Don’t get me wrong, this things are super sweet, but seriously folks. I think the utility market is insane when it comes to pricing.
As if the pricing for waterproof camera enclosures wasn’t bad enough (It’s plastic folks, seriously, $1,000?) Dell drop’s a new rugged laptop that makes a Toughbook look cheap!
Starting at $3,899, that’s right, nearly two Macbook Pros….the Dell Toughbook, er, XFR D630….guess marketing was busy when they named it 
clocks it as one of the priciest notebooks you can buy.
I can totally see the need for this type of laptop, I’ll just never figure out why a hard plastic case and a spill proof keyboard membrane jumps the price a few thousand dollars. It’s almost laughable, as the Panasonic Toughbooks have been for years.
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To answer your question simply, rugged lappies cost so much because they are rugged
On a more serious note, maybe this one is meant for some class of people.
I am guessing you don’t know much about rugged laptops, and other aspects of the rugged category…or have not done your research.
Drop your regular lappy, and you will be off to buy another one in short order, not to mention these are designed for use in extreme conditions, like rain and in extreme heat, cold, and pressure.
digitalnomad »
I think you read about as much of my article as I did research on it! I was only saying that the parts/r&d to make them rugged is surely not worth what the premium is. I just looked up the latest 2.0Ghz Core 2 Duo Toughbook, and an equivalent business class Toshiba Tecra is literay 1/3 of the price. That means that for a $1,000 laptop you are paying $2,000 for a hardened case. That doesn’t sound quite right to me. But then again I feel odd paying $1,000 for a plastic box to waterproof an $800 camera. Maybe it’s just me?
Jason-
My post comment was not intended to offend your sensibilities, nor disregard your opinions. I am involved in the ruggedized, semi-rugged, and fully rugged niche, and with due respect, a fully rugged laptop involves more than a \”hard plastic case and a spill proof keyboard membrane\”. I only want to share information. I also agree that the marketing department was awol when they named this laptop.
Mil-Std 810F is a Department of Defense Test Method Standard that establishes uniform environmental test methods for determining the resistance of materials to the effects of natural and induced environments peculiar to military operations. This is the default standard the industry
is currently using as the measure for rugged laptops.
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/corp/pressoffice/en/2008/2008_03_04_rr_000?c=us&l=en&s=corp
\”It focuses on the process of tailoring materiel design and test criteria to the specific environmental conditions a materiel item is likely to encounter during its service life.\”
http://www.dtc.army.mil/navigator/
The Environments are 1. Altitude 2. Temperature 3. Rain and Dust 4. Humidity. 5. Cold Storage 6. Vibration 7. Shock. 8. Drop
Mil-Std 810F test methods do not require specific materials, hardware, nor specific manufacturing processes. An 810F certified device is not the result of enveloping consumer electronics in a heavy-duty enclosure of ballistic plastic, or any such other material.
So, the price points you use in your examples are not a reliable comparative analysis. You have to look under the hood. To answer your question, this is why rugged laptops cost so much.
Hello,
Not to butt in, I build the notebooks for the company dell gets them from, and while I agree they might be a bit on the expensive side, the casing isn’t hard plastic. It’s magnesium.
That might help explain part of the cost?
As a user of these rugged laptops, I can attest they are worth every penny. When you spend millions of dollars on a project and then send up crap equipment to store your data, 6 thousand dollars?!? a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of recovering the data. Expensive for an individual, but CHEAP for projects.
The XFR I use has seen underground, survived a blast, cold, microfine cements (you think regular dust is bad.. microfine dust kills EVERYTHING), drops, sand, running water on the keyboard…
I’m typing this via a satellite connection, outside in northern Quebec on a Dell XFR, its -30, and snowing. Let’s see your macbook pro do that.
I am not saying they don’t work
I know they are fantastic, I am just saying that the sum of the parts to make a laptop rugged do not equal the 10x price increase.
Is there a rugged notebook with Mac OSX as operating system? Or all come with WinXP?
I am afraid not. There is possibly one you could put a hack of OS X on, but Apple doesn’t make one.