14 DAY TRIAL // There may be many systems on today's IT market, but only some of them can truly be said to have what it takes to survive in unfriendly environments, one of them having just been launched by NextComputing.
There are certain products on the consumer market which are said to be rugged, but the word is usually used loosely in their case.
The truly rugged computing systems in existence are those that are used by the industrial sector, since unfriendly environments are often the place where workstations have to be taken.
That said, a special amount of effort seems to be placed in the making of portable solutions with a durable chassis and still enough performance to handle any task thrown at them.
NextComputing claims to have created a device of this sort, the Vigor EX, although the word 'portable' could be seen as a bit of a stretch, what with the screen size of 17 inches and the starting weight of 35 lbs.
Still, one cannot argue with results, and the outfit made sure that the system is as well protected as possible by implementing a dual-chassis design.
“Our customers in the military and other demanding markets have for years relied on our Vigor series rugged workstations for their mission-critical applications,” says Bob Labadini, President & CTO of NextComputing.
“The Vigor EX continues this tradition by packaging the latest COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) motherboard technology in our durable dual-chassis design, while maintaining our commitment to quality and custom engineering services.”
Simply put, an internal, shock-mounted chassis is suspended in a mil-anodized, rugged external case (no metal-to-metal contact happens).
As for the actual specs, a single-core or dual-core Intel Xeon (or single-core Intel Core i7) processor is used, backed by up to 48 GB ECC RAM (or 28 GB non-ECC DDR3) and paired with up to twelve HDDs, for over 7 TB of storage (all drives are hot-swappable).
Finally, the built-in display can be complemented by one or two extra, fold-out panels. The price was not given, but shipments should already be underway.