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Dell Rugged Laptops Not Quite Tough Enough
An anonymous reader writes "Trusted Reviews has put the new Dell XFR rugged laptop through the grinder and it hasn't fared as well as expected. Considering that these guys drove a car over a Panasonic Toughbook, they went pretty easy on the Dell, but it still couldn't take the punishment. It looks like Dell still has a way to go to steal the ball from Panasonic when it comes to all terrain computing."
Did *you* RTFA? They stated quite clearly that the Dell had issues with water ingress, including water getting into a battery compartment that isn't isolated from the mainboard.
Yes, it worked again after they let it dry out for a day... but that's bad.
I volunteer somewhere that bought one of these Dells, and honestly I have no idea why they needed a ruggedized laptop.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
We used to believe that the ToughBooks were the end all be all of ruggedized computers; that is until the day someone actually managed to break one!
If you read the warranty statement from Panasonic you will see the following under Section 3 - Limited Warranty Exclusions
"Failures which result from alteration, accident, misuse, introduction of liquid or other foreign matter into the unit, abuse, neglect, installation, maladjustment of consumer controls, improper maintenance or modification, use not in accordance with product use instructions"
That means that if your coffee somehow spills on the laptop and fries the motherboard Panasonic will not repair it under warranty!
On the other hand if you purchase a Dell or an HP ruggedized notebook with the accidental damage protection the notebook will be repaired with no questions asked.
Considering the cost of the Panasonic ToughBooks, I would take a Dell XFR + CompleteCare any day!
Besides, regardless of what notebook you own, if you roll over it with your vehicle (by accident) and it happens to break, would you not rather be covered?
This isn't a uber traveler laptop. It's for people working in harsh environments. Do you work on an oil rig, war zone or the middle of the amazon? If you answer no, then you don't need a rugged laptop.
That's pretty much spot on. They need the hardware to work in temperature extremes. And even then I would assume they would by the semi-rugged model. The Panasonic Toughbook is a great machine. They still make them by hand in Kyoto. Panasonic doesn't trust the quality of factories in other parts of Asia, part of the price premium means you're getting a laptop built by a highly skilled workforce with a keen eye on tolerances.
They've typically got a metal case
Not just generic steel or aluminum, Toughbooks have titanium cases, to keep them light, stiff, and strong. Now you can get a Toughbook with a solid state drive, and the biggest weakness to the system is eliminated. With an SSD on board, it becomes extremely difficult to damage the laptop. You have to hit something so hard you literally tear the components off the motherboard (very hard to do) or overcome the strength of the titanium (which is not thin, btw) to crush it. Even then you're more likely to damage the LCD than anything, and destroying the hard drive would be nearly impossible.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Magnesium's also easy to injection mold or die cast. There are some difficulties in safely melting magnesium (as this amazing picture showing a Volkswagen magnesium casting foundry burning in 2006 demonstrates) but it's far easier to do casting processes with magnesium, which melts at a very reasonable temperature, than it is with titanium, which destroys mold materials. Titanium also burns fiercely, and goes so far as to burn in a pure nitrogen environment, the only metal that will do so. Magnesium's also cheaper. However, it isn't anywhere nearly as tough. Titanium has yield strengths on the order of 40,000-140,000 pounds per square inch, while magnesium's more in the 20,000-50,000psi range. However, since magnesium's like 1/3 the density of titanium you can put a *lot* more magnesium into a structure for the same weight, and since stiffness rises as an exponential function of cross-section, you get hellaciously stiff, light structures that are reasonably tough.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.