do you need a rugged laptop? the article below helps weigh the benefits
and costs, which can be more t han five times that of a regular laptop.
kelly
from The New York Times
May 20, 1999
How Tough Is Your Laptop?
______________________________________________________________
For Off-Road Typing, and a Rugged Look, Computers Built Like Tanks
By IAN AUSTEN
Larry Garrett, a Sears technician, didn't get a chance to see what
was wrong with the riding mower during a service call on April 3
near Benton, La. He was barely in the door of the customer's mobile
home when a tornado set it and Garrett tumbling.
Photo credit:
Jeff Green for The New York Times
Photo caption:
Waterproof
To earn the description "rugged," an Itronix laptop is drenched in
water while operating.
_________________________________________________________________
When the vicious wind had passed, Garrett climbed out of the rubble
with a broken wrist and a dislocated thumb. His Ford service van
sat about 20 feet from where he had parked it, with its windows
smashed and doors destroyed and a piece of lumber through the
dashboard.
Picking through the mess, Garrett uncovered his Itronix X-C 6250
laptop computer beside the ruined driver's seat.
"I thought I would send a message to routing that I wasn't going to
be able to finish my calls for the day," he said. It didn't look
promising. A thick layer of debris, much of it fiberglass
insulation from destroyed houses, coated both the keyboard and
screen.
Much to his amazement, the computer turned on and operated
normally. While Garrett's plan to get in touch with the Sears
office in Shreveport failed -- the tornado had torn away part of
his van's antenna -- he was able to look up his exact location from
a digital work sheet stored in the computer and call his brother
for help.
"Best as I can tell, the computer wasn't beat up at all," Garrett
said in a telephone interview last month, while he was recovering
from his injuries at home in Shreveport. "I expect to use the same
laptop when I get back to work. I'm hoping for a new van, though."
You won't find Garrett's Itronix laptop at your local computer
store because they are generally marketed to corporations through
other channels. It's one of a small number of models, called
"ruggedized" laptops. Heavier (up to 25 pounds), more costly (some
models start at $8,000) and generally less technically
sophisticated, they are to ordinary laptops what the Hummer is to
the family car.
Salespeople run them through dishwashers to show that they are
waterproof. Public relations people boast about machines that have
taken bullets or been charred like hamburgers and lived to move
data the next day. Hummers have rolled their cartoon-size tires
over these rugged laptops at trade shows.
Rugged laptops have earned such a reputation in the nearly two
decades since they were introduced that Panasonic, the only major
electronics company currently in the market, now hopes to convince
business executives that even though they don't often work in
tornadoes or dodge bullets, they, too, need a beefy laptop PC, like
one of Panasonic's Toughbooks. To that end, it is offering a series
of slightly less rugged and less expensive models -- sort of the
Jeep Grand Cherokee of the durable laptop world.
Rugged notebooks are also produced by a number of small companies
or military suppliers. Fieldworks and Itronix are leading
manufacturers, but the group also includes Thomson-CSF, Promark
Technology, Paravant Computer Systems, Miltope, Getac, Cyberchron,
Amrel Systems and GSCS.
"Ruggedization is not just the domain of the blue-collar guys --
everybody's notebooks are breaking all the time," said John Harris,
vice president of marketing for the Panasonic Personal Computer
Company, playing on a widely held fear, if not a fully demonstrable
fact.
But despite all the testosterone in the advertising, the reality of
these rugged computers is more mundane. Sure, they are hauled up
mountains by explorers, into battle by soldiers and into high-speed
chases by the police. But so far, the biggest group of
rugged-laptop users includes repair technicians like Garrett,
truckers and insurance adjusters. But hey, once you've driven over
an $8,000 computer a couple of times, anything can seem glamorous.
Photo credit:
Jeff Green for The New York Times
Photo caption:
Humidity-Proof
Toughened laptops are tested in high humidity in temperatures of 86 to
140 degrees.
_________________________________________________________________
Within Itronix's headquarters in Spokane, Wash., there is a device
that some computer users might like to borrow after they have
received their umpteenth error message: a machine that tries to
demolish laptops.
Vaguely resembling a drill press, the device has a clamp that holds
laptops, then drops them one meter, a little more than three feet,
onto a concrete floor. That may not sound like much, but new models
are dropped by Itronix at least 54 times while they are operating.
"It's an adrenaline rush anytime you see a notebook fall from that
height even if you know it's supposed to survive," said Wally
Starr, the company's senior product manager, who never tires of the
experience.
The most obvious difference between a rugged laptop and its regular
counterpart is the case. Rather than the traditional PVC plastic,
they are usually clad in magnesium -- a material that is, by
Panasonic's estimate, 20 times stronger than the most durable
plastics. Some models also get a layer of thick rubber.
But the outside box is the least of a rugged-laptop designer's
worries.
Because most failures of mobile PC's come from prolonged vibration
or humidity -- or sometimes spilled coffee, rugged laptops have
special fittings for their components. To guard against spills, the
laptop and keyboard are sealed and the air drawn out, leaving a
vacuum to avoid condensation. Itronix has a special water-torture
chamber that blasts the laptops with water at a pressure of 40
pounds per square inch.
The arrival of Pentium chips created a major problem because
ordinary Pentium laptops have a circular opening for a fan to drive
out the heat generated by their central processing units.
Rugged machines, therefore, keep their interiors sealed but avoid
spontaneous combustion by using the surrounding magnesium case as a
heat sink.
For similar reasons, some rugged machines completely eliminate
speakers. Some Panasonic models contain a single mono speaker,
mounted on the bottom, that uses a membrane made from materials
more commonly found in outdoor clothing. But Harris, at Panasonic,
conceded that "it certainly doesn't give you stellar sound
quality."
The two most vulnerable elements in a laptop computer are its
delicate hard drive and the liquid crystal display screen, which
contains a thin sheet of glass.
Starr estimated that most hard drives could survive a fall that
generated about 500 times the force of gravity, or 500 G's, if the
computer was turned off and about 100 G's if it was turned on. A
belly flop off a desk, however, would mean a force of 1,000 to
3,000 G's at impact. Worse, Starr added, "it's a very dramatic,
short impact, making it difficult to dissipate the energy."
To protect the hard drive, manufacturers have resorted to
surrounding it with a variety of silicon gels. To further reduce
the shock, a team of two engineers spent six months at Itronix
designing an elaborate series of baffles and louvers in and around
the gel. L.C.D. screens get much the same treatment. In most
models, they are protected from shock by being mounted in
additional goop. The most extreme models also add an outside layer
of bulletproof plastic.
Photo credit:
Jeff Green for The New York Times
Photo caption:
Foolproof?
Laptops aren't usually run through washing machines, but this one
passed the test.
_________________________________________________________________
Who needs a bulletproof computer screen? The police might. Robert
Ford, director of police services in Port Orange, Fla., switched to
rugged models for squad cars after finding that ordinary laptops
were lasting, on average, about a week because of drops, jolts and
spills.
After six months of using rugged units from Panasonic, the police
in Port Orange have experienced few failures.
One machine, in fact, withstood a particularly grueling episode.
About a year ago, a truck traveling about 65 miles an hour with its
driver asleep at the wheel crashed into the back of a stopped
police cruiser, pushing the trunk into space normally filled by the
back seat. The officer, Steve Braddock suffered serious injuries,
from which he has since recovered. The laptop, which was in the
trunk at the time of the crash, was cut out of the wreckage by
mechanics. "For a joke they switched it on," Ford said.
The machine worked.
After some cosmetic repairs and a screen replacement, the computer
was soon back in service.
But Ford has not found the Panasonic laptops invincible. Officers
still occasionally drive off with computers sitting on the roofs of
cruisers. They survive only if they make their inevitable plummet
to the pavement at less than 30 miles an hour.
For other users of rugged laptops, like Jim Bruton, a former
documentary producer, surviving abuse is part of the environment.
For the third year in a row, Bruton is spending part of this month
at a Mount Everest base camp providing Internet communications and
telemedicine links for a climbing expedition.
On a trip in 1996, his Fieldworks laptop was left open overnight.
The next day, it was covered in snow and ice after. "I let the sun
melt it for an hour, dried it off and everything was fine," Bruton
said.
So does a person who reaches high elevations only in an airline
seat really need a more rugged laptop? Not surprisingly, the answer
from Toshiba, a leading maker of ordinary laptops, is no.
Masa Okumura, director of worldwide portables marketing for
Toshiba, said the company designed notebooks to cope with
"inevitable day-to-day stress but not to be abused." The vast
majority of service returns at Toshiba, he said, are a result of
software problems, not physical damage.
Itronix is happy to sell its laptops -- full-size models start at
$5,995 -- to anyone who wants them. But Matt Gerber, the company's
vice president for marketing, acknowledged that the Itronix rugged
laptops were overkill for most people. "A typical laptop user does
not need our product," he said.
Nevertheless, Panasonic has high hopes for its scaled-down line of
rugged laptops, which are a little less tough than the more
expensive laptops. This line of machines -- some of them are to
sell for less than $2,000 each -- eliminates some of the extra
survival measures, like floating the screen in gel, while retaining
some of the macho features, like the magnesium case.
Harris, at Panasonic, compared the notebook to the sport utility
vehicle he bought for commuting in New Jersey. "I bought a Jeep,
not because I want to go off road," he said. "But three times a
year when there's a big snowstorm, I say, 'Boy, I'm glad I have
this.' The rest of the time, it just gets lousy mileage."
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