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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 ;)
Will they survive 20 minutes in a 400 degree oven?
Seriously though, I've owned laptops for about ten years now and I've never dropped one.Stop coating your hands with butter before you pick the laptop up!
Putting moderation advice in your
"We drop each one 54 times from one meter, bake it in an oven, chill it in a freezer, vibrate it, and submit it to a shower of hurricane proportions,"
Who the fuck would buy a beaten up piece of shit like that??
I remember a Washington Post Article where some Marine Private was evaluating his 733t new computer. "I could beat someone to death with this battery pack..."
My laptop just took a lil fall and the screen went cracky cracky. I can still read what the screen says, but its too bad that this laptop wasn't the one I dropped.
;)
I wonder how they have the hard drive set up, or if they use flash. Normally, any hard drive experiencing even a small shock can be easily destroyed if the head is reading.
700 MhZ isn't too great but you could always take it in the shower for some good 'ol pr0n.
I don't think I'd buy one of these laptops either because I'm not likely to be fighting a chemical spill or a fire while working on my laptop.
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.
OK, what about aweproof?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Having said that, it's also clear that some operating systems, owing to their monlithic architecture, will never improve. At least with Unix, you can discard what you don't need, reducing the volume of code that has to be checked. That's a major reason why Microsoft's "Trustworthy Computing" initiative is such a joke -- you can't get rid of the crapola, heck you can't even see the crapola!
...-.-
Ss you want to sell laptops to the US Army?
Yes, would you like to test it out?
Yes, Put it over there.
[Officer aims a rifle at the laptop and puts a hole the size of a small tangerine through the case]
I'm sorry. Your product has failed our quality inspection. Have a nice day.
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
My friend also sent his for a trip down the stairs (Screen open, iBook on), and it still works A.O.K.
So, you could also buy an iBook, and it will survive the same falls.
My wife used to work for Itronix and these will run indefinetly at 140 degrees (the official numbers.) While I was in the infantry I once spent the month of August in Death Valley and I can tell you we NEVER hit 140, 127 with MOPP4 and kevlar is no picnic, but it wouldn't of phased this laptop. They don't have the high end horse power of the p4 laptop I am on right now, but knowing what these things can go through, they are amazing.
You obviously don't understand the NEED for rugadized computers. What good is 4 crappy comercial laptops when your on a ship that is torpedoed or a plane that crashes? Those four laptops will be toast, but a properly rugadized computer has a good choice of still running. This is important when your LIFE may depend on that laptop.
I mod down any one who says "I'm sure I will get modded down for this"
Granted, I don't expect consumer-channel equipment to be that strong.
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
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
http://www.gobookmax.com/gobookmax/images/gobookma x.pdf
Mobile Pentium III/700, 256 MB of PC100 SDRAM, 20 GB IBM DJSA-200 hard disk, external 10x TEAC USB CD-ROM, external USB floppy, 4MB Silicon Motion LynxEM+ graphics, 10.4in SVGA touchscreen TFT, ESS Allegro PCI audio, integrated mono speaker, V.90 modem, integrated CISCO Wirelsss LAN PC Card, one Type II PC Card slot, plus support for VGA, serial and two USB, Windows 2000 Professional. Dimensions: 284 x 233 x 62mm (W x D x H) excludion handle. Weight 3.3 kg. [7.28 pounds]
Note: The PDF wouldn't let me copy and paste the text, but I think I got it all right.
Dolch has been making these sorts of things for years now. Mostly aimed at scientific, construction, and engeneering field work (the military only started widely deploying laptops fairly recently). Their laptops can handle 15G's while running and 50 when turned off.
That is because your data is 100% worthless. Even to you by your own admission.
The panasonic toughbook and the military units contain priceless data and in the military people will DIE if it fails.
you are a consumer with absolutely useless and value-less data.
it is not for you.
Since the US military never are the ones being bombed, but rather always the ones bombing.. what do they need this for?
Part of their image I guess.. "Oh yes, we're getting bombed all the time".
bomberclaad...
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
We drop each one 54 times from one meter
This seems rather time consuming. Why don't they just drop them once from a height of 54 meters? That would be the same, right?
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Can they perform "military grade" encryption?
Heisenberg might have been here.
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
-"Hey, Baby. It's not a rash, it's textured love."
I'm not sure what you meant by the term, but if you are talking about operating systems and kernels, Unix systems are generally monolithic whereas windows (nt and on) are microkernel(ish) architectures.
You say that on Unix you can throw away what you don't need but that on Windows you "can't even see the crapola". You certainly can't open up Solaris, cut out what you don't need, and recompile for a leaner version so I assume you meant Linux or BSD. But obviously you can only do that with those OSes because they are open source, it really has nothing to do with their architecture.
dan.
Most of the laptops I've owned over the years died through dropping or drowning
Ewww Taco... That's a little more information than we needed thank you very much
*goes to take long shower*
I'm a professional soldier, so here's what I have to say.
:)
If I'm called on to go to visit my colleagues who are already in Iraq, I'll be carrying over 130 lbs of protective gear, weapons, ammo, rucksack and equipment, and the bulk of it goes on my back. A plane and a parachute gets me to my DZ and I walk from there.
Military equipment is bulky and heavy. Take the PLGR (Precision Lightweight GPS Receiver). The last picture shows it's size. This puppy weighs 2.75 pounds and is huge. Compare to any Garmin, Magellan, Lowrance and others whose products weigh less than a pound and are a quarter of the size. (Blah, blah, Selective Availability. Another discussion.)
Another example: The Mortar Ballistic Computer weighs 7 lbs and makes my Gameboy Advance (cheap entertainment in the field) look like a Cray Supercomputer. Oh, and it's roughly 20x larger than the GBA.
So if I had the room in my ruck for a laptop (I don't), and I could justify spending $4500 on it - four months' pay (I took a slight paycut when I quit my sysadmin job in Silicon Valley for the opportunity to get gassed in Iraq), you could bet I'd be buying one of these and not FOUR pieces of crap that are going to break when I hit the DZ.
Cheers!
I've been in the Marines for about 8 years and I've never seen these. I've seen some Panasonic Toughbooks but nowadays all we use are Dell latitudes. Of course, the Air Force has infinitely more $$$ than the Corps.
This guy is way out there
54 is such a strange number. :)
I guess after the 55th drop it was dead
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
The old Bell Labs standard called for 1/3 of system faults to be ascribed to hardware, 1/3 to software, and 1/3 to operator error. Most available operating systems clearly aren't there yet
That doesn't sound quite right. At least, if the users at Bell are anything like the users where I work, hardware and software really have to fail a lot more frequently if they're going to keep up with the operator errors.Anyway, Apple's "wonderful" repair centers are refusing to fix it under warranty because it is "accidental damage or mistreatment." Since iBooks do not have PCMCIA ports, and usb ethernet devices only work with Macs, she has two choices. She can either pay the outrageous $775 that Apple is charging to repair an ethernet jack with a few broken pins, or else buy an AirPort card and 802.11b base station.
It should also be mentioned that the power connector is very fragile. Being stepped on can bend it completely out of shape, and it is very difficult to get back in the right shape, because it has to be basically a perfect circle.
The test of laptop sturdiness, IMHO, is not whether it can survive the dramatic falls, but whether it can survive the minor, day to day damage over a prolonged period. Can it survive being tripped over, carried around in a backpack, etc? I have a 4 year old Dell laptop that I have treated far more roughly than my girlfriend has treated her 6 month old iBook. The Dell looks a little worse for the wear, but works perfectly. The iBook still looks shiny and new, but has been completely crippled.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
In Antarctica, 1997. I had two rugged military laptops (Kontron) for data acquisition and an HP Vectra desktop for use indoors. One of the laptops video fried when a snow machine started a few feet from it and the other didn't have the right connectors. I had to program an eprom on some equipment outside and just put the Vectra+Monitor on a box. For 4 hours at -45C and it worked fine. I even have a picture. So it's not because there's a thicker case around a motherboard that it makes it more reliable...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
I owned an older Itronix military grade model at one time. It was pretty cool, I threw it in the oven a few times and into a lake once, and it kept on working. But, we I finally threw it across the room and it landed on its corner... the hard drive ceased to function. ;-)