The Rugged Notebooks Blog™

As this blog has often reported, all signs point to the fact that consumers are starting to catch on to the great value offered by rugged laptops and rugged portable gear. Consumer brands like Panasonic and Dell have added rugged labels like ToughBook and Latitude ATG, joining older established niche players such as Rugged Notebooks Inc. New mini portables like the OLPC, Intel Classmate, and Asus Eee are making headlines, and will help to make rugged components like flash memory and SSDs more popular.

A recent Harris Interactive Survey flushes out some of the reasons why this sector is garnering more attention from everyday consumers. Here are some of the recent findings from the research commissioned by Panasonic and published in November 2007:

1. Among adults who regularly use a laptop computer, 47% use their laptop outside of a typical office environment on a daily basis. 25% regularly (i.e., 3 days a week or more) use a laptop while traveling or somewhere else outside their home or work.
2. Among laptop users, 68 percent reported the type of damage their laptop is most at risk for when traveling is being dropped, knocking against a hard surface or getting crushed under the weight of other objects, and 39 percent reported experiencing some form of mishap (drop, knock, and spill) with their laptop.
3. 89 percent of laptop users surveyed cited long battery life (i.e., greater than 3 hours) is “Absolutely Essential/Very Important/Important,” yet, 70 percent said the longest amount of battery life they typically experience is three hours or less.
4. Reliable wireless access to the Internet through their laptop is viewed as “Absolutely Essential/Very Important” by 75 percent of employed laptop owners with wireless capabilities.
5. 90 percent of laptop users would be at least somewhat willing to pay a premium for a laptop with durability features.

Now that more people are working outside traditional office environments, there is a growing need for mobile computing that meets higher expectations. This translates to durability, reliability, and wireless connectivity being among the most desirable features.

This backs up the older research conducted in 2005 by International Data Corporation that is almost always cited by rugged portable computer companies. That report indicated that most damage to laptops results from accidental drops, spilled liquids, and short falls from a desk or table.

The notion is that ruggedized, semi-rugged, and fully rugged computer gear is no longer considered out of the reach of the mainstream consumer. Soon these once specialized computers possibly won’t even be considered “niche” products at all.

Photo Credit: www.whatlaptop.co.uk

Rugged Notebooks: Extreme Computers for Extreme Conditions™