I would be interested in seeing how mainstream laptops stack up - I suspect some may be much better than others.
Alternatively, I'd like to see how suitable these ruggedized laptops are for mainstream, consumer use and situations - ie. could I put the laptop in checked luggage at the airport, and not worry about it? Are the screens bright enough for use outdoors in bright sunlight (all of the laptops I've had fail this miserably - it sucks needing to work inside on a nice summer day when there is no business need for it)
Land Surveyors pops into my head immediately. They at least need a rugged PDA to capture data from their instruments. Also, security installers or anyone who works in the field and still needs more functionality than they can get from a smartphone. Maybe a plummer is down in a sewer and wants to look up a part. Or maybe I just want to check my email outside in the rain or next to the swimming pool.
Speaking from the perspective of someone who works everyday with mobile / ruggedized needs - I would welcome this. I can also say there may be a large audience of members (military, contractor, government service, etc) that view this site on a daily basis, myself being one of them, that maybe you don't know about. It surprised myself meeting others that were as geeky as myself in the profession I am (not necessarily a techy job).
We pretty much don't know what is the value of it. You could address that:
Other than reading in sunlight, you could take it to fishing/camping (star gazing?) and checking if it can be used onder rain/snow (are the buttons ok to use with gloves or even if the thing can take the weather you wont use it), can it survive sliping from a rock/dock and falling in the river/sea. You would probably have to ask what kind of accidents are common for the people that takes their laptops to those stuff (what their primary use seeing maps? I don't think anyone would play Farcry in a tropical jungle.
If there are some sort of common accidents compare how many normal laptops of similar performance would be wasted before a rugged one is cost effective.
I don't really think a rugged laptop is worth it other than in military situations (having to throw the thing in the car and hit the gas) as other poster mentioned.
I see it this way: what would I rather see a review of, given the author's limited time available to write quality reviews? A simple line-by-line analysis of the spec sheet is not sufficient for a website like AnandTech; that belongs on DailyTech. I would rather see this site review products that consumers and readers are likely to buy, such as a tablet or thin-and-light laptop. A ruggedized laptop is not even lust-worthy like a gaming laptop is.
I am currently assigned to Afghanistan and can assure you that there are real uses for these computers. Even with the rediculous prices. Hypothetically speaking: Let's say that you are out... somewhere ... and are working on an issue with the Afghan National Army. You have some resources on your laptop that are helpful (training materials etc..) Suppose that you are required to mount up IMMEDIATELY and toss your computer in your HMMWV and take off. Of course your standard laptop can handle a minute or two of bouncing around on the marvelous roads and a few hundred HOT 7.62 rounds dropping on it from your top gunner is OK too, but when the gunner steps on it, well $h!7... Anyway, if you want me to test out ruggedized laptops for you, let me know!!! I can hand out as many as you want to provide and see which one lasts longest. This is not exactly scientific testing but what the heck.
While I'm not likely to buy one, I'd love reading about them. The features that interest me most in ruggedized notebooks are the transflective LCDs and the cooling systems. I'd love to have a mainstream notebook with a display I could view in direct sunlight. If enough people adopt ruggedized notebooks with these displays, then economies of scale could be realized and possibly move them down to less expensive notebooks.
Without a large baseline of reviews demarcating the state of the art (or at least, the market), individual product reviews are generally not particularly helpful or informative for consumers trying to pick out an outstanding product.
If AT wants to be serious about reviewing notebooks, they need to get serious about it, to the scale of C|Net or NBR, but hopefully with the in-depth expertise that we associate and expect of AT.
I really just want to see people dropping, baking, freezing, and pouring sand and liquids in notebooks to see if they break. Seeing those notebooks abused just makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
//there I said it, now you know why everyone wants to see the rugged tests, but hardly anybody is actually interested in buying them.
We've got one Toughbook (T-74) at the office, and it's a great machine. Seeing sites put them through torture tests is really impressive.
I especially like the test where they put the laptop in a box with sand, and put the box in a paint shaker, then turn on the laptop and see how effective the fans are at blowing sand out of the machine.
Agreed. I think the whole desire is akin to the "will it blend?" videos. No one is actually buying those expensive blenders, but we all love the videos.
"particularly if our options don’t exactly match what you’re thinking"
What definition are you using for Ultraportable? If you use the term the same as nearly every company's marketing department then the option I want isn't here. IMO, battery life is the most important spec when it comes to portability with size being secondary then weight. Very few even market the battery life as a feature and even fewer of those life up to their numbers. Most companies, when speaking of portability, tout the weight of their models and base the importance of that aspect on what I would suspect to be biased surveying. "My battery doesn't last long enough" is an all too common phrase used by many laptop owners. We put up with it because our machines are expensive, personal, and comfortable to us after we've gotten used to them, but how many would put up with having to plug in their cell phone whenever they planned to use it for more than just a few minutes? It's completely opposite what these devices we're meant to do.
I would love to have a rugged notebook, but I refuse to pay 2-4x as much as a modern notebook. Last time I was shopping for a notebook was in '06H1 and the cheapest Panasonic Toughbook was $3500 and the specs were a year out of date compared to the Toshiba I bought for $1200. Things may have changed since then and the rugged laptops may be keeping up to speed these days with their model updates. I don't know because I haven't been shopping for a replacement, and they don't get talked about much. I would guess that is primarily due to price. Almost no one, except for the mentioned military/government, is willing to pay that much for a laptop period, so they get little coverage on tech sites.
As for testing, they're already tested for desert usage. Test them against consumer products. What's overkill on the rugged laptops for the typical person? What's nice to have? What are they missing that most people would require on a personal laptop? What other product not designed for military use is a good middle ground? You know it would be fun to destroy a few machines in the name of review. How many times can a standard laptop withstand falling off your lap while sitting on a tailgate? How about a 1 or 2 story fall from a balcony? Do these new G-sensing head parking features in most 2.5" hard drives really work or is it all marketing? Just how resilient are SSDs? I wouldn't see this as a regular feature, but a once a year durability round up would be a nice read.
You can compare computers using software benchmarks, and some will be faster than others.
You might be forgiving if something also fits in a specific category: I'll give up some performance to have a really thin notebook such as the Macbook Air. I'll sacrifice battery life / mobility in order to have a good hefty gaming notebook.
And when notebooks are in that niche, you focus a bit on the niche benchmarksl gaming for gaming notebooks, battery life for ultrathin notebooks.
So what priorities do people have when they need a Rugged notebook? Aside from sysmark, what benchmarks would you focus on? Personally I don't need a rugged notebook at all, but perhaps:
- Readability in sunlight
- Hibernation / standby reliability
- Boot speed, wake-up speed
- Quality of the factory installed SSD
- Overall responsiveness
Maybe someone who's used a rugged notebook in a rugged environment can chime in on what matters most to rugged notebook users.
Usually Drop, immersion, and loose cargo vibration are the big ones that are hard to meet (i.e. cost the big $$ in the design). Drop in particular is hard to meet: 48" onto plywood over concrete 26 times (all faces, edges and corners). Toughbooks claim IP65, which means no dust ingress (difficult when sand is blowing at high speeds) and water jets spraying in direct contact from any direction can't cause damage. Loose cargo shakes the crap out of the object on a special table.
I'd love to hear from some real users in the field that use the Toughbooks or other. The applications I've seen run on them are Outlook, messaging apps, command and control applications, and a few others, none of which are very intensive.
I feel like while those things are important, the various "rugged" certifications already tested those. Anandtech could repeat those tests for fun, but wouldn't be providing anything really new.
What would Anandtech add that isn't covered by the existing certifications to make a review worthwhile?
Maybe a hardware analysis picking apart a rugged notebook and comparing it to a cheapo laptop, a mac laptop, and an upscale business laptop?
Maybe seeing how "rugged" the new macbook pro's are, in terms of drops, impacts, fire, immersion? :) That'd be an entertaining read!
I find it funny that 47% of respondents would like to see reviews of rugged notebooks, but only 7% "want it" over other types of notebook reviews...the lowest rating.
I would like to second this, tablets are great options for items such as taking notes for class/work but are rarely reviewed. A roundup of some of the currently available or upcoming models would be greatly appreciated.
Actually I believe a lot is missing at Anandtech's. I waited and waited for a review for the HP tx tablet series but nothing came out. The HP tx series were especially interesting for at least 2 reasons:
1-Tablet, and the only tablet with good graphics I saw between all small Tablet PC offers.
2-AMD Turion Ultra, which I never saw reviewed on Anadtech's, not compared to a regular old AMD Turion X2, or to any Intel system.
I believe the HP tx series are very popular. Where is your review?
Panasonic is a motivated company who focuses its technology not only to help man but to assist Marine Mammals. Black Hawk Toughbook™ computers are rugged enough for the US military in remote regions all over the world. Now, Panasonic's robust portable computer is moving into a new territory – the wet, salty environment of dolphins.
Thanks to Panasonic’s recent loan of three Toughbook computers to SpeakDolphin.com, Dolphin Researchers, Jack & Donna Kassewitz, are introducing the touchscreen computers to the dolphins in their research program. "The Toughbook’s screen brightness and water resistance are important for our project. We’ve seen the videos of trucks driving over Toughbooks and glasses of water being poured on the keyboard and the Toughbook keeps right on working—so we think these computers can handle dolphins."
The Toughbook computers will be part of language interface between humans and dolphins. The beginning phases of the project involve a cognitive game called "same/different" where a dolphin is shown an object in real life, such as a ball or flower pot, then asked to identify a photo of the same object on the touch screen. This process is to teach the dolphin that images on the computer screen can be used to symbolize real objects. Donna Kassewitz explained, "The dolphins have to get the hang of manipulating the touchscreen and also make the mental connection of symbols vs. real life objects. Then we’ll add symbols for actions and dolphin sounds associated with each of the symbols. We feel confident that both the dolphins and the Panasonic Toughbooks are up to the task."
One of the dolphins in the research program, a young male bottlenose named Merlin, already has experience with touchscreen computers. "Now with the Toughbooks’ interconnectivity we are better able to record the dolphin sounds and analyze them in real time" said Jack Kassewitz. "Thanks to support from Panasonic and donations from the public through our website, we are making progress in this important research. We believe both dolphins and humans will benefit from an interspecies language interface. We need all the support we can get towards this goal." Learn more from Black Hawk Toughbooks at http://www.PanasonicToughbooks.net about purchasing a Toughbook by Panasonic.
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27 Comments
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jediknight - Saturday, June 13, 2009 - link
I would be interested in seeing how mainstream laptops stack up - I suspect some may be much better than others.Alternatively, I'd like to see how suitable these ruggedized laptops are for mainstream, consumer use and situations - ie. could I put the laptop in checked luggage at the airport, and not worry about it? Are the screens bright enough for use outdoors in bright sunlight (all of the laptops I've had fail this miserably - it sucks needing to work inside on a nice summer day when there is no business need for it)
JohnMD1022 - Thursday, June 11, 2009 - link
There are already a number of sites covering this subject. Some are specializing in it.So why add to the clutter?
Flyboy27 - Tuesday, June 9, 2009 - link
Land Surveyors pops into my head immediately. They at least need a rugged PDA to capture data from their instruments. Also, security installers or anyone who works in the field and still needs more functionality than they can get from a smartphone. Maybe a plummer is down in a sewer and wants to look up a part. Or maybe I just want to check my email outside in the rain or next to the swimming pool.cazares - Tuesday, June 9, 2009 - link
Speaking from the perspective of someone who works everyday with mobile / ruggedized needs - I would welcome this. I can also say there may be a large audience of members (military, contractor, government service, etc) that view this site on a daily basis, myself being one of them, that maybe you don't know about. It surprised myself meeting others that were as geeky as myself in the profession I am (not necessarily a techy job).umbrel - Tuesday, June 9, 2009 - link
We pretty much don't know what is the value of it. You could address that:Other than reading in sunlight, you could take it to fishing/camping (star gazing?) and checking if it can be used onder rain/snow (are the buttons ok to use with gloves or even if the thing can take the weather you wont use it), can it survive sliping from a rock/dock and falling in the river/sea. You would probably have to ask what kind of accidents are common for the people that takes their laptops to those stuff (what their primary use seeing maps? I don't think anyone would play Farcry in a tropical jungle.
If there are some sort of common accidents compare how many normal laptops of similar performance would be wasted before a rugged one is cost effective.
I don't really think a rugged laptop is worth it other than in military situations (having to throw the thing in the car and hit the gas) as other poster mentioned.
soydios - Tuesday, June 9, 2009 - link
I see it this way: what would I rather see a review of, given the author's limited time available to write quality reviews? A simple line-by-line analysis of the spec sheet is not sufficient for a website like AnandTech; that belongs on DailyTech. I would rather see this site review products that consumers and readers are likely to buy, such as a tablet or thin-and-light laptop. A ruggedized laptop is not even lust-worthy like a gaming laptop is.ironique - Tuesday, June 9, 2009 - link
If you do decide to review ruggedized laptops, it'd be nice if you could look into Panasonic Toughbooks too.Willie11b - Tuesday, June 9, 2009 - link
I am currently assigned to Afghanistan and can assure you that there are real uses for these computers. Even with the rediculous prices. Hypothetically speaking: Let's say that you are out... somewhere ... and are working on an issue with the Afghan National Army. You have some resources on your laptop that are helpful (training materials etc..) Suppose that you are required to mount up IMMEDIATELY and toss your computer in your HMMWV and take off. Of course your standard laptop can handle a minute or two of bouncing around on the marvelous roads and a few hundred HOT 7.62 rounds dropping on it from your top gunner is OK too, but when the gunner steps on it, well $h!7... Anyway, if you want me to test out ruggedized laptops for you, let me know!!! I can hand out as many as you want to provide and see which one lasts longest. This is not exactly scientific testing but what the heck.Out!
ChuckDriver - Tuesday, June 9, 2009 - link
While I'm not likely to buy one, I'd love reading about them. The features that interest me most in ruggedized notebooks are the transflective LCDs and the cooling systems. I'd love to have a mainstream notebook with a display I could view in direct sunlight. If enough people adopt ruggedized notebooks with these displays, then economies of scale could be realized and possibly move them down to less expensive notebooks.Voldenuit - Monday, June 8, 2009 - link
Without a large baseline of reviews demarcating the state of the art (or at least, the market), individual product reviews are generally not particularly helpful or informative for consumers trying to pick out an outstanding product.If AT wants to be serious about reviewing notebooks, they need to get serious about it, to the scale of C|Net or NBR, but hopefully with the in-depth expertise that we associate and expect of AT.
StraightPipe - Monday, June 8, 2009 - link
I really just want to see people dropping, baking, freezing, and pouring sand and liquids in notebooks to see if they break. Seeing those notebooks abused just makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.//there I said it, now you know why everyone wants to see the rugged tests, but hardly anybody is actually interested in buying them.
We've got one Toughbook (T-74) at the office, and it's a great machine. Seeing sites put them through torture tests is really impressive.
I especially like the test where they put the laptop in a box with sand, and put the box in a paint shaker, then turn on the laptop and see how effective the fans are at blowing sand out of the machine.
//we want videos of the whole torture process.
icrf - Tuesday, June 9, 2009 - link
Agreed. I think the whole desire is akin to the "will it blend?" videos. No one is actually buying those expensive blenders, but we all love the videos.Voo - Tuesday, June 9, 2009 - link
Yeah I thought the same thing: It would be quite.. amusing, to see what you can do to these poor little guys, but I wouldn't consider buying one.I'd be more interested in tablets or "mainstream" notebooks for work/traveling where weight, battery life, etc. are the most important factors.
WillReid - Monday, June 8, 2009 - link
"particularly if our options don’t exactly match what you’re thinking"What definition are you using for Ultraportable? If you use the term the same as nearly every company's marketing department then the option I want isn't here. IMO, battery life is the most important spec when it comes to portability with size being secondary then weight. Very few even market the battery life as a feature and even fewer of those life up to their numbers. Most companies, when speaking of portability, tout the weight of their models and base the importance of that aspect on what I would suspect to be biased surveying. "My battery doesn't last long enough" is an all too common phrase used by many laptop owners. We put up with it because our machines are expensive, personal, and comfortable to us after we've gotten used to them, but how many would put up with having to plug in their cell phone whenever they planned to use it for more than just a few minutes? It's completely opposite what these devices we're meant to do.
I would love to have a rugged notebook, but I refuse to pay 2-4x as much as a modern notebook. Last time I was shopping for a notebook was in '06H1 and the cheapest Panasonic Toughbook was $3500 and the specs were a year out of date compared to the Toshiba I bought for $1200. Things may have changed since then and the rugged laptops may be keeping up to speed these days with their model updates. I don't know because I haven't been shopping for a replacement, and they don't get talked about much. I would guess that is primarily due to price. Almost no one, except for the mentioned military/government, is willing to pay that much for a laptop period, so they get little coverage on tech sites.
As for testing, they're already tested for desert usage. Test them against consumer products. What's overkill on the rugged laptops for the typical person? What's nice to have? What are they missing that most people would require on a personal laptop? What other product not designed for military use is a good middle ground? You know it would be fun to destroy a few machines in the name of review. How many times can a standard laptop withstand falling off your lap while sitting on a tailgate? How about a 1 or 2 story fall from a balcony? Do these new G-sensing head parking features in most 2.5" hard drives really work or is it all marketing? Just how resilient are SSDs? I wouldn't see this as a regular feature, but a once a year durability round up would be a nice read.
crimson117 - Monday, June 8, 2009 - link
You can compare computers using software benchmarks, and some will be faster than others.You might be forgiving if something also fits in a specific category: I'll give up some performance to have a really thin notebook such as the Macbook Air. I'll sacrifice battery life / mobility in order to have a good hefty gaming notebook.
And when notebooks are in that niche, you focus a bit on the niche benchmarksl gaming for gaming notebooks, battery life for ultrathin notebooks.
So what priorities do people have when they need a Rugged notebook? Aside from sysmark, what benchmarks would you focus on? Personally I don't need a rugged notebook at all, but perhaps:
- Readability in sunlight
- Hibernation / standby reliability
- Boot speed, wake-up speed
- Quality of the factory installed SSD
- Overall responsiveness
Maybe someone who's used a rugged notebook in a rugged environment can chime in on what matters most to rugged notebook users.
Matt Campbell - Tuesday, June 9, 2009 - link
Usually Drop, immersion, and loose cargo vibration are the big ones that are hard to meet (i.e. cost the big $$ in the design). Drop in particular is hard to meet: 48" onto plywood over concrete 26 times (all faces, edges and corners). Toughbooks claim IP65, which means no dust ingress (difficult when sand is blowing at high speeds) and water jets spraying in direct contact from any direction can't cause damage. Loose cargo shakes the crap out of the object on a special table.I'd love to hear from some real users in the field that use the Toughbooks or other. The applications I've seen run on them are Outlook, messaging apps, command and control applications, and a few others, none of which are very intensive.
crimson117 - Thursday, June 11, 2009 - link
I feel like while those things are important, the various "rugged" certifications already tested those. Anandtech could repeat those tests for fun, but wouldn't be providing anything really new.What would Anandtech add that isn't covered by the existing certifications to make a review worthwhile?
Maybe a hardware analysis picking apart a rugged notebook and comparing it to a cheapo laptop, a mac laptop, and an upscale business laptop?
Maybe seeing how "rugged" the new macbook pro's are, in terms of drops, impacts, fire, immersion? :) That'd be an entertaining read!
SigmundEXactos - Monday, June 8, 2009 - link
I find it funny that 47% of respondents would like to see reviews of rugged notebooks, but only 7% "want it" over other types of notebook reviews...the lowest rating.UNHchabo - Tuesday, June 9, 2009 - link
We just want more reviews! ;)Busboy2 - Monday, June 8, 2009 - link
I'm want some tablet reviews. I always prefer tablets at school and work.pattycake0147 - Monday, June 8, 2009 - link
I would like to second this, tablets are great options for items such as taking notes for class/work but are rarely reviewed. A roundup of some of the currently available or upcoming models would be greatly appreciated.erple2 - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
Pah, real notetakers use LaTeX.However, I'd also like to see some more tablet based testing, including the fundamental reason for buying a tablet: handwriting recognition.
joos2000 - Monday, June 8, 2009 - link
Yea, I would like to see more tablet reviews. Handwriting support, photoshop intergration, multitouch functionality etc etc.Mk4ever - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
Same here.Actually I believe a lot is missing at Anandtech's. I waited and waited for a review for the HP tx tablet series but nothing came out. The HP tx series were especially interesting for at least 2 reasons:
1-Tablet, and the only tablet with good graphics I saw between all small Tablet PC offers.
2-AMD Turion Ultra, which I never saw reviewed on Anadtech's, not compared to a regular old AMD Turion X2, or to any Intel system.
I believe the HP tx series are very popular. Where is your review?
Etern205 - Sunday, June 14, 2009 - link
ToughBooks most of the time are also tablets, just look at the pictures.Used a Panasonic ToughBook Before and the mouse button needs improvement cause my thumb start hurt after half hour of use.
Mr Alpha - Tuesday, June 9, 2009 - link
I'll add my vote to tablet reviews.Reviewsarr - Saturday, April 6, 2013 - link
Panasonic is a motivated company who focuses its technology not only to help man but to assist Marine Mammals. Black Hawk Toughbook™ computers are rugged enough for the US military in remote regions all over the world. Now, Panasonic's robust portable computer is moving into a new territory – the wet, salty environment of dolphins.Thanks to Panasonic’s recent loan of three Toughbook computers to SpeakDolphin.com, Dolphin Researchers, Jack & Donna Kassewitz, are introducing the touchscreen computers to the dolphins in their research program. "The Toughbook’s screen brightness and water resistance are important for our project. We’ve seen the videos of trucks driving over Toughbooks and glasses of water being poured on the keyboard and the Toughbook keeps right on working—so we think these computers can handle dolphins."
The Toughbook computers will be part of language interface between humans and dolphins. The beginning phases of the project involve a cognitive game called "same/different" where a dolphin is shown an object in real life, such as a ball or flower pot, then asked to identify a photo of the same object on the touch screen. This process is to teach the dolphin that images on the computer screen can be used to symbolize real objects. Donna Kassewitz explained, "The dolphins have to get the hang of manipulating the touchscreen and also make the mental connection of symbols vs. real life objects. Then we’ll add symbols for actions and dolphin sounds associated with each of the symbols. We feel confident that both the dolphins and the Panasonic Toughbooks are up to the task."
One of the dolphins in the research program, a young male bottlenose named Merlin, already has experience with touchscreen computers. "Now with the Toughbooks’ interconnectivity we are better able to record the dolphin sounds and analyze them in real time" said Jack Kassewitz. "Thanks to support from Panasonic and donations from the public through our website, we are making progress in this important research. We believe both dolphins and humans will benefit from an interspecies language interface. We need all the support we can get towards this goal."
Learn more from Black Hawk Toughbooks at http://www.PanasonicToughbooks.net about purchasing a Toughbook by Panasonic.