What is 'Rugged'?

It's more than surviving a few splashes of water.

It's more than the ability to deal with a bit of mud.

It's a Design Philosophy, not a marketing statement.

When all you have is a glossy brochure to go by, it can be difficult to understand what separates 'toys' from serious business 'tools'. So is it that makes Opentecs so different?

Pick up any Opentec product and you'll immediately understand the difference between what we classify as "toughened" (or possibly more correctly "rubberised") office grade products, and a truly "ruggedised" portabe product such as ours.

For starters, ours haven't simply evolved from some tame desktop ancestor, but have been engineered expressly to survive - and thrive - in the outdoors, come rain, hail or dust storm.

Consider just a few of the refinements that make our products some of the most durable, rugged portable computers you can buy:

• Heavy-duty, cast Magnesium Alloy chassis (that look strong because they are)
• External device ports that are isolated from the motherboard (to keep the outside OUTSIDE)
• Fully sealed, water and dustproof keyboards (to deal with more than the ocassional splash)
• Fan-less (passive) cooling systems (because fans - waterproof or not - are just another thing to fail)
• Heavy-duty screen hinging mechanisms (because when hinges break, screens - the most expensive component of the computer - generally fail as well)
• High-brightness daylight readable backlit LCDs (because you simply can't see standard TFT screens properly in full sunlight)
• Sealed, field-swappable drives and battery packs that don't need any special tools to remove (because Murphy's Law says you'll never have a screwdriver with you when you really need one)

Consider these things, and you start to appreciate why the Opentec range is fundamentally different. And fundamentally more 'rugged' because ... well let's face it, sometimes being 'tough' just isn't enough!

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