Linked by Amjith Ramanujam on Mon 14th Jul 2008 20:28 UTC
A lot of manufacturers have notebook computers that they consider ruggedized in some form or another, but it's not always clear just how much they can take. Panasonic gave Geek.com access to their testing facilities in order to see some of what their notebooks go through. Some tests include temperature shock, drop testing (from various angles), a 360-degree shower with pressurized water, and more. In addition to describing parts of the test process they got some video of a Toughbook 30 standing up to a few drops and a lot of water.
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Member since:
2005-06-30
"Are they military certified."
Yes, we used Toughbooks extensively in Iraq earlier this year. They started replacing Thinkpads a few years ago, about the time that the buggy T4x line came out with the loose GPU problem, where solder connections would break under normal use causing spontaneous freezing and reboots. These things can withstand anything...I've seen them slammed against walls, dropped, full of sand, and they still run fine. I think all the Toughbooks come with a touchscreen, which was very practical for the software we were using. We found a CF-25 that we ran Ubuntu on for awhile, but the touchscreen didn't work. Driver support from Toshiba sucks though; I had a CF-73 whose XP install went apeshit, and it took days navigating through a Japanese website to find drivers. The Thinkpads are still used, just in controlled (indoor) environments. As a side note, some of the hardware being used in Humvees is running a custom version of RedHat, with fvwm95 as the window manager.