A Few Baaaaaad Apples

SONET writes: "Why aren't all laptops made like this? I'm always putting my lappie in my otherwise empty briefcase. Even if it's just Photoshop/GIMP vapor, I really like the idea of a more rugged shell ... and the design is exceptionally clean. I know there are ruggedized laptops for the military and the like, but they really aren't for the average consumer as I envision something like this could be. The page is in Japanese, but the images really speak for themselves." I'm assuming it's just a mockup, the nicer to be proved wrong about ;) For the Exacto knife-and-firesale crowd though, an anonymous reader whispers that "Some guy modded his G4 Cube to have a Propaganda tile mapped inside the case. Looks excellent. That it does.

It's been done before

[Lucky Kevin]

Does anyone remember the Osbourne?

Well, they do exist...

[SlowCoder]

Panasonics "ToughBook" series is a _tough_ notebook, made for outdoor and industrial use..
Doesn't look too bad either..

Some features:
* Shock-restistance
* Spill-resistance
* Vibration-resistance
* Dust-restistance
* Magnesium casing

http://www.panasonic.com/computer/notebook/Default .asp [panasonic.com]

Re:Rugged? Try Titanium

[jchristopher]

Titanium in such minimal thicknesses is actually very flexible. (and also very lightweight). I'm no engineer, but look at the tubes of titanium bike frames. They are always oversized in diameter compared to steel, otherwise the bike would flex like a noodle.

Check out the cool Ti bike stuff at Litespeed [litespeed.com]

Ti is nice, but there is nothing necessarily indestructable about it.

P.S. If you really ran a TiBook over with a car, it would be completely destroyed. You can flex the screen a scary amount by hand. (not that x86 laptops are any different).

Re:iBook Clamshells are quite durable as well.

[Super_Frosty]

Unlike Dell, Apple can't justify the cost of the higher end with faster chips (they don't exist)

The TiBook has a G4 chip. The iBook has a G3 chip. Even though they are both 500 MHz, the different architectures = a sizable speed difference. Also, Apple makes up to a 800? MHz G4 chip.

Of course, this makes it all the more pathetic to dumb down the iBook in other ways. Not only is the display an issue, but also the slow bus. Apple is not a friendly company.

I own both and real Zero-Haliburton now extinct!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I own the most expensive, no longer made, version of the cool alimunimum Zero-Haliburton briefcase with waterproof seals, and *dual* hinges, and pigskin lining, in anodized gold tone. It cost a lot of money in 1990 money even after haggling.

It floats in water if it falls off your yacht.

and its extremely hard to break into

but Zero-Haliburton gave up and instead of going out of business or raising prices over the years to 1000 bucks they merely dropped all the functional features.

AS you saw in that link that is a modern Zero-Haliburton case with only ONE hinge. and because it is not waterproof if it falls overboard, the japanese designer gave up and built usb holes in the case (four usb ports if you study the photos.

But this stuff is old hate. Macintosh protable enthusiasts have been desinging things like this for ages.

I myself had the first alterred mac shell with two floppy disk drives inside and SCSI a year before the Mac SE shipped.

But please look at the five pages of Feb 2001 posts and pictures at http://forums.macnn.com/cgi-bin/Forum17/HTML/00165 0-2.html and you can see lots of case designs and opinions.

forma and function and ease of use are some of the primary reasons mac supporters crave the mac os and the mac hardware. Not just candy coating which every johnny-come-lately device manufacturer has tried to promote after apples imacs (pagers, phones, pdas, hand held games, flashlights, etc etc)

but a REAL design better than this would use an early 1990s Zero-Haliburton case and shock mounting.

The mac lowend teen oriented ibook screen for is already four times strionger for finger resistance than the typical business lcd screen. Press on a ibook screen and notice the lcd does not deflect.

But the strongest portable keyboard apple ever made was the one found in the 6 thousand dollar Wallstreet g3 (holds three hard disks!). I onw two of those bad boys. Those older flawless g3s with scsi and infra red can be upgraded to over 500 Mhz from the original 300 from two upgrade companies for not much money.

A special version of the Dell Inspiron 7500 once shipped with a 1400 pixel wide screen. I use it every day. every other inspiron 7500 i ever saw has far less pixels.

I wish people started insisting on 1400 pixel lcds even if they do make the system weight 10 pounds (the weight of my dell).

sigh...

Re:This reminds me of...

[shepd]

You know what works even better than a briefcase?

The aluminum (well, metal covering some cheap fiberboard) cases they sell for $10-$20 at Home Depot. They are _exactly_ the width of the motherboard + 1" (leaving enough room for you to mount the motherboard backplate inside). They are tall enough for whatever peripherals you want inside, and are long enough to fit everything comfortably.

They aren't too hard to cut up, and you end up with a sheilded, easy to lug about computer that only has to be opened (via the EZ-open latches) for servicing! :-)

Best $10 I spent in quite a while.

Re:Panasonic Toughbook

[Telek]

I was working at Panasonic when they were developing that beast. The trials were fun. They didn't really tell us (my group, cuz I was in tech support at the time) much about this book (or at least they didn't tell us that this presentation was going to be about this book), and proceeded to do a normal meeting, brought up a simple powerpoint display and then some sort of movie producing sound as well (think it was a music video or something). Then the guy unplugged the notebook, poured the rest of his coffee on it, threw it on the ground, jumped on it a few times, and then plugged it back in just as the video was finishing and the "panasonic toughbook" logo came on (although I think it was called something different back then, but I can't remember, it was like 6 years or so ago). Made for one hell of an attention getter though.

Re:why?

[Stenpas]

Geesh people. Calm down. The sky isn't falling or anything like that. But nevertheless, not to spawn an OS war, the operating system matters as much if not more than the hardware.

The MacOS has been proven again and again to be more reliable in the sense that it's more secure and takes less steps to get the same job done compared to any Microsoft OS.

I read from somewhere that in a years time, the average PC user will spend more than 50 hours tech supporting their system, while the average mac user spends less than 5. I'm not too sure about the windows side of the equation, but I'd say that's pretty accurate for the mac side. I've spent maybe...umm..lemme think here. ok. It's been so long that I can't remember. 10 minutes maybe. In a worst case senario, it might be 2-3 hours in a year.

Besides that, MacOS X looks like it has some real potential. 10.1 looks like a winner. They've got about a month to perfect it. Even on that ram retarded icebook it should run semi-decent after the upgrade to 10.1.

It's not just the hardware which commands the premium price, it's all the stuff that comes with it. MacOS 9, MacOS X, itunes, imovie, Appleworks. All of those are in the price of the computer.

Beyond all of that crap I just typed, a lot you guys seem to be making price your first priority when buying something. I don't know about you guys, but USER SATISFICATION comes first for me, then comes price. I always pay a lot of money for stuff I want, but my reaction is always something like, "Yup. I paid a lot of money for this, but I'm damned glad I did!"