The Pipeline
Light as a feather, tough as a rock; Catch our drift?
Itronix General Dynamics
“One of the top reasons we’re excited about this is that it’s the lightest and smallest-footprint fully rugged notebook available today,” said Marie Hartis, director of marketing communications at Itronix.
Weighing 6.8 pounds, which is light for a rugged notebook PC, the GoBook XR-1 meets the Mil-Std 810F standard for drops, shocks and vibration and Ingress Protection rating 54 for water and dust.
Hartis said the GoBook is the first rugged notebook to use an Intel dual-core processor. The processor clocks in at 1.83 GHz. You can order the laptop with a 40G or 80G hard drive.
The GoBook is no slouch in the graphics department. It has a dedicated ATI M22-CSP/32 external graphics engine.
Itronix paid special attention to security. “From a government perspective, the GoBook XR-1 is the most secure product we’ve launched to date,” Hartis said. The laptop contains Trusted Platform Module Version 1.2, user-removable hard drives, and optional fingerprint scanner and smart card reader.
The GoBook has a stealth mode option for military applications, which lets you boot the laptop without turning on its sound, light or fan. When not in stealth mode, the GoBook has four embedded wireless radios, so you can communicate via wireless local-area, wide-area, Bluetooth and Global Positioning System networks.
Catch our drift?
Catcher Holdings has released a ruggedized mobile command center, aptly named the Catcher, which looks like a thick tablet PC with lots of buttons. Instead, it is a fully featured portable PC with an Intel Pentium processor. It can perform real-time translation, perimeter monitoring, facial recognition, fingerprint identification, Breathalyzer tests and speech-to-text applications.
The product, made for use outdoors, meets Mil-Std 810F. It has a sunlight-readable 6.4-inch display.
The Catcher’s communications protocols include 802.11b/g wireless, Bluetooth, Ethernet and optional cellular communications, such as Code Division Multiple Access or Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM).
The Catcher comes with several security goodies including a fingerprint reader, electronic watermarking and an optional iris scanner.
The device offers an indoor location service based on a combination of hardware and software, including GPS and GSM, to generate coordinates and display your location in any building, floor or room within a six-inch degree of accuracy.
The Catcher has a digital voice recorder, two digital cameras — one facing outward and another facing the user — real-time video capture and optional videoconferencing. If you order the Catcher with the optional radio frequency identification reader, you can also use it for tasks such as baggage handling and inventory asset management.