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3 Rugged Notebooks Take a Beating
bsk_cw writes "Brian Nadel got a chance to try to destroy three 'fully rugged' notebooks and get paid for it — Computerworld had him drop, spray, drown, bake, shake, and freeze notebooks from General Dynamics Itronix, Getac, and Panasonic. All three suffered some damage, but only the Getac M230 actually died as a result. Brian made videos of the tests (which were apparently done in his home, including his kitchen)."
Brian made videos of the tests (which were apparently done in his home, including his kitchen)."
Proof that Brian is not married.
To save you having to wade through 6 ad-filled half pages - here's the link.
Why this link is't published to start with is beyond me.
Is crushing a suspect's child's testicles illegal?
John Yoo: "No, [if] the President thinks he needs to do that."
Fisher-Price today announced that, rumors to the contrary, they do not intend to introduce notebooks for children. A company spokesman gave the company's reasoning in prepared remarks, "These laptops survived being buried, broiled, frozen and drowned for a weekend? That is a typical lazy Sunday for our products in the hands of our customers. We are supposed to be impressed by that? No, our customers would scoff at such fragility."
All the drop tests in the video showed the units being dropped onto a soft mat. Where's the drop onto the tile floor? Where's the drop onto parking lot asphalt? From a moving rental car? Landing under the wheels?
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
Well, come on, man, tell us what we need to know.
Did it blend?
What kind of maniacal beast would cook their brand new multi thousand dollar laptop in the oven?? Maybe he was hit over the head when he was a kid with laptops and this is some kind of twisted cathartic therapy?
Does this guy do house calls? If so, my neighbour's laptop might need some "testing".. I know his sound system works thanks to his rigorous 24 hour full-volume test, but I'd like to be just as confident in his laptop's abilities as well.
Oh, and don't tell him you're testing it either. It's a ummmm..surprise birthday present from me. Yeah, that's it. Birthday present.
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
They should not be dropped flat or on their spine to simulate drop damage. I've seen plenty of notebooks survive that. Pick a corner.
He missed one, battery life at low temps. A few years back for a former employer we looked at ruggedized laptops for field work and battery life at low temps was a major draw back. Our conclusion was that pencil and paper was still the best.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Nothing is better than the six year old test. The Beeb ran a test a few years ago on rugged testing CF cards. They nailed them to a tree, given to a six year old with simply instructions to "destroy" and put in a strainer and stove top boiled. now THAT is what I call ruggedized testing.
Don't bother clicking through for the videos. All three only show how they dropped the laptops on the floor. Whooping three shots per laptop: falling on the floor on the spine, base from 29 inches and in a bag from 60 inches. Nothing interesting. Just go with the print version if you want to read it.
Growth from 575,000 units to 879,000 units in three years represents 15 percent growth, when compounded annually. Are you in a market segment that is growing that fast?
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
My IBM (nee Lenovo) Thinkpad T40 still works flawlessly after being bungied to the back of a motorcycle in rainstorms. Let's see how those models do in THAT test.
The company I work for has had trouble with toughbooks because people think they are alot more rugged than they really are. Employees have a real false sense of security with them. With the big macho 'Rugged Notebook' they expect it to be able to take abuse. What has happened in out experience is they still break when dropped from four feet onto pavement, and with a 'Rugged Notebook' they are more likely to be dropped because of the false sense of security. We have found that we are far better of with a really well built non-rugged notebook, like a t-series.
... will it blend?
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
I work for an ambulance company. We use the Itronics GoBook III. It's rugged and touted for use by Fire depts, Police, Military and Ambulance people, with some other as well. We have a fleet of about 30 of these books, and have yet to have a problem with the rugged parts. We do have issues with displays getting cracked, ports breaking loose, missing keys, things like that. We've had one run over by an ambulance(they are heavy), and it survived. It was misformed but usable. As for actual performance, good luck. Your top of the line electronics do not match well with survivability in rugged laptops. They do make fine weapons to defend yourself with if need be.
Why did he only test them to 25 degrees? I've had to take my laptop outside in colder. If I had to guess, I'd say the coldest I've taken my laptop (a Dell Inspiron 6000, hardly a tough laptop) out in is 10, and it's worked fine afterwards. If he's going to test the physical limits of these tough-books he should test them beyond everyday temperatures, especially since winter temperatures often get below 25 in many places.
This sig is false.
Watch out for the Itronix Gobooks, we've got some of them deployed in our police cruisers, and the PC card slots are not well attached to the MB. With the celluar data cards installed there (due to needing ext antenna connector) we've destroyed 4 of 6 that way.
The Toughbook CF-27s we had before this survived years w/o a hitch, on the other hand.
When I first got here someone who worked flight line brought in an Panasonic that had fallout out of an airborn helicopter and onto the tarmac. It was all dented up and I could actually see the internal components. I plugged it in and the damn thing powered right up! I was shocked because this thing was beat up.
Oh Itronix... we seriously thought these things were made here in Iraq. What hunks of crap! I've had my share of experiences with them, all bad. They are slow, buggy, bulky, ugly... If price is not an issue definitely go with the Panasonic over Itronix. If I ever get a choice, I choose Panasonic over Itronix.
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero