Like a battered boxer, the new Dell E6400 XFR is both tough and ugly, and can take a beating. The rugged laptop also manages to squeeze in pretty much everything you’d need, and some things you don’t.
First, just how tough is it? The sealed keyboard and magnesium chassis (this last also found on old iBooks, which were also pretty tough little machines) mean you can drop it from four feet, splash it with water or coffee and use it in a desert dust storm. The 14.1”” screen is designed to be viewable outside and, again like an old iBook (the toilet-seat model, this time) the Dell has a carrying handle.
You won’t be surprised by many of the connections: 4 x USB, a PCI slot and a memory card reader – but leaving out Bluetooth in favor of a modem seems rather odd. We guess that Dell sees this being used in some out of the way places without (shiver) proper internet. All these ports are concealed behind protective flaps when not in use.
Inside you’ll find a 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo processor, a DVD drive and a 120GB hard drive. For true resilience, though, there is an optional 128GB SSD. Finally, if you opt to put in a “mobile broadband” card, you’ll get GPS as a bonus.
Actually, the more I look at the product pictures, the more I like it. It looks like the kind of computer you'd find in Halo. The price for this tuff-e-nuff notebook? From $3200.
First, just how tough is it? The sealed keyboard and magnesium chassis (this last also found on old iBooks, which were also pretty tough little machines) mean you can drop it from four feet, splash it with water or coffee and use it in a desert dust storm. The 14.1”” screen is designed to be viewable outside and, again like an old iBook (the toilet-seat model, this time) the Dell has a carrying handle.
You won’t be surprised by many of the connections: 4 x USB, a PCI slot and a memory card reader – but leaving out Bluetooth in favor of a modem seems rather odd. We guess that Dell sees this being used in some out of the way places without (shiver) proper internet. All these ports are concealed behind protective flaps when not in use.
Inside you’ll find a 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo processor, a DVD drive and a 120GB hard drive. For true resilience, though, there is an optional 128GB SSD. Finally, if you opt to put in a “mobile broadband” card, you’ll get GPS as a bonus.
Actually, the more I look at the product pictures, the more I like it. It looks like the kind of computer you'd find in Halo. The price for this tuff-e-nuff notebook? From $3200.
No comments:
Post a Comment