Toughest Notebook Challenge

There's the pop music star who, sitting on a pier in Key West, Fla., while writing a novel, stood up and saw the notebook slip into the salty water below.

Then there's the average business user whose kid trips over the laptop's power cord and sends the entire thing crashing down to the floor, destroying untold hours of work, invaluable data and a lifeline to the working world.

Different scenarios call for different levels of tough. Not everyone needs a notebook that meets the U.S. military's MIL-STD-810F standard for ruggedized equipment, which includes tests under extreme conditions including high altitude, low altitude, high pressure, low pressure, heat, subfreezing, hard rain and fungus. (Yes, fungus. Don't ask.)

But notebook vendors are putting more emphasis and research dollars into making laptops tough enough for extreme everyday use. CRN put out a call to a number of different notebook vendors for those willing to put their products to the test: Give us a mobile PC, priced at no more than $2,500, that we can beat the daylights out of, that we could spill stuff on, that we could drop down a flight of stairs.

Four gutsy PC makers responded. A few ignored us. Some wanted nothing to do with it.

What happened next was CMP Channel's first-ever Toughest Notebook Challenge. Acer, Dell, Panasonic and Toshiba entered the ring. Systems from Acer and Panasonic came out alive. The results, taken together, tell the story of how the PC industry is racing to keep up with changing work habits, how it is faring and how much work still needs to be done.

The Challenge
CMP Channel's Test Center put an Acer TravelMate 4720, a Panasonic Toughbook CF-Y5, a Toshiba Tecra A9-S9017 and a Dell Latitude D630 through the tough notebook challenge tests: being pulled off a desk by the power cord; dropped from three and a half feet; having four ounces of soda spilled onto the keyboard; and then, the grand finale, being dropped down a flight of stairs.

Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo, invited to provide notebooks that could take part in the test, each declined participation.

The environment used for the tests was typical of an office. The desk furniture and carpeted floor in the test area provided real-world conditions for three of the tests—tripping over the power cord attached to the notebook, spilling soda and dropping the notebook. The tests done on the desk simulated various accidents users can have when working in an office. Before the notebooks were banged up, engineers ran PassMark tests. All of the banging up and spilling was done when each notebook had the power on.

The tripping-over-the-cord test simulated a user passing a desk, accidentally tripping over the cord and having the notebook fall to the floor. The test was easy to do, but hard to watch. It consisted of pulling the power cord while attached to the notebook.

The drop test simulated having a notebook fall from a person's hands. The distance of the drop was about the height of the desk—about three and a half feet.

Spilling soda on the notebooks was the most fun and hardest for the notebooks to pass. Because soda is a good conductor, any pin-size hole located between a keyboard and the inside of a notebook can shortcircuit the electronics.

The last test simulated dropping a notebook bag with the notebook in it down a flight of stairs.

The tests were monitored by two solution providers: Nick Gigante, an account executive with Future Tech Enterprises, Holbrook, N.Y., and Shiv Kumar, executive vice president of ZSL, Edison, N.J. After each test, Gigante and Kumar gave us their expert opinions on whether the system survived. The VARs looked for cracks in the LCDs and body. They shook each notebook to see if anything was loose. They booted each to make sure it could power up. They also moved the mouse and used the keyboard to make sure that the notebook was usable.

"These tests are real-world," Kumar said. "We put them through the challenges, what we see on a real-world basis."

Next: The Tests ,?strong>TEST 1
Tripping over the power cord and knocking the laptop off the desk: All four notebooks survived the test, which attempted to simulate someone tripping over a power cord and knocking a laptop to the floor. The table was about three and a half feet high, and the carpeting was thin, office-standard. The Dell unit made a slight rattling noise when we shook it to see if any components were loose. The notebook did boot up and function properly.

TEST 2
The desk-drop test: All four notebooks passed this test, where each unit slipped out of a pair of hands and dropped to the carpeted floor. The Acer, the Panasonic and the Toshiba all booted up right away. Dell passed the test, but took a long enough time to reboot that it could make a butter-fingered user very nervous. Still, all the competitors advanced to the next round.

TEST 3
The soda spill test: This turned into the most controversial of the tests. Several vendors questioned which specific soda would be used—Coke? Pepsi? Diet? Regular?—saying sugar content could have an impact on how easily a board could burn out (they cited conduction properties).

For the record, about four ounces of regular Pepsi was used for each notebook. The soda was poured directly onto the keyboard and into the unit of each, and then poured out after a few seconds. We wanted to see if they could continue operation.

The Dell and the Toshiba units each failed this test. The Dell unit shut down and then, on an attempted reboot, reported that it could not find the hard drive and shut down again. Another attempt to reboot the system yielded nothing. The Toshiba notebook remained powered on but froze up and could not be rebooted to a working state. The Acer and the Panasonic each passed and made it to the Death Round.

TEST 4
The stairs drop test: Both the Acer and Panasonic units were placed securely into a padded Targus backpack-style notebook carrying case. One at a time, the engineer walked each down three steps, dropped the bag and let it tumble down seven hard steps and onto a landing. Both notebooks were then pulled out of the bag and booted up as if nothing happened. None showed any signs of physical damage—the LCD, keyboard, case and Acer's slightly protruding battery had no dents or dings. So, at the end of our first-ever Toughest Notebook Challenge, we crowned the Acer and Panasonic notebooks winners for their ability to withstand typical disasters encountered by the mobile PC business user.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: Well, Aren't We Nosy ...
PC makers asked us some questions on how the Tough Notebook Challenge was conducted.