nooooooo i wanted the Toughbooks :*(

[meltdown75]

Our company was doing some field trials to see which kind of PCs they wanted to buy for the staff that does field work...

So it had to be something mobile.

It was a battle between the Panasonic Toughbook and the Motion Computing LE-1600.

Apparently they are going with the Motion... it is the first one I tested for 3+ months and I liked it, but I've had the Toughbook for about 5 months now and I love it.

I think it came down to $. boo urns. Toughbooks are awesome. crap this is kinda on-topic... ugh

 

[RagingBITCH]

Aren't all laptops "mobile"?

Seriously though, those Motions don't look that "rugged", especially for field work. (Depending on what kind of field work you're talking about)

 

[JoeKing]

my office has a few toughbooks for us to use in the field, pretty nice units, but ours have a battery issue to where you have to actually take the battery out of the unit in order for it to keep its charge :thumbsdown:

 

[mwmorph]

Does the Motion Computing pc have a keyboard?

 

[MikeyIs4Dcats]

Toughbooks are insanely expensive, and for most uses would be overkill. We don't even use them in construction, because it's cheaper to replace a moderately priced laptop several times before you'd have covered the cost of a Toughbook.

 

[MikeyIs4Dcats]

oh, and I don't know who in the hell decided a tablet PC and a Toughbook were apples and apples....but they're idiots.

 

[Tiamat]

Originally posted by: MikeyIs4Dcats
Toughbooks are insanely expensive, and for most uses would be overkill. We don't even use them in construction, because it's cheaper to replace a moderately priced laptop several times before you'd have covered the cost of a Toughbook.

While your point is well taken, it depends on the field and the value on immediacy of the data. If you do backups very often, it makes sense to buy normal laptops and replace them as they go down. But if you do mission critical stuff where you cannot deal with even 2 minutes of downtime following a failure of the laptop, thats what the Toughbook is for. I wouldn't see any need for a Toughbook in non-mission critical environments.

 

[ViviTheMage]

we have a few toughbooks here...things can last through anything! It lasts in the rain, fall in the mud, etc, etc.

 

[meltdown75]

RB: the Motions aren't very rugged at all. there is a seperate case just to take them out in the field which is pretty pricey itself. the TB came with a case to test out but I never actually needed it... it's too tough on it's own.

Joe: that's interesting. i found one of the positives with the TBs was the battery life. with the Motion, we had to buy a backup battery which piggybacks the main battery, just for an 8 hour field shift. the TB was always good to go for the whole day and I never needed the car charger once.

mwmorph: nope, software keyboard only (onscreen). something that was lacking, but obviously with the form factor they wanted, there could be no keyboard.

FYI I work in property assessment. these units are for sketching new buildings on-site and running some of our work apps in the field.

We tried prepaid wireless internet cards with the Motion, but the data transfer was so slow that it took 5 minutes just to look up basic property information, let alone do live updates from the field.

edit: Vivi: yeah they are great. I liked to drop mine to show other staff just how tough they were. you can also stand on them

 

[Avalon]

We used to have a couple toughbooks at work. Those things were great. I flung a decommissioned one across the warehouse once. Had a couple scratches, but still worked. Never told the boss