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Notebooks for Rough People
snack writes "Hey guys, I was surfing around, and somehow I came across Panasonic Tough Book. These things look uber cool, magnesium casings and all. They've also got shock resistant lcd's and hard drives. Water proof, and dust proof. Very very kick ass." Okay. Finally I'm gonna jump on the Slashdot "I gotta have one of these!" bandwagon. (My tongue is hanging out as I type.) Update: Yes, we know hardened laptops aren't new, but this is an exceptionally slim, light, and cute one. -Roblimo
I know lots of people have already mentioned it's old news, but...
I saw one of these things about 4 years ago. A SBE I met had one that he claimed came from a military buddy of his.
Besides being durable and top-of-the-line (well, for the time period), it had a CD burner built in! Press a button and the entire motorized (no spring-action crap) keyboard raised up and the CD tray slid out from underneath! No BS!
Pretty damn cool for a laptop 4 years ago! (Any other mfg's doing that today?)
I work for a police department and we tested these laptops. Damn things are awesome. Weigh a ton though. One officer turned his on and tossed it across the room, landing on a concrete floor. The thing didn't skip a beat. Any other laptop would have been destroyed.
stuff
>And then there was a contracted deal between DoD
>and some PC manufacturer to produce "battle-
>proof" PC which were used in both "Desert
>Shield" and later "Desert Storm" Operations.
That would have been GRiD (http://www.grid.com), as I recall.. they made some pretty nifty notebooks, including some of the earlier consumer-grade pads (GRiDpad).
Unfortunately, their web page doesn't seem to have a lot of information (listed as under construction, of course).
I seem to remember Grid going under a few years back... the web page says it's from GSCS, "founded to service and support exiting (sic) GRiD products".
Anyone have any idea what the real history is?
-LjM
i bought one of these bad boys a while back for a trip to saudi arabia. i knew nothing less would survive the ordeal. for various reasons i never actually went to saudi, so now i have this nice expensive laptop that cant possible live up to its potential.
thats ok though...it is currently a linux server running mandrake 6.0 with an uptime well over 30 days.
i love this box. get one. now.
The Panasonic is not that rugged. It's not entirely waterproof, the drives can and do break if you drop the unit, and the casings are not that rugged. Truly ruggedized portables can be completely submerged in liquid and can withstand major drops onto concrete. They're also several times more expensive than this unit.
.sig file
This unit is a sort of compromise. Sorta ruggedized, and sorta affordable.
Korhan Tekin
korhan@damgudesign.com
This is my
Pure magnesium would suck as a case material, it is way too ductile(soft) and wouldn't hold it's shape. It does work great in various alloys however, and this is what is actually used. These alloys also make good heatsinks.
This is the type of notebook a man should buy.
Forget those girlie iBooks! Open one of these rugged notebooks and the airline passenger next to you will know who's the boss!
Blueberry? Tangerine? What the fuck!?
NEC has (or had) an article on their website .gov installation who lost
about a fellow at a
his bag (with his laptop in it, foolish man);
said bag (with the laptop still in it) turned
up in the parking lot of the facility, was
deemed "suspicious" and taken out by a bomb
squad robot with a shotgun. The laptop's screen
was trashed, but the machine still booted and he
was able to retrieve his data. Woo.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
I went to DefCon 7 with my two best friends, and while wandering around the show room, one of them was wearing his red fedora from RedHat and carrying his panasonic ruggidized lap top. We were all expecting people to comment on the hat, which was very noticable, but no one said a thing about it. Conversely, six people walked up to us wanting to touch, feel, and drool on his laptop, which he had been carrying at his side, not paying much attention to. It was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen. But those laptops are worth it, I swear. This particular one once saved my friend from someone who wanted to see just how tough the case was and threw a screwdriver at him without warning. There's a tiny little nick in the case where the sharp end of the screwdriver made impact at high speeds. My instinct would NOT have been to defend myself with an expensive piece of equipment, but it was lucky for him that his was.
Roma vivit!
Personally, I won't be completely satisfied until there is a notebook computer waterproof to about 100 feet.
I've got an Intel Bubble Memory Evaluation Kit thing from the mid 80's. Basically it's a block of Bubble memory mounted on an ISA card, with accompanying docs and software. It's got drivers to make it a 'solid state disk drive' (it has 4 megabits of space in the bubble, so it can make a 512K drive) on an XT or an AT system under DOS. Has anybody written Linux drivers for it yet? I was tempted at one point to make an attempt.
I should try to sell it on eBay to a collector...
gosh that was a good one.
this type of things have been around for ages. I think Roblimo can be our historian. but PLEASE email the manufacturers to ban him from buying those, cuz he's gona post more stupid things like this if he gets to carry this laptop everywhere with him. (in the limo??)
I had read about them in an article on rugged notebooks a couple of years ago. Earlier this year, I had a consulting gig at Rollerblade (handling the data migration off of their IRIX network when the company was shipped out to New Jersey). On my way in to RB one day, something that had been nagging at me for the past couple of weeks finally came to a head; Fieldworks was less than a block down the street from RB.
I mentioned this, excited, to a couple of the R&D guys there with whom I had become friends. They told me about a former RB R&D guy who had left to go work at Fieldworks, and they asked if I'd like them to try to set up a tour.
Fun fun, we got to go there later that week. It's an amazing place. Every computer is assembled and tested by hand there in Eden Prarie, Minnesota. They run them overnight in a room hot enough that I only lasted a minute before I fled in fear that I might pass out. And that was only one of the horrors to which these are subjected.
It gets better. The customer is able to choose a number of different levels of "ruggedness" for the computers they're purchasing. Going up north? They have special measures to make the computer (and the LCD) behave just fine in far colder temperatures than an unshielded human could handle.
Best of all, these notebooks are upgradable. They have PCMCIA slots, but they also have room for standard ISA cards (I don't remember about VESA or PCI). This allows a number of companies to use these for highly specific purposes.
Finally, a bit I found amusing. A number of police departments use Fieldworks machines. They'll send one in every once in a while to have it cleaned. Seems the officers with these mounted in their cars often use the keyboard as a nice flat place to set coffee or a donut. Now, this doesn't do any damage or anything, but eventually enough sugar/syrup/spilled coffee/etc accumulated to clog up the keys of the keyboard. They send it in, FW sprays it out with a hose, tests it, ships it back.
I am not an employee, customer, client, or contractor for or of Fieldworks. I just think they're cool.
I havcen't read a magazine since this summer, and I read about that in one this summer... so like you're 4 months old Robin...
what ? i thought roblimo was the only dumb ass here but he's got a match. magnesium is soft. very soft. these only get hard when mixed with other metals. i lit plenty of those in the lab. for entertainment purpose of course.
I work for a Dairy Herd Improvement Association, and our field reps take their laptops into cattle barns. This is only marginally less hazardous to electronics than a battlefield. :)
:)
:(
We regularly replace laptops; usually 1 or 2 (out of 120 or so) a month. admittedly, they're all used equipment when we buy them (a $400 486 laptop will run DOS programs just fine); but they get dropped regularly, and often just thrown in with a bunch of other equipment. Certain reps of course, break more than others. You just want to tell some of these people "you broke all your toys, you can't have any more!", after their 3rd or 4th computer.
We generally try to buy IBMs; parts are plentiful, and they're pretty good computers. they've held up a lot better than the Dells, Compaqs, and Zeniths we've had.
the *best* ones we ever had (and there are a few still in service), were ancient PS/2s, with 8086s.
they run our DOS apps just fine; have good battery life (8086s don't suck as much power as newer processors), and are DURABLE. (that's why we have several still in service; while all our Zeniths and Compaqs keep going belly-up).
I saw the Toughbooks, and thought they'd be just the thing for us. we bought a CF-45 (the semi-rugged one), and I liked it when I was using it around the office. we sent it out to one of our (better) reps; and he says he likes the nice bright screen; but the floppy drive went bad on him.
so I can't say I have an opinion one way or another. I'd certainly buy one for myself (it felt really good to use; esp. since I liked the trackball); but I wouldn't guarantee that all the parts will be equally durable.
(of course, there is a 3-year warranty on these Panasonic things. that's about as good as a laptop warranty gets).
the only other laptop I'd buy would be an IBM. nothing else that I've seen (and I've seen a *lot* of laptops get abused in ways you wouldn't ever think of [dropped into tanks of milk, dropped in manure, milk splashed on them, chewed on by cows (!), stepped on by cows), has held up as well. IBMs are hardly perfect performers under these conditions; but they seem better than most.
- Red Chrome
It would make a scene if something happens to the factory...
Wow, that sounds nice! I'd really love to see ;)
more non-x86 notebooks. Those little Netwinders
that Corel made would make a good laptop core,
I'd think. The only real non-x86 competition in
the laptop market for any decent price is Apple,
that I know of. And one button on those things
just doesn't cut it for me. Not to mention how
ugly the current ones are.
Hate to burst anyone's bubble, but the hinges on these things are pretty fragile. In my former life as an IT manager in an oilfield company, we had far more trouble with the hinges on those Panasonics than on either the Compaq or IBM laptops we had.
And the PC itself wasn't all that wonderful.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
My Toughbook CF-M33 runs linux perfectly with a Teac PORTA CD and a NE2000 PCMCIA card. Note though, it crashes on install on Redhat 6.1 but works fine with 6.0 and before and SUSE. The sound, Power Management, Screen all work flawlessly with linux!
it doesnt come with a modem..well..mine didnt...also for those wondering, i have linux up and running on it just fine..(why arent i in linux now? good question) reboot time
***There is no point in asking, you'll get no reply***
You forgot Indiana Jones and Quartermain as potential buyers.
There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don't.
Yes, we use this model for Mobile Date Terminals at the Pueblo, Colorado Police Department. Running Win95B (yech) with a terminal program by Allinson-Ross to log in to the old Unisys Mainframe, and via secure fiber to the Colorado Criminal Information Computers. Transmission is via a radio modem, seriously encrypted (of course) so the connection is ssslllooooww. But that notebook is DAMN tough. You can spill coffee all over it, and it keeps on tickin!
--Officer Jeff Pettorino, Pueblo PD
Magnesium is found in plant chlorophyll and is necessary in the diet of animals and humans.
:)
But if you get stranded out in the middle of nowhere you can eat your laptop and survive!
I wear pants.
From what I recall from chemistry, Mg is a highly reactive metal. From Encyclopædia Britannica:
"At one time, magnesium was used predominantly for photographic flash ribbon and powder, incendiary bombs, and pyrotechnic devices, because in finely divided form it burns in air with an intense white light....It is a very strong reducing agent, reacting with most acids or with boiling water to liberate hydrogen"
er..Don't pour any boiling water on your 'super tough' laptop I guess.
". Because of its low density (only two-thirds that of aluminum) it has found extensive use in the aerospace industry. A part that would weigh 70 pounds (31.8 kilograms) when made of steel weighs only 15 pounds when made from magnesium. Because the pure metal has low structural strength, alloys have been developed--principally with aluminum, zinc, and manganese--to improve its hardness, tensile strength, and ability to be cast, welded, and machined. "
Perhaps an alloy is more heat resistant and less reactive. But they claim to be using a 'full' magnesium case. I guess it means that the case won't be very strong either.
It does, the case is practically the same, I've had mine for almost 2 years now and it was the best notebook I have ever bought... hmm, I guess HP beat them to the idea, just didn't market it right =)
Yeah this is definatly nothing new. I have an 8088 powered Campaq travel computer. It weighs ~28lbs., has a small builtin monochrome screen, and two 360k 5.25" floppy drives.
Now, I don't know if this is true or not, but I heard that Compaq salespersons were known to drop these beasts to show how rugged they were.
If I were to throw this thing against a brick wall, it would probably go right through.
http://www.husky.co.uk/uk/products/fex21.html
pretty nice looking pc's dont care for the OS though.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
I saw one of these at PCexpo that had a bullet hole in it.. the bullet had entered through the screen, hit the keyboard and was stopped (!) by the hard drive, or whatever protective material is around the hard drive..
The rep told me it booted fine with an external keyboard and monitor.. no data was lost and the only things that broke were the screen and the kb.
Unfortunately he couldn't tell me any details of how the laptop managed to take a bullet, he said the police were still investigating whatever case it was related to.
A computer is only as tough as its operating system.
I saw one at a govt. trade show a couple years back. They dropped it from 4 feet in the air, it was fine. They had a 200 pound man stand on it, it was fine. Then the man started jumping about 1 foot in the air, I the LCD got a hair line crack but it really didnt effect it that much.
What I didnt see was them testing it at weird angles this was all with the laptop close and flat to the ground. Never the less I hope to afford one of these once I get out of school.
you are talking about aluminum. Megnesium is very soft and flamable.
If it's got a winmodem, (i.e. incompatible software modem with secret spec) don't bother.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
A few years ago I used to do allot of kiosk development and a company named microyouch made a touchscreen which they installed in a crap 20 inch monitor (the package sold for 2600 or so, even at volume) which could stop a bullet, and keep on ticking... if you were a really big potential customer, they would even demo the bulet-proof issue for you in their mass factory (isnt that illegal???)
ya, stop breakage... i can see it now: "we have incorporated inertial dampers into the body and display segments to prevent damage caused by accidental dropping. Infact this takes the machine into a new era, wireless is no-longer important, this product needs no table.. no level surface.. you can ue it in an airplane, and not have to worry about where it rests...." HOVER NOTEBOOK... apple should try to develop this, and call it the h-book.. sell it in fatigue color
I am two things: A long-distance backpacker and a geek. So, in 1996, when I headed to hike from Georgia to Maine, I did what came naturally: I brought a laptop.
:)
And another one. And another one. And so on. Some of them didn't last but a week. The Thinkpad's screen broke, the Compaq Aero's motherboard snapped, several others simply couldn't handle the moisture or the heat/cold.
Finally, in Maine, Texas Micro gave me a Hardbody. This, I was told, was the toughest laptop known to man. It was created to MILSPEC, intended to survive the harshest conditions, including wild swings of temperature, 6-foot drops onto rock, strong vibrations, and lots of moisture.
It lasted just under 2 days.
Am I down on the Toughbook? Kinda.
Obviously, they didn't make this notebook for me or for other unreasonable freaks. They advertise that broken notebooks cause loss of work time and money for corporations. These are created to withstand the rigors, of, say, the Beltway. I think that by most of our standards, this system is nothing special. It sure doesn't look like anything that you or I couldn't do with a Toshiba Satellite, some caulking and a little duct tape.
Anyhow, I found my ideal trail computer. It worked perfectly at all times, ran for days at a time on very few batteries, even with those pesky cell-phone data uploads, was nearly waterproof, didn't give a damn about jolts or drops. The system? A Newton.
Actually, getting a coffee-resistant crotch is not so hard. Simply start out with water slightly above lukewarm, and tip a cup into your lap first thing every morning. If you make the water about half one degree hotter every day, soon you'll be able to withstand even fresh expresso poured steaming over the family jewels.
This is a great party trick. Once you are at the balls-of-steel stage, challenge an unpopular manager to an endurance contest. You'll be the life of the party.
>You can get a 366mhz laptop but I doubt you'll find a 366mhz ruggedised laptop.
http://www.pana sonic.com/computer/notebook/products/toughbook71.
You're right. Who carries a laptop and doesn't carry at least a pad of paper, a magazine, change of socks...whatever with them? As far as i can see, the major deal with these is that the handle on the laptop will take up a lot of extra space in your laptop bag...oh wait, you don't have extra space in your laptop bag either? suit yourself (oops, pun). For a few grand less my off the shelf toshiba in a jansport backpack gets tossed around (camping even!) and never ever complains......
Isn't this really old news?
begin 644
Think of the buyers: Military ('natch), campers (not the Quake kind), off-road bikers, heavy-duty business travellers -- just about anyone who gets tossed around enough that their gear has to take a beatin' and keep on tickin'.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
i think i saw these things a while ago. didn't news.com do a story on them? their sposed to be able to with-stand fires (the screens are fairly easy to replace, right?) gunshots, car-crashes, scalding coffee (though my crotch can't yet, gotta work on that), etc. etc. etc.
i think lots - o - cops have these things in their cars...
pretty fun to see again though..
I saw these a few Comdexes ago I believe... I think there was some type of "If you break one, you get one" challenge then. I don' think anyone won, but the contest may have been cut short (Softbank probably didn't take too kindly to people tossing notebook computers across the grounds of the show... Heh).
And, this would have been at least 2 Comdexes ago. Very old news, and it's been on slashdot before. Doesn't matter though.
I remember drooling over the P75 version of the Toughbook. They where a lot more expensive back then also. I'm glad to see that they are still making them. Now, only if it came bundled with one of those nifty solar chargers. . .
We don't need to hear about how you want everything you hear about.
btw - some of these stories lately have been kinda repetative:
AMD announces the xxx Mhz Athlon
Tom's hardware reviews the ______
Transmeta gets another patent
(MS/Dvorak/Whoever) spreading FUD about linux
:)
amd - enough already - we know they can take kryotech's refregeration tech and make the athlon go beyond 800 Mhz
tom's hardware - so what? - plenty of websites out there are dedicated to computer hardware, why do they always post tom's reviews? stop being biased toward anand!
transmeta - patience, my friend, patience - stop speculating and wait for their product to come out.
fud - it's all lies - much of it is just misinformation for the misinformed, and dvorak's just in it for the ad revenues... "stop feeding trolls and don't read spam"
_______________________________________________
There is no statute of limitation on stupidity.
Ouch, keep away from party sparklers! Mind you, very good for avoiding black hats: Oh oh, here come the MIB... fzzzzFZZZZZZZ. Haha, can't get my data.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
I worked for a company that modified these units into some kickin' tempest units. Anyways, the website is http://www.hetrasecure.com. I don't recall what they cost, but if you're a US citizen, it's all you. The advantage of ruggedness and TEMPEST, all in one!!!
Those look cool. I should get one for a friend who recently rolled over his laptop with his car!! Neither survived (note I didn't say drove over...)
I remember finding a site a long time ago that had super rugged laptops. There were a number of problems with those oldies though: They were slow, ugly, and heavy. The Panasonic's look much nicer IMHO.
However, I wonder how much they would cost! I do wish companies weren't so paranoid about posting prices. It makes it nearly impossible to even consider purchasing something if I cannot see the price when I actually visit the site on a whim.
-B
This "tough 'puter" thingy is definitely not new.
Someone has produced "tough" carry-ons back in the '386 days. And then there was a contracted deal between DoD and some PC manufacturer to produce "battle-proof" PC which were used in both "Desert Shield" and later "Desert Storm" Operations.
BTW, can anyone tell me if there is anything new this "toughy", other than a new processor, bigger memory and HDD, and nicer screen ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I don't know about anyone else, but I take care of my laptops. I don't really need tough computers. What we really need are super tough laptop carrying cases. That would mean that you could pay $100 for a really tough carrying bag instead of paying $400 more for the super tough laptop case option. Another nice thing is if your laptop bag breaks you can replace it for $100, if your laptop exterior breaks you have to replace the laptop or buy another case ($400 + $100 for the installation. I'm using estimates here.) even if you have a laptop where the case can be replaced.
= Case made of Kevlar, and running Fin..er..Linux.
(I think I've been reading too much Cryptonomicon!)
-AC
I work for a governmental agency that oversees contractors, and the inspectors have to take notes and record time and personnel data on construction sites.
;)
:)
:)
This has been done for years with Fujitsu Stylistic 500 hand-held Pen-based units. (486/50 with max of about 20MB ram - and whatever size you can get a type 3 PCMCIA hard drive; 340? - although they're grayscale and I haven't tried X on them, they would make a nice little Linux boxen if someone would write the drivers for the pen function.
We have recently begun to deploy some model of these "tanks". I haven't heard any feedback yet, but it will be interesting. Based on the number of pen units out there, if they were all replaced, there might be a test-bed of several hundred machines... and, lucky me, I'm one of the ones who is going to get to try fix them (or pass along for warranty work) when they break. I'll have a feel for how good they are in 6 months to a year. They've gotta be better than the Compaq Armada 7800's.
BTW, a little off-topic, but I keep seeing this word "administrate". I always thought it was "administer." (I know, I looked it up in the dictionary and they are both verbs and synonyms.) Does this word *sound* dumb to anyone else?
It's just like "taking one's medication" instead of "taking one's medicine." "Administrate" and "medication" sound so haughty, pompous and self-important. Does it seem that way to anyone else?
Perhaps CT or Hemos will consider an article on this so I don't get moderated in obscurity for off-topic? I just hate bad Karma.
Russ
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
Backlit keyboards...lot's of cool stuff. (I want to have one vehicle mounted in my car to play MP3s with, though that's probably not going to happen
End gratuitous plug....
"Administrate" is merely illiterate and pompous.
"Medication" is more interesting. I am a student of propaganda and I have noticed that through the 90's, there has been a segregation movement going on here. The term "drug" has been shunned by the medical industry; replaced by "medication".
"Drug" is becoming ghettoized to mean "illegal drug". Furthermore, instead of referring to a specific illegal drug, the tendency now is to conflate narcotics, stimulants, and cannabis into the generic term of opprobrium, "drugs".
This category error serves the promoters of the War on Drugs by hyping up the problem. Instead of a few thousand users of heroin and speed, and 20 million cannabis smokers, you now have 20 million "drug users". This helps sell the budget ($17 billion this year in the U.S.).
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. -Albert Einstein
Anybody else misread that as inertial dampeners? Heh, it's all star trek's fault.
Still, that would surely reduce drop damage
F0 07 C7 C8
...and I'm very happy with both. One is a cf-35, which is only marginally ruggedized (magnesium screen casing, shock mounted HD). It's only a pentium 133, but it does OK.
The nice one is a cf71 (pII-266), which is very rugged indeed. It's lasted me well, and it's been through a lot, including a torrential rainstorm that got it pretty well soaked. One of the coolest things about it is its handle, which lets you just carry thing thing without any additional case. And it really is tough enough that I don't have to worry about banging it around or anything.
Only problem: the cf35 has a nearly 6 hour battery life. The cf71, however, lasts for about 80 minutes of real use. Ugh.
Anyways, I'd highly reccomend the panasonics if you're looking for an affordable, ruggedized notebook. They've been good to me.
Where have you guys been? Here's your SUV of notebook computers:
http://www.dolch.com/html/portables.html
I don't think any more needs to be said about it, do you?
Ever see someone light an old VW engine block? With enough heat to start it, magnesium burns quite nicely even solid in an alloy...
You've never had the urge to treat your equipment poorly? I'd much rather have a machine that I don't have to worry about spilling stuff on, that I can drop, that I can punch or throw across the room in a fit of rage.
It'd kick much ass to have a party-proof laptop. Besides, Quake3 is best on the desktop.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
I've been supporting these POS for about 6 months now and they are the most problematic, NON-DURABLE machines I have ever seen. They certainly don not justify the $6,000 plus pricetag for the P166 MMX version.
I have a small hardshell case from sampsonite. I got it at a mall luggage shop for $70
If came with the half the case filled with the foam cube treatment, and with a soft bag that attaches inside the top cover.
This is cool because I can put the computer in the foam, and stick accesories in the bag, and just use the case, or if I need to haul more stuff, I put the computer in the soft bag and pack it in my mombo-hauling indigo bag.
The alternative to limited government is unlimited government.
Does anyone here remember the old Tandy/RadioShack laptops? Now there is a truly indestructable computer. My mother owned one, and let me play with it as a toddler. Talk about durable... I'm pretty sure it still works today. In fact, I'm planning on bringing it back to school with me after my next break.
Have you read the Moderation Guidelines Addendum?
I'm missing something here, did you get a Toughbook? I thought you were talking about the Hardbody, which is a different box.
I have the 12" dstn, which works well and uses a CT 65550 with 2MB ram, and works ok with Xfree. I understand the TFT CF-25's used a neomagic chip with one meg.
I've yet to get the cardbus to work with a 2.2 kernel, I'm using pcmcia-cs-2.9.12 with kernel 2.0.37. Oh, yah, and the serial port drops bytes, and I've read (on deja) that it drops bytes in some dos apps, too.
Also, the bios didn't understand my Linux partition, kept prompting me to stick in my Windblows cd, so I now boot a tiny dos partition, which runs loadlin. Poo!
I've opened mine up, and all the internals say "(c)IBM" all over them. It's pretty heavy duty inside. It's not just a mag case, the main body is a very heavy casting, with a mag cover that covers the disk and batt. compartment on the bottom, and a cover on the top deck that might be plastic. The HD sits in a jelly-like molded compartment, and is not screwed to anything. It took three minuts to stick in a bigger drive. There's a spot in the bottom for a SO-DIMM, which Panasonic claims is proprietory, but a generic worked for me.
On the good side, I've so far spilled coffee on it, carried it in a duffel with lots of other junk, dropped it down the stairs, stepped on it, dropped it off my desk while running, and dropped it from five feet a bunch of times to scare my co-workers, all without damage (although the black paint does scratch off eventually.) I'm kinda hard on laptops, and this one is holding up much better so far than any other one I've owned. The big benifit to me so far is that I just don't worry about breaking it, or bumping my bag into walls, or whatever.
This sounds similar to my Compaq SLT/386 (my little slut) - damn thing weighs about 14 lbs (no, not as mighty as yours, but still damn heavy) - causes shoulder pain after carrying it for awhile.
Why do I keep it? Well, it has a nice monochrome screen - and get this: A detachable keyboard. Put it on a desk, remove the keyboard, and kick back!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I remember a year ago, maybe a bit longer when these debuted at around P233MMX mobiles or so. I saw them at an expo and for the demonstration they had 10 toughbooks, a 10 foot ladder, an anvil on a slab of concrete, hot plate, icebox, and lots of drinks. For the entire duration of the show they would drop, if not throw them (open and closed) onto the anvil, while it was running mind you! In addition they would be doused with coffee, heated, chilled, and put through other torture tests.
They wouldn't replace one in a test until it broke. It took about 7 hours for the first one to go, the display was annihilated. The other failed right before the expo ended. Considering they dropped it every minute or so . . .
Meets my standards for "tough", that's for sure!
I work for the government, and we have a number of the toughbooks around. Some of our work involves getting pretty dirty, and being exposed to the elements quite a bit so they've been pretty handy. They're rock hard - they have waterproof plugs for all the external ports, and are just generally hardcore, not to mention satisfyingly clunky.
Only problem is, everyone in the district uses Windows, which lessens the effect. Try and picture a hardass black tough-guy notebook with the Utopia sound scheme on it...
-lx
Do they come in Blueberry?
How about Tangerine?
As an ordinary college student, I don't have much need to take a laptop underwater or have the ability to throw it off tall buildings.
I'd much rather have a new iBook that I can play wireless Quake 3 on.
The overwhelming majority of those SUV owners never actually engage the Sport-Utility part of their Sport-Utility Vehicle i.e. these wimps never take their trucks OFF ROAD! And in fact you look at SUVs like the Lexus RX300 (adapted from the Toyota Camry of all things!) and you realize that SUVs are getting less Sportier and more Utilitier.
Personally, I think they sell so well simply because they are as functional as a station wagon for a family, but without the wussy-stigma. ^_^
So we may see a parallel in notebooks: the ruggedized rigs are the Manly Machines. You wouldn't want to be caught on a plane with the station wagon of computers now, would you?
Crusade against lame software! votezone.com
magnesium (Mg), metallic element, discovered as an oxide by Sir Humphry DAVY in 1808. A ductile, silver-white, chemically active ALKALINE-EARTH METAL, it is the eighth most abundant element in the earth's crust. Its commercial uses include lightweight alloys in aircraft fuselages, jet-engine parts, rockets and missiles, cameras, and optical instruments. The metal is used in pyrotechnics. Magnesium is found in plant chlorophyll and is necessary in the diet of animals and humans. See CHEMICAL ELEMENTS (table).
From www.encyclopedia.com
Not so flammable in jet-engine parts I would guess ;-)
Pretty cool. Imagine the beowulf cluster you could build with these.
I crack myself up sometimes.
er, d'oh!
specifically:
http://www.dolch.com/html/notepac.html
I rember using Husky Hunters back in the late 80's. Those things were indestructible. My one had been driven over a few times by trucks and suck. They were waterproof, shockproof, carproof, and made a convenient club if you were attacked.
Husky are at husky.co.uk.
Can't remember what OS the came with, but it was almost certainly something odd. I remember we used Psion IIs at the same time (64k RAM!).
dave "banging two rocks to get ones and zeros"
and I have one. Used to use it a lot, but now I play Age of Empires on it against my girlf friend. She's a tcatical genius, just kick my sorry ass.
"I just can't sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it's nonsense" J Watson, Sci Am 288:(4)51
Our old system admin, showed me some titanium
notebooks, with Alpha processors, a few years
back. This is much more interesting to me.
What is the brand? I can't remember at all.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I think Popular Science did something on this a while back. The notebook didn't succumb to defeat until they hit it with an axe (it survived the Mac truck running over it). It was later determined that the axe didn't break the computer, it only broke the LCD screen. I would gladly accept any extra of these laying around as a donation.
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.
These things have had some serious problems, the shock mounting system was causing the HD's to overheat and it didn't work as well as hoped, the case??? One Govt agency while testing simply took a pen and jabbed it through the case, the handle is tough though it weighs more than the rest of the unit. You can check out other industrial stuff at www.microslate.com they have a nice little notebook, not for your average business user though
I worked for somewhere that had GRiD Compasses and GRiD Cases in a past life. We had quite a few of them, and they all ran DOS. If you drop it on a corner, you'll break the plasma screen (we broke a few like that, but give our "normal" treatment they were amazingly rugged.)
;)
:)
The was a TEMPEST rated version, and in fact I had one of each that I kept in the trunk of my car. I actually came across a power brick for one of these last time I moved. My "rationale" for one of each was that I had to be able to "test programs on the TEMPEST version as well." I guess management's clue level over the years hasn't changed much
The TEMPEST ones also had a pretty cool encryption option. Bubble memory helped with not having to rely on magnetic media as well. The only problem with the Crypto option was that you weren't allowed to leave them in the trunk of your car
GRiD used to run over them with jeeps and drop them from helicopters in sales demos back then. Nothing else would stand up to it.
I think I seriously hurt the TEMPEST version of a Compaq Luggable that I had in for testing once. The GRiD's would take a heck of a lot more abuse.
New GRiDs were somwhere between $17,000 and $27,000 if I recall correctly. CryptoGRiDs might have been more.
GRiDCase's had better and bigger screens than the Compass, but weren't TEMPESTable AIR.
Paul
http://www.pauldrobertson.com
Okay, sure, guys, fine, it's a rock, but come on - it's got the same lines as 1997 Toshiba Tecra. Boxy. Ugly ugly ugly. Heavy.
A couple years ago when I worked for a LARGE company, I was asked to test one out to see how tough it was. In the manual it stated that it could be dropped from a height of six feet. Curiosity got the best of me and I held it upto my eyes (only 5' 8" +/-) and dropped it. I then picked all of the pieces up, put them in the box and informed my manager that it wasn't so tough. I wonder if they ever took that statement out of the manual?
I've been through 2 palmIII's. Hopefully the Visor will hold up better.
This kind of stuff has been around for years. I know of a New Zealand power company that have been using panasonic toughbooks for the last couple of years (their faultman use them as a map viewer - field GIS).
also check out the Fujitsu Stylistic series of pen based machines. These are based on mobile pentiums and are also solid as a rock. Mine has been for a swim in the goldfish pond with no problems. Dropped off the roof of the house (3.5 metres) with no problems.
There isn't a very market because of the cost. And that the tech lags behind standard laptops. You can get a 366mhz laptop but I doubt you'll find a 366mhz ruggedised laptop.
In New Zealand a good off the shelf laptop costs about NZ$4000 (US$2000), but a 266mhz toughbook costs about NZ$7000 (US$3500). The price difference is such that many organisations buy normal laptops for their field staff as even though they replace them more often than the ruggedised versions it still works out cheaper.
Cheers,
Adam.
I scored a GRiD Compass 1101 sometime ago at the Dallas Sidewalk Sale. Still have the thing too. It's big and heavy compared to anything made in the last 8 years, though for a '81 vintage machine it's at least briefcase-crammable, compared to a Compaq Luggable. It had an 8086 for brains, (I think) 384k RAM, GPIB for an I/O bus (this is where the external disk hung), a dinky little plasma display, and, get this, bubble memory for nonvolatile storage. That means your data is (so 'they' say) EMP-proof. There was no batteries. You had to jam an AC cord into this thing.
The truly striking feature has to be the cast magnesium case. (Alloy, kids, not pure magnesium, that would be stupid. First person to suggest that this machine is flammable gets GUN!!!) Usually when I show this machine off to someone I'll plug it in, turn it on, start it doing something, set the thing on the floor, jump up and down on it like a madman, and then show the screen. It's taken ritual torture and doesn't yet have a scar to prove it.
The thing is fscking amazing. I hear that there was a TEMPEST rated version out there. With the bubble memory and the freaky OS these things ran (DOS 2.x was an option, but wasn't popular) I could see this machine as being popular with the CIA and the like.
me and my friend drove over this old Compaq P120 notebook (can't remember model).. it belonged to the company of course, and we were going for a cruise in his 300ZX to test out the wireless stuff on this notebook (LOL, ya 2 hours of cruising and 20 mins of testing ;-).. anyways, we couldn't beleive that after he drove directly over it with his rear right tire (he thought he put it in the trunk) it was still 100% ok (except for a small irrelevant crack in the case where the screen is hinged) and is still running strong today!
I remember hearing of bubble memory, but not much.. The most I heard was that it was extremely expensive, fast, but small. Not something for industrial usage. Of course.. that was back in the 80s when I heard anything about it, and that info was from my father.. who I'm not sure where/when he heard it.
What exactly is bubble memory?
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