Dell Goes Fully-Rugged With The Latitude XFR D630

When you’re working outdoors at a construction site rock quarry, or other non-friendly notebook location, and need to get some computing done, notebooks that slip into Manilla envelopes simply won’t do. You need a tank of a machine that can withstand the harshness of the environment. The Dell Latitude XFR D630 looks to fill that space. The Latitude XFR D630 is Dell’s first fully-ruggedized notebook, and it meets the Department of Defense’s MIL-STD 810 standard of toughness. So what does that mean? The system is designed to operate in extreme temperatures and high altitudes, while staving off damage from dust and driving rain. Starting at a rather hefty $3,899, you’ll get a base configuration that includes:

• A 14.1-inch 500 nit outdoor-viewable display
• 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
• Windows XP Home
• 80GB shock-mounted hard drive
• 802.11g Wi-Fi
• A three-year limited warranty

If you’re really want to get fancy, you can trick out the XFR D630 with Sprint or Verizon mobile broadband, Bluetooth, up to 4GB of RAM, Windows Vista Business, a touch screen display, and a 64GB shock-mounted solid-state drive. Dell claims that its patent-pending thermal management system allows the Latitude XFR D630 to use “latest generation technology” that delivers four times the graphics performance than the Panasonic Toughbook CF-30. The Dell Latitude XFR D630 is available for purchase right now.