HP Unveils Rugged Notebook, Tablet PC

Hewlett-Packard on Thursday filled a hole in its portable PC line with the introduction of a rugged notebook PC and a rugged Tablet PC.

Both products--the nr3600 rugged notebook and the tr3000 rugged Tablet PC--exceed military standard MIL-STD-810F in terms of resistance to vibration, heat, humidity, drop and dust, said Ben Thacker, business development manager for HP's Mobile Computing Global Business Unit, Palo Alto, Calif.

Wireless is a key feature of the new portables, Thacker said. Both come standard with 802.11b wireless LAN capabilities and have options for Bluetooth and wireless WAN functionality. The wireless LAN features 100mW of power, compared with the typical 40mW of most portable PCs.

"When you go rugged, it's all about connectivity," Thacker said. Both portables also include a shock-mounted, removable hard drive and an option for a second battery.

The nr3600 notebook weighs 7.9 pounds and comes with an Intel Pentium 4 processor, an outdoor transmissive 12.1-inch touch screen and a glow-in-the-dark or backlit keyboard. The list price for the base configuration of a 1.7GHz processor, 256 Mbytes of memory and a 40-Gbyte hard drive is $4,099.At 1.65 inches thick, the tr3000 Tablet PC weighs 3.7 pounds and includes an outdoor transmissive 8.4-inch touch screen with a digitizer pen. It carries a list price of $3,499 for a base configuration with a 933MHz mobile Pentium 3 processor, 256 Mbytes of memory and a 40-Gbyte hard drive.

Both products are scheduled to ship April 5 via HP's direct and indirect channels, Thacker said.