Rugged Laptops

[Scott Brady]

I am forced to move on to a rugged laptop a little sooner than expected. My HP 17" work powerhouse is dying a slow death and so is my adventure laptop (a Winbook X1 titanium case). The Outback Challenge was the final nail in the X1.

They are both still working but with one leg in the grave. I always prefer to upgrade machines on my terms instead of when one crashes.

I thought the research and final decision may be helpful to others here, so here we go.

Requirements:

1. Rugged or Ultra Rugged
2. Big HD 100gig
3. Fast processor with min 2gig memory
4. HD screen and hinges
5. GPS

Anyone have experience with these models?

[Scott Brady]

MIL-STD-810F (http://www.aptesting.com/pdf/STD810F.pdf): Specification

[Scott Brady]

IP54: (http://www.bopla.de/english/technische_informationen/ip54.html) Specification

[pan7eraboyca]

http://www.panasonic.com/business/toughbook/toughbooks_home.asp

Panasonic Toughbook if you need the meatiest laptop out there.

[gcec]

I use, highly recommend, but don't sell ;) Xplore Technologies (http://www.xploretech.com/) ix104 rugged tablet PCs. Way better than laptops IMHO.

[Dave]

I'll second the Panasonic Toughbooks. I help maintain a fleet of 20+ Panasonic Toughbooks for a local police department and a small ranger division. We've had them for at least six years. I can't say they were a problem free six years, but they haven't exactly been babied either. Most of the irrepairable damage has been user inflicted...like slamming the screen down to the closed position with an ink pen resting on the keyboard. :rolleyes:

I think the only widespread problem we've had with them was when the officers would leave the laptop running in a car that was shut off for hours on end in very hot weather. Once we trained the users to shut down the laptop in those circumstances, the problem "fixed itself".

They're heavy and pricey compared to most other conventional laptops, but the model we use has a handle!

[Scott Brady]

Great feedback Dave. I will begin researching in earnest early next month.

[Jonathan Hanson]

Scott, I tested a Panasonic Toughbook some time ago. It was as rugged as they claim, but way, way behind its non-ruggedized peers in processing speed, which the rep told me was because of the problem of heat dissipation in the sealed chassis.

What about a partially ruggedized model, with a shock-mounted hard drive and spill-proof keyboard, but higher speed?

[bigreen505]

Check out what the teams of the Volvo Ocean Race and other offshore ocean race boats use in the nav station. Those laptops see the worst of what the world can dish out except for dust -- hot, cold, water, huge shocks. PM me if you want and I can see if I can dig up Stan Honey or Larry Rosenberg's e-mail they would be excellent people to ask.

[Dave]

It was as rugged as they claim, but way, way behind its non-ruggedized peers in processing speed, which the rep told me was because of the problem of heat dissipation in the sealed chassis.

That's a pretty good point, but I think they've come pretty close to catching up. I was looking at them fairly recently and I think they had a fully ruggedized model with a Pentium M CPU at 1.6GHz. I'm not sure you can get one with a full 2 GB of memory and a 100 GB hard drive in a fully ruggedized model though. I know they do come with onboard GPS and some even come with onboard Sprint CDMA EVDO cell cards which is what we use for connectivity. Another nice feature is the touch screen. I don't think my officers could function on the road without it.

I'm assuming the laptop would be used for navigation, but what else would it be used for to require 2GB of RAM?

[Scott Brady]

I do really like the Tough Books

The Model 29: http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/images/models/cf-29ctkgzzm.jpg

It gets close in the spec with an 80gig HD, 1.8gig of max memory and a 1.6mhz processor.

Here are the specs (http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ModelDetail?displayTab=O&storeId=11201&catalogId=13051&itemId=68953&catGroupId=32001&modelNo=Toughbook-29&surfModel=Toughbook-29)

[Scott Brady]

What about a partially ruggedized model, with a shock-mounted hard drive and spill-proof keyboard, but higher speed?

I might need to go that way. For example, my winbook X1 is semi-rugged with shock mounted HD and titanium chassis. It survived pretty well through NVTR and the Outback Challenge.

There are a few other companies I am researching. Hopefully I can find the right solution.

[Scott Brady]

I would not purchase this model (doesn't meet my needs), but it is one hell of a deal

Systemax Semi-Rugged: (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1873392&CatId=2246) $999

http://images.tigerdirect.com/SkuImages/gallery/large/Vigor-c.jpg

http://images.tigerdirect.com/SkuImages/gallery/large/Vigor-f.jpg

[Dave]

I would not purchase this model (doesn't meet my needs), but it is one hell of a deal

I know you said that model wouldn't meet your needs, but the first thing I noticed about it when looking at the pictures is that the ports are all exposed to the elements. The nice thing about the Toughbooks I've used is that all the ports are sealed behind access doors. Sure you have to open those doors to use the ports, but out in the field where you don't have a bunch of peripherals hooked up (since GPS and EVDO are onboard of course :ylsmoke: ), your ports will be protected from dirt and grim.

[Scott Brady]

I'm assuming the laptop would be used for navigation, but what else would it be used for to require 2GB of RAM?

This machine will replace two laptops. My HP 17", 3mhz, 100gig, 2gig RAM work laptop and my Winbook X1, which got trashed in Morocco (still works, but is hurting).

So, I do a lot of photo manipulation, web and graphics design and then of course the moving map with Ozi Explorer, which is pretty processor intensive.

On too many recent trips I have needed to bring BOTH laptops along, which is crazy.

And the HP 17" is starting to fail. It shuts down at random now and requires an aux. fan blowing into the cooling vents to stay running (and the stock fans still work). :o

[Dave]

Ahhh...if I were you, I would talk to a someone at Panasonic before dropping the cash on a Toughbook considering your needs. I'm not sure the Toughbook would be up to the graphic design and photo manipulation work load. Also, you will sacrifice a considerable amount of viewable screen real estate with a Toughbook.

[Hanley Noel]

we are taking a Toughbook 51 760 model with us on our adventure. we plan to edit videos, etc. we'll keep everyone posted on the performance.

[robert]

Have you thought about just buying a tablet and putting it in an Otterbox case?
http://www.otterbox.com/products/pc_cases/tablet/

Just an idea...

[flyingwil]

Here is some more to consider:
http://www.getac.com/pages/home.html
http://www.argonautcomputer.com/1400t_xl.htm
http://www.itronix.com/products/notebooks/gobookiii.asp
http://www.hummerlaptops.com/

[cshontz]

I stumbled upon this one on Engadget - sorry if it has already been listed. I see Wil posted a similar link.

http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/14/itronix-unveils-lightweight-rugged-xr-1-laptop/

http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/media/2006/08/8.14.06---xr-1-notebook.jpg

[flyingwil]

itronix makes some good stuff they also make the Hummer Laptop which is very similar.

[preacherman]

Several us gov contractors use these itronix ones

http://www.gd-computing.com/

[Robthebrit]

Why not get a semi rugged laptop and a pelican laptop case? They are far more rugged than a panasonic toughbook and you can get anything you like, toughbooks are way behind the curve at the highend and really expensive. You can also remove it from the case when at home so you don't have to sit with a huge brick on your lap.

If you are breaking them while they are in use then this solution may not be for you as the case is obviously open while its in use, but, even when open it has good impact protection but you may be vunerable to water. They have heavier foam than a regular pelican and it fits the lap top as tight as you like, allowing for ventilation. It has little tabs that hold the laptop in should you drop it while it is open.

When its closed your laptop is pretty safe, you can drive over them, throw them in water (they float) and they are completely protected from dust. The auto parking hard disks in toughbooks are nothing special and can be found in Fry's and multiple vendors online.

I guess it really depends on what you are doing with it.

[Grim Reaper]

Why not get a semi rugged laptop and a pelican laptop case? They are far more rugged than a panasonic toughbook and you can get anything you like, toughbooks are way behind the curve at the highend and really expensive. You can also remove it from the case when at home so you don't have to sit with a huge brick on your lap.

If you are breaking them while they are in use then this solution may not be for you as the case is obviously open while its in use, but, even when open it has good impact protection but you may be vunerable to water. They have heavier foam than a regular pelican and it fits the lap top as tight as you like, allowing for ventilation. It has little tabs that hold the laptop in should you drop it while it is open.

When its closed your laptop is pretty safe, you can drive over them, throw them in water (they float) and they are completely protected from dust. The auto parking hard disks in toughbooks are nothing special and can be found in Fry's and multiple vendors online.

I guess it really depends on what you are doing with it.

I think where he is seeing the problems is using while rolling. It is pretty rough on the Hard drives.

I am really surprised an affordable storage device is not available without moving parts. Basically a big lump of non volatile ram. They are still quite expensive compared to a conventional hard drive. Make it easily moved so you could take it out plug it into a laptop. In the vehicle have a touch screen mounted up front and wireless keayboard and the processor somewhere else with some A/C ducted to it to keep it cool in the summer.

[whitethaiger]

I think where he is seeing the problems is using while rolling. It is pretty rough on the Hard drives.
......

Are there any statistics or at least any anecdotal evidence that this is really a problem?

My regular notebook has over 1000 miles of dirt road travel on it and it's always running OziExplorer, i.e., accessing the disk. I know at least one other person with more miles on theirs.
My older notebook had even more miles on it. The hinges on that one gave up eventually.

[Grim Reaper]

Are there any statistics or at least any anecdotal evidence that this is really a problem?

My regular notebook has over 1000 miles of dirt road travel on it and it's always running OziExplorer, i.e., accessing the disk. I know at least one other person with more miles on theirs.
My older notebook had even more miles on it. The hinges on that one gave up eventually.
Well it may not be his problem but that’s a very common problem. The disc spins. The heads bounce on it eventually you either destroy the disc surface or you destroy the heads. That usually shows itself as a sector error.

another killer is moisture causing oxidation on the boards and components.

Yet another problem is temperature cycling causing failures in the solder. Ideally electronics like to live in an environment where it is about 60-65 degrees and dry.

As an example...some idiot in my company decided that their would be big savings if the temperature in our Cell sites was raised to 75 degrees. Sounds harmless doesn't it and huge savings on electric allowing a 5-10 degree increase in temp of a unmanned building. Well that’s fine its 75 degrees at the wall now but the electronics were then running 90-100 degrees instead of 80-90. Amplifiers that had been running for years with no problems started dropping like flies. So at $1500 each on fixed rate repair on just that one unit and their may be as many as 6 in a big site how much did they end up saving? :xxrotflma

Sealing he main board is not hard. Its the processor and the hard drive making heat that need the airflow. The processor is actually and easy fix byt potting it and only having the heat sink and fan exposed. The hard drive is more complicated to seal and then you still have the issue of Vibration.

They are MUCH better then they use to be that’s for sure but there is still big room for improvement on some components.

[Robthebrit]

I would like to know if the harddisk really is the problem. I would of thought the general abuse from the environment, dust and dirt cause more problems than bumps. Afterall the initial impact of bumps are somewhat damped by the suspension.

Like I have said before I have a old Sony vaio which has done nearly as many miles in my mog as I have, I have never taken any steps to protect it other than mont it. I even have an external USB harddisk which I used for photo storage when I run out of card space and its not had any problems either.

Rugged drives (instant park on acceleration and impact) are used as OEM equipment in more laptops than you think so check them carefully, try to get the actual drive model and look on the internet. The hard disk in a laptop is easily replaceable so buy a rugged drive and put it in your favorite laptop (do it before you install all your software), they are not expensive, not difficult to find and are used in a lot more places than laptops such as GPS units.

Has anybody had a laptop fail as a direct result of rough driving? Has anybody had mechanical problems such as a screen hinge breaking?

Rob

[Grim Reaper]

I would like to know if the harddisk really is the problem. I would of thought the general abuse from the environment, dust and dirt cause more problems than bumps. Afterall the initial impact of bumps are somewhat damped by the suspension.

Like I have said before I have a old Sony vaio which has done nearly as many miles in my mog as I have, I have never taken any steps to protect it other than mont it. I even have an external USB harddisk which I used for photo storage when I run out of card space and its not had any problems either.

Rugged drives (instant park on acceleration and impact) are used as OEM equipment in more laptops than you think so check them carefully, try to get the actual drive model and look on the internet. The hard disk in a laptop is easily replaceable so buy a rugged drive and put it in your favorite laptop (do it before you install all your software), they are not expensive, not difficult to find and are used in a lot more places than laptops such as GPS units.

Has anybody had a laptop fail as a direct result of rough driving? Has anybody had mechanical problems such as a screen hinge breaking?

Rob
I have 53 Field engineers I support and they put a lot of miles on and a lot of them are off road to sites. Some put 20-40k a year on a truck. All have laptops and all have mounts in vehicles because they are used heavily to not only get access to e-mail but to Data log as they drive.

Most are crashing a laptop every 12-24 months. I hear a lot of them say they had to replace the drive as the fix. Most are Compaq or HP’s before they merged and after. The company tries to get 4 years out of them…most rarely make 3. Exact statistics I do not know. How many of these are butter fingers dropping them when out of the vehicle I do not know.

[Robthebrit]

That is certainly worth more than my sample of 1!!

Not using them while driving is obviously better but it may not be an option for most.

Rob

[whitethaiger]

I have 53 Field engineers I support and they put a lot of miles on and a lot of them are off road to sites. Some put 20-40k a year on a truck. All have laptops and all have mounts in vehicles because they are used heavily to not only get access to e-mail but to Data log as they drive.

Most are crashing a laptop every 12-24 months. I hear a lot of them say they had to replace the drive as the fix. Most are Compaq or HP’s before they merged and after. The company tries to get 4 years out of them…most rarely make 3. Exact statistics I do not know. How many of these are butter fingers dropping them when out of the vehicle I do not know.

That's good info, thanks!

Looks like if one does just a few hundred to 1K miles a year the notebook will last quite a few years.

[Mlachica]

Yeah, I'm gravedigging...

Does anybody have experience with this...

It's a Toshiba Satellite U200/U205 (http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/cmod.to?coid=-31396&seg=HHO)

"Ultra-mobile. Ultra-durable.
http://www.toshibadirect.com/images/ui2/cmtd_rgb_60.gif (http://javascript<b></b>:winPopup('http://www.intel.com/intelinside/weblinks/english/cmtd.htm','143','147')) Less than 1.4" thick, starting at 4.1lbs., the Satellite&#174; U200/U205 has advanced protection beginning its lightweight, ultra-strong, magnesium alloy chassis. A special shock-absorbing design with airpocket cushioning and padding materials protects key components (HDD, LCD, inverter) and the chassis against excessive vibration. A spill resistant keyboard allows time to save and close your open files and turn off the machine."

Sounds like a great companion for the road/ozi

[big sky trapper]

I spent 18 months with USAF AFTAC DET 452 completly traveling the world doing "seismic research", we complelty switched to the panasonic tough book series that was available around 2001ish. I tell you just shy complete submersion in water nothing seem to get at them. With the most minor of care they held up to everything we could possible do to them. Desert sands, artic snows and temp extrems to monsoons in asia they held up fine. below 20 F the screens were a little slow on anitial boot up to provide full resalution but every thing elese ran fine....

They were spendy ...around 8K a pop....

[Beowulf]

From doing as much research as I could on this I would go with the Getac or the Toughbook. Toughbooks are more mainstream but the Getac is much more rugged.

Of course they have a wide price difference.

[eugene]

Hers a question, of the laptops that are dying, the OP's HP for example, is it a pavilion or a business model?
Reason I ask is there is a difference in quality between the two lines. HP and Compaq have the Presario and Pavilion line, Dell the Inspiron, etc. HP/Compaq also makes the Evo line and Dell the Latitude which are the business models. Toshiba has the two model lines but I can't remember which is which. The business models usually get better cooling, stronger cases, better hinges, better keyboards, etc. So you could compromise and instead of buying a toughbook buy something from a common business line instead of the home line and it should hold up pretty well. They are kind of like any other tool, you can buy the cheap import wrench from walmart or the super expensive snapon or compromise and buy the craftsman and they will hold up nearly as well as the snapon but for half the price.
Another option is to use something like http://www.mini-box.com/site/index.html and a separate display. I copied their design a long time ago and have a 500MHz mini-itx completely fanless, runs straight from 12v (no inverter needed) and draws around 1A @ 12v so its very low power. Take some ideas from www.mp3car.com

[devinsixtyseven]

Lotta great stuff on the mp3car website. The downside to an integrated unit is you can't take it out of the vehicle, but there are more options now.

The HDD is the weak point, it fails before everything else unless you dunk the whole mess in saltwater or have a lot of conductive dust in the air.

My senior project in college involved an autonomous robot, the thing had to drive itself over a variety of obstacles, so there was a three stage shock absorber plan...vehicle suspension, computer case suspension and HDD suspension.

In addition, the OS and all critical applications (nav, etc) ran on solid-state HDDs. Their storage capacity is not as great as spinning platters, but like my MPIO vs an iPod, it'll never ever skip. All secondary applications and data logging used a ruggedized spinning HDD. Each unit took up less space than a mini-keyboard, including depth, with peripherals attached as needed and locked down elsewhere--RS232 linked GPSR, thermal imaging and sonar--since they just plugged in to a port somewhere on each box (three, all linked, performing different tasks and as backup to each other).

If it's possible to mount a solid state main drive in your laptop, with a secondary spinning drive, it'll last a lot longer...but I don't know if MS's or Mac's pigs of operating systems will fit on one of those drives, they're usually not more than a couple gigs. It works perfect if you're running an -ix like we were, you can even diagnose a failing drive on the fly since everything's running from the solid states, or run almost worry-free storage if the spinning drives are striped.

It'll also last longer if you pop the case once in a while and clean out the dust...it insulates everything and causes massive overheating, which usually means forced or catastrophic reboots right when you're doing something processor-intensive.

An old roommate of mine had a job for a while repairing laptops. They're not difficult to pull apart, and he saw plenty of instances where a good cleaning solved the majority of lockups and reboots...of course if it's gone that far, it's going downhill anyway and parts need replacing, but a thorough cleaning does wonders.

None of that helps if you've dropped it, tho. That was the most common cause of malfunction he saw, the unit was dropped and broke something--screen, solder, boards, etc...not always possible to fix without buying a new unit.

-Sean

*edit* There is one thing I forgot. I don't know if anyone makes a suspended swingarm mount for a laptop, but it will work wonders if you can find/make one vs using a rigid mount. We looked at this but it would have meant more time in the machine shop that we didn't have. Something as simple as an arm supported by a gel pack or foam does the trick, the difficult part is matching the suspension to the weight of the suspended components. The foam used in "space mattresses" (find that stuff at any home decor store now) works great as it doesn't "bounce" back, same with gel. Elastomer is a poor choice since you need a damper and that greatly increases the complexity of your setup. IIRC we used foam, but our components were very light. There are some products available that are sort of like gel, but more solid like elastomer...a quick and simple way to do it could be to mount a lightweight setup on the end of a swingarm supported by one of those gel wrist supports meant to go with a mouse and keyboard.

[Scott Brady]

Sean,

Do you know if anyone is making a SSD that fits in the HDD locations yet?

I could even live with 30 GB or so for my laptop. (we do all of our design and photo work on a Mac now).

[eugene]

The general consensus on mp3car.com is mounting drives or computers on some sort of shock mount make them fail faster. Also laptop drives are better than desktop drives for surviving.
My mp3computer boots Linux from a 128M CF card. I simply stuck it in an IDE adapter and plugged it and a cdrom drive in and installed the very basic "A" set of slackware Linux then rebooted and edited one of the startup files to take out the remount -rw so it boots read only. I had to do a quick search on how to setup a ram drive then made a small script to create some files in the ram drive and replaced those files on the read only drive with symlinks to the ram drive. it actually took less time to set it up than to type this, was super simple. I tried XP embedded and it sucked pretty much as bad as regular XP, I spent weeks trying to get it running completely read only and used up an MSDN tech support incident to have the MS tech tell me I should just use the XP license and install NT4 or w2k embedded if I really wanted it to work.

[devinsixtyseven]

The general consensus on mp3car.com is mounting drives or computers on some sort of shock mount make them fail faster.That's very strange. Not that I'm doubting that's the general case, but perhaps they were mounted with a spring and no damper? Undamped, it would be like bouncing your laptop on a trampoline!

Scott, the solid state drives we used were very low capacity...IIRC around 4GB. They were slightly larger than a credit card and less than 1/2" thick. There have been a lot of improvements since then, that was a little over five years ago, but IIRC basically they were a similar setup as the little USB keychain drives--just non-volatile flash storage. The computer boxes were completely custom, so we didn't encounter any issues fitting a drive in to a standard slot.

-Sean