterproof, vaporproof, shockproof" laptops the military is using. It's not at the cutting edge of performance, but it's nice to see some bombproof hardware." Most of the laptops I've owned over the years died through dropping or drowning, so maybe I should look into something a little more sturdy ;)

Comments

toughbooks

[hawwy]

wired ran an article a few weeks ago about how the army was using rugged panasonic laptops for operations. one of their gis guys was having trouble manipulating huge images with them and had the government ship over a titanium powerbook which is apparently holding up fine.

Hardened hard drives

[87C751]

Hard drives can be made to withstand a lot of punishment. 10 years ago, I saw a demo at a trade show where a 2.5" HP hard drive was attached to the end of a 30" bar. A motor and crank lifted the end of the bar 18" above a steel plate and then dropped it. There was an O-scope hooked up to the read channel, and it barely fluctuated at impact.

Granted, I don't expect consumer-channel equipment to be that strong.

I spent 2 yrs playing IT guy for a tank battalion

[disputin]

The laptop isn't the problem. Most people are smart
enough to keep it out of the rain and dust. Most of the components are sealed. The real problem was copiers and printers. If someone made a copier or printer that could be bounced around working in heat, cold and dust, they'd make a killing with the US Army.

I don't need a sig - I gave up smoking

i build similar machines

[snyrt]

i'm a pre-production engineer from technology advancement group, a company in dulles, va. we build systems very similar, though we've moved away from the laptops and build mostly rack mounted systems. our systems are build to be ruggedized from the component level in order to survive more shock than any other system around. all the chassis are custom designed and all components are tested thoroughly. our most impressive test is the barge test. we take our machine, put it inside it's fiberglass case, turn it on and link up to it with a wireless connection. we put it on a small barge in a lake and detonate depth charges beneath the barge. most of the time the barge will fall apart, the machine will go flying in the air and land floating in the water. while all this is happening it is linked to a system on land which is monitoring its work. we don't sell a system unless it can go through this test without missing a step. this is the beauty of ruggedized computers. there's a video of a barge test on our website