Our dept. currently has an installed base of approx 73 Panasonic Toughbooks in service, approx half are CF-28's, the other half CF-29's. We're looking at the Dell XFR D630 fully ruggedized notebook as a possibility to replace some of the Panny's that are coming due for refresh. Municipal PD, use is in a police squad car environment.

The Dell XFR is so new, I was wondering if any IT folks on the forum had any experiences with them yet. Dell alludes to info that the military is looking hard at their XFR's, but having no contacts in mil IT fields I have no way to know if it is hype or fact.

We have a few of the Dell units and have them installed in some squad cars so the patrol officers can have a go at them. The docking stations for the Dell's bolt right up to the mounting stem we used with the Pandocks.

The Dell seems to be a pretty nice unit, and is a Latitude D630 on the inside-- a company called Augmentix takes the D630 guts and builds it into the ruggedized end product.

But, the Panny's have been practically bullet proof. We have 31 of them (mostly CF-28's) hitting 5+ yrs in service (due for refresh) and they're still functioning. Being in IT I should know better than to say that out loud-- they'll likely all break tomorrow...

 

Not sure on the Dells but we gave one of our maintenance guys a Panny after he broke 3 or 4 gateway/Dells by dropping them...the Panny has been running rock solid for like the past 3 years....stick with what works





Goose