Road warriors who are fit on notebooks have reason to rejoice. On Tuesday, Dell unveiled its first fully ruggedized laptop, the Latitude XFR D630. Selling for $3,899, the system promises extreme durability without compromising performance. The target audience is government and commercial users.

“The Latitude XFR D630 represents a tectonic shift toward simplicity in the ruggedized laptop space,” said Brett McAnally, director of the Dell Product Group. “We are taking a multidimensional approach that focuses on simplified deployment, service and durability without sacrificing performance. Major competitors focus their efforts on ‘rugged’ only.”

Rugged Specs

For all the market-speak, the XFR D630 does offer some rugged specs. The laptop meets MIL-STD 810F standards from the station of Defense for products that operate in extreme temperatures, moisture and altitude. It has shock-isolated mounting to help protect the hard drive, LCD screen and core electronic elements, and a sealed keyboard designed to resist driving rain and dust.

A patent-pending thermal

management system allows the laptop to use the latest technology and deliver up to four times better graphics performance than the Panasonic ToughBook CF-30, the company said. Dell additionally claims the XFR D630 offers five times more notes durability than leading competitors with solid-state drives. Batteries, Dell said, charge at least 30 minutes faster than competitors.

An Extreme Niche

The ruggedized laptop market is, quite literally, one of extremes, according to Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. Military users take these machines into the field, where they are used for everything from managing encrypted communications
to directing troop movements to targeting heavy weapons fire. Commercial users may bring them to construction, desert and subpolar oil fields, and on highways and at sea.

“Such diverse usage might propose that a similarly diverse group of vendors would inhabit the ruggedized laptop market, but that assumption would be incorrect,” King said. “Developing and…

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