Dell launches sorta-indestructible laptop

You may be tempted to drop-kick, drown, or otherwise abuse the new Dell Latitude ATG D620. That's not because of any sort of personal animosity--the ATG stands for All Terrain Grade, and it's Dell's first semirugged laptop.

The ATG isn't exactly a new system built from the ground up. It's essentially a Dell Latitude D620 with a new case and a few other rugged extras. It has a magnesium-alloy shell with high-durability textured bumpers built onto the edges, a shock-mounted hard drive (a 1.8-inch drive in a cushioned 2.5-inch drive bay), a spill-resistant keyboard, and plastic port covers. While it doesn't meet military specs for truly rugged laptops (MIL SPEC 810F), it does meet the specs in certain categories, such as vibration and humidity.

For in-the-field action, the LCD screen is about 50 percent brighter than the standard D620's, and there's a red task light for illuminating the keyboard in low-light situations, especially useful for vehicle-mounted systems at night.

The Latitude ATG starts at $2,499, and like most Dell systems, is highly configurable.

[johnm371]

Indetructible?? Is it kid-tested?

Give this to a 7-yr old, and after being with them for 3 hours let's see if it still works. I've seen 7-yr old kids tear up anything that they can get their hands on. :)

[make_or_break]

Give a 7-yr old a $2500 laptop?

You [i]MUST[/i] be rich...

[mdarmocida]

Dell Sucks

It doesn't matter if it's all terrain or not. We have been using Dell for quite a while and my conclusion is that they make crap! Their service is crap, their outsourced tech support is crap. They don't give consumer's any recourse with regard to contacting an executive customer service and a business user has to work through their sales rep.<br /><br />In short, Dell doesn't care about their customers. As far as the 620 is concerned, we had the usual Dell crap problems with the 600s and 610s that we bought. However, I have requestioned two 620s for two new hires and they are horrendous. They don't work consistently and both 620s had to go back to IT to reformat the hard drive and reinstall to factory settings to fix them. Even after that, the inconsistent performance continues. Not to mention that the battery sticks out of the front, loosing any portabilty gains that the lower profile had to offer over the 600 and 610.<br /><br />Add all those problems to the those of the Axim x51v I bought with &gt;$800 personal funds about a year ago. The unit was problematic from the start... You have to reset it nearly every time you turn it on, it is constantly resetting itself, and turning itself off, telling you the battery latch was opened (when it wasn't), and has bluetooth, but no usable bluetooth stack, making the bluetooth useless. Tech support, when they can speak decent English, knows less about the unit than I and they still haven't fixed the problems. They also don't tell you that the 3-year extended warranty consists of a swap out program for a refurbished unit (someone else's scratched up piece of junk). When I saw the replacement unit, I sent it back. They also don't tell you that they use DHL (a very inconvenient shipper) and if you don't return the replaced item within 10-days, you are billed for it. My Axim is barely over a year old and is about to be shelved because it just isn't worth the headache.<br /><br />These were my first Dell products. Before this I used to think HP was bad. Now I can't wait to go back to good old HP; because they are heads and shoulders above Dell in every respect.<br /><br />Currently, I am working to have my company acquire new laptops from Lenovo as IBM Thinkpads (the gold standard of laptops) and all future PDAs will be from HP. Next I'll work on getting rid of those crappy Dell servers.

[Csipa1]

i agree...

dell sucks ass

[treet007]

Get a Panasonic Toughbook instead...

If you want something really rugged, get a Panasonic Toughbook that meets or exceeds the MIL spec instead. Expect to pay a pretty penny and a half, though...<br /><br />--GIF

[acaaleks]

Dell's so-called indestructable laptop

I have an IBM T41 ThinkPad that has everything except the plastic bumpers that this Dell has;yet my ThinkPad is even more indestructable than the Dell.If you trip over the power cord of a ThinkPad that is busy processing info &#38; it goes flying hitting the floor the hard drive senses the motion of falling &#38; automatically stops,not damaging nor losing any info on the drive.The Thinkpads always have had shock absorbers on the hard drives &#38; waterproof keyboards that withstand hot coffee being poured on them.And they take falls very gracefully.