Aug 12, 2010 10:51 GMT  ·  By

Consumers may be more inclined, at present, to think of the iPad and its competitors when speaking about tablets, but purpose-built tablet PCs have existed since long before Apple's product even became publicly known, and the latest of them has just came out from underneath DRS's wing, eager to show the world what the word rugged really means.

Workers of all kinds often find great use for portable electronics, but there are simply some environments that are not exactly friendly to most devices.

Industrial applications often have gadgets exposed to extreme temperatures, humidity, dust or susceptible to other forms of physical harm, and DRS seeks to address this.

What DRS Technologies did was develop the aptly-named Armor X10gx, a rugged table PC that is certified for use in rail and port facilities, public safety, transportation and other environments.

The magnesium alloy chassis is the main factor behind the durability of the newcomer, and confers upon the 10.1-inch tablet its dust and water resistance.

The machine can actually be submerged underwater at depths of up to 1 meter, and is mostly dust-proof, even as it still provides all the necessary performance level and features.

The 10.1-inch display has a native resolution of 1,024 x 768 pixels and is an LCD (liquid crystal display) with support for resistive touch input and digitizer pen.

At its heart lies an Intel Core 2 Duo SU9300 central processing unit of 1.2 GHz, backed up by 2GB of RAM and a solid state drive of 64 GB, 80 GB or 160 GB of storage space.

Finally, for connectivity and I/O, DRS threw in LAN, Bluetooth 2.0, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and a SD card reader.

The DRS Technologies Armor X10gx complies with the MIL-STD-810G standard and is not yet available, but should start shipping by September 15. It's price has not yet been disclosed.