Durabook Laptop Marketing Claims 'Destroyed'

jkwdoc writes "The crew at [H] Consumer got a hold of a Durabook sample from Twinhead and got the green light to hold Twinhead to their word about what kind of abuse the unit can withstand. Twinhead originally claimed that their unit could survive 26 drops from 29 inches. A cracked LCD and busted hard drive later, they changed their tune. Complete with video!"

Comments

Re:Mean time to failure

[punkr0x]

No, if they are (were) claiming that it would survive 26 drops, then that should be the minimum amount of abuse that could break it. The average should be much higher.

Re:Marketing nonsense

[jonored]

The one I'm writing on (CF-27 toughbook) wouldn't flinch even if it were on. You'd not want to do it on a table you care about, though, as it'll leave gouges in the surface; there's no plastic padding on the corners. A friend of mine was giving a presentation on a CF-26, and when asked if that was a toughbook, unplugged the cable, closed the hatch over it, threw the laptop against the brick wall, running, picked it up, plugged it in, and finished the presentation. Of course, that did crack the screen, but it was decidedly an out-of-spec event.

Re:Tandy Model 10x

[alnicodon]

Lately I've bought an Alphasmart Dana, which looks like the Tandy you describe, and is a Palm system with a battery, changeable for 3 AA batteries, leaving you with a 25 hour autonomy. If that is not enough, you may still get; from the same manufacturer, the simpler "Neo" offers a whopping 700 hours autonomy, and 8 text buffers (no PalmOS this time), and some basic connectivity to a PC.

http://www.alphasmart.com/products/

Not exactly "feel the power" kind of stuff but imho, these do nicely match the portability, general resilience and autonomy requirements. They're rather expansive, too.

Another interesting way is to adjoin a Bluetooth keyboard to a PDA.

Just my 2 eurocents.

Re:Marketing nonsense

[multimediavt]

FTFA:

DURABOOK Rugged Standard All DURABOOK systems pass US Military and European Committee rugged feature standards to ensure its durable qualification. These standard test measurements include: DROP TEST - MIL STD 810F, Method 516.4, Procedure IV, 26 drops of 36 inches (29 inches for all 15" DURABOOK systems) onto plywood over concrete with unit off and display closed. Now, this is something that the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Military will not tolerate. The Durabook is *claimed* to meet MilSpec and I am curious to know how many of these things they duped the military into buying. I'll be very surprised if they don't get shut down for this. It's fraud, plain and simple, and although comical results were gotten at, the company has got some serious explaining to do! I have seen and played with MilSpec laptops and, frankly, I wasn't surprised by the test results when I saw the design. I was surprised that they claimed MilSpec. MilSpec portable computers look like the old Dolch boxes that I don't think they make any more. Kind of like an old Osbourne system with a modern set of guts, but ammo box (or better) quality metal all around. I dropped that thing off a loading dock straight onto concrete (by accident, really) and it did dent on the corner, but everything worked peachy!

Re:Surprised no one mentioned

[ozmanjusri]

Mining is the first industry that comes to mind

Yeah, we used to use a thing called a Husky Hunter as a datalogger in underground mining. One fell down an ore pass, along with several thousand tonnes of rock and was retrieved several days later. The screen and most of the keys had been abraded off, but by pushing the keystubs with a paper clip, we were able to retrieve the stored data (worth much more than the Husky).