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Dell's Rugged Laptop Doesn't Quite Pass 4-Foot Drop Test
narramissic writes "Dell's new Latitude E6400 XFR laptop is designed to withstand drops, dust and high pressure water spray. The company claims the laptop, which is intended for military use, can withstand rain and wind gusts of up 70 mph, and can work in temperatures from -20 to 145 degrees Fahrenheit. It can also work for an hour at an altitude of 15,000 feet and is designed to withstand drops of around 4 feet (48 inches) when not operating and 36 inches when operational. The LCD screen floats a little bit within the LCD cover so it can take impacts and shock, said Jeremy Bolen, a Dell spokesman. But watch as the laptop that Dell used to show these features wasn't able to withstand the rough treatment that was part of the company's demonstration."
Many years ago, I had a sales rep who sold me Nissan thermos bottles. During one of his visits, he showed me (not to try to sell it to me, but because he thought I'd think it was cool) a new titanium dent-proof bottle that was really light and marketed at cyclists. When it came to demonstrating that it was dent-proof, he took his sample in hand and whacked it three times on one of my tables. "Now watch, those dents will just pop right out." Well, by the time he left, those dents were still there. In fact, he recently sent that bottle to me. The dents are still there.
Another sales rep was showing off glasses that didn't break when dropped. She demonstrated this by flinging the glass across the shop. While the glass didn't break, she did say, "One of these days I'm not going to get away with that."
The lesson: shit happens in product demos.
Remember RFC 873!
Heck, now that SSDs are a fairly standard option, I'd expect an ordinary laptop to take a 4 foot drop with nothing more than some surface damage. If the laptop is going to be priced like a tank, ugly like a tank, and heavy like a tank, I'd expect rather better.
Did anyone catch "Attack of the Show" last night? They showed another one of these increasingly trendy "drop proof" laptops. Every time they dropped it (even from just two or three feet), the battery and dvd drive went flying off (requiring a reboot and, of course, costing you any unsaved data).
The problem with many of these things is that they build bullet-proof titanium super-duper-armour plating for the shell, but use the same old components for the hard drives, battery connections, drive bay connections, etc. The skin of the thing is the LEAST problematic part. I'm more interesting in how you built the hard drive than the SKIN. An adamantium skin won't help your laptop survive if it's using some standard off-the-shelf hard drive and battery.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Whether it fell off a couch or a cement wall, isn't it more important what it is falling onto instead of what it is falling off of?
What are you running on them?
I had a small-shop custom-built job years ago with Win2K on it, and Windows would go belly-up hard-reboot with depressing and increasing frequency, necessitating a complete wipe every couple months, after which the reboot-X-days-later cycle would restart with X as a larger, though shrinking, number. Later I installed Red Hat on it with Windows in a VM (required for certain software, >sigh...<) and it worked like a charm. Turned out the mobo's SMART controller was borked in some subtle way that killed Windows, but Linux was smart enough to find the mobo error and work around it (confirmed in dmesg).
I'm not saying your shitload of Dell OptiPlex 700 series desktops all have borked mobos, but maybe some BIOS setting or Windows driver isn't playing nicely?
(Disclaimer: I own a Dell and have had generally good luck with it, but I'm no apologist. My own machine is a Dimension 5150, and I was bothered to learn that, despite a 64-bit CPU, the chipset is limited to 32-bit memory addressing. How stupid!)
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
If e-paper ever improves enough, this would be an excellent place for it.
E-paper doesn't withstand drops well, either. I dropped my Kindle from a height of about 2 feet, it landed facing up, and the display was permanently broken. There was a diagonal "crack" in the matrix under the surface, and vertical and horizontal streaks leading up to it. It wasn't pretty.
Interestingly, it *did* hold the display until it tried to refresh. I didn't realize it was broken until I turned the page.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Fair enough. OTOH, if you have access to adamantium, you probably also could just use a brick with a +3 data storage bonus, rather than a hard drive.
I accidently dropped my wifes Dell laptop from at least 4 feet. It survived
What's more important is that you obviously survived to post this tale. Sir, please mail me when you divorce because for the love of all that's sacred, I will propose this fine woman.
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Are you able to get a replacement for your kindle?
Already have it. I submitted an inquiry on amazon.com, and they responded promptly telling me to use their tool on the website to speak with them via phone, which sounded kinda strange, but ok... so there's a page (after you log in and go to the manageyourkindle page) where you type in your phone number, and they call you RIGHT THAT SECOND. You still wait on hold for, gosh, maybe 30 seconds, but freaky anyway. ;-) Then a rep with a Starbucks-caliber chipper friendliness in his attitude asked what I'd done to try to address the problem, and after I told him I'd done what you're supposed to do (I'd power-cycled and used the Reset button under the back cover), told me I'd have my replacement Monday, which I did. That was Friday night at 9:30 p.m.
They never even asked how it got broken. I'd been agonizing over whether to say "Gosh, I just pulled it out of my purse and it was like that" or tell them the truth... but it didn't even matter.
Best. CS. Ever.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?