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Metal Laptop Make?
SALAD - 17/5/10 at 07:43 PM

A while ago someone was talking about the metal cased laptops that the RAC etc use.
Are they any good for megajolt and more to the point, what make/model are they?
No luck with the search button unfortunately.

RichardK - 17/5/10 at 07:44 PM

panasonic toughbooks?

Cheers

Rich

rayward - 17/5/10 at 07:44 PM

panasonic toughbook,

i've got an old one for in the garage, its been dropped, stood on and still going

hth
Ray

SALAD - 17/5/10 at 07:49 PM

Excellent, thanks chaps.
Any good for Megajolt....I'm guessing that's what yours is used for Ray?

scudderfish - 17/5/10 at 07:52 PM

High end Apple laptops have metal bodies.

rost - 17/5/10 at 08:03 PM

quote:
Originally posted by scudderfish
High end Apple laptops have metal bodies.

But that's just for looks though, they're not that solid.

Professional Dells and Lenovo laptops have a magnesium frame and are pretty solid too. An older model, like the T40-41 series has a serial port too.

Hugh_ - 17/5/10 at 08:24 PM

I'm typing this on an HP Pavillion dm3 which is metal framed for the body, and metal skinned screen. It is noticably stiffer than plastic laptops, but I still wouldnt want to give it too much abuse.

They are fairly new and I think Windows 7 only, no serial port. I didnt have any luck getting my existing (eBay sourced) usb-serial converter with it though.

dave r - 17/5/10 at 08:43 PM

i have chucked my works panasonic tough book in disgust many times

every time its survived...
good bit of kit, shame about the rubish software we have to use on it for work

RichieHall - 17/5/10 at 08:46 PM

We used similar all the time, it's been dropped in fuel, used as a shelf, step almost as a hammer!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ITRONIX-GOBOOK-IX250-P3-850-LAPTOP-RUGGED-HARD-CASING-/380232342891?cmd=ViewItem&pt=UK_Computing_Laptops_EH&hash=item588 79d1d6b#ht_3775wt_1165

NTWM by the way, there are loads of these on ebay just search for rugged laptop

indykid - 17/5/10 at 10:25 PM

avoneer has a panasonic toughbook for running megajolt. we also used it as a wheel chock at trackdays.
tom

brianthemagical - 18/5/10 at 09:04 AM

Are toughbooks not quite expencive?
I remember looking for them a while ago and thought for the spec they were a bit pricey.

As for needing one, a normal laptop will do fine, and take a fair amount of abuse. I'm currently on a net book and it survives in my car.
Saying that, i wouldn't even dream of putting something on top of it, never mind the above suggestions.

mcerd1 - 18/5/10 at 09:30 AM

quote:
Originally posted by brianthemagical
Are toughbooks not quite expencive?
I remember looking for them a while ago and thought for the spec they were a bit pricey.


thay are slow too - all that strength reduces there ability to disapate the heat

my brother had an old one at work, it was painfuly slow...

Vindi_andy - 18/5/10 at 09:49 AM

The hard drive in the tough books is encased in gel to absorb shocks as well not just the magnesium alloy case.

We had one guy where I used to work had his laptop in the boot, had a rear end shunt where the laptop took a fair amount of the impact, managed to extract said laptop and do some work while he waited for the transport manager to get out to him.

indykid - 18/5/10 at 09:52 AM

quote:
Originally posted by mcerd1
quote:
Originally posted by brianthemagical
Are toughbooks not quite expencive?
I remember looking for them a while ago and thought for the spec they were a bit pricey.

thay are slow too - all that strength reduces there ability to disapate the heat

my brother had an old one at work, it was painfuly slow...

you're not going to be playing games on them! i think pat's was £50 and the battery lasts a solid 2 hours.

they're fine running megatune/tunerstudio once it's got the program running and 2 hours gets you a decent datalog

i've lost various bits of data off my hard drive from using my laptop for tuning pat's turbo'd mx5 though. it may be coincidence, but they only disappeared after we'd used my laptop for tuning and datalogging. bad sectors ahoy
tom

mcerd1 - 18/5/10 at 10:02 AM

quote:
Originally posted by indykid
you're not going to be playing games on them!

lol

but this one (the sort of one you'd see s/h for £100ish now I think) took 10min just to start up....
I guess it wasn't in perfect health though

[Edited on 18/5/2010 by mcerd1]

iank - 18/5/10 at 10:31 AM

quote:
Originally posted by brianthemagical
Are toughbooks not quite expencive?
I remember looking for them a while ago and thought for the spec they were a bit pricey.

As for needing one, a normal laptop will do fine, and take a fair amount of abuse. I'm currently on a net book and it survives in my car.
Saying that, i wouldn't even dream of putting something on top of it, never mind the above suggestions.


They are anything up to £3k for a new high powered one. There are a lot of second hand old spec ones kicking around for a lot less as people like British Gas issue them to their fitters.

I'd only use a standard laptop if fitted with an SSD in an automotive environment as the vibration will knacker a HDD pretty quickly and probably kill the performance for the rest of the time.