What is the price difference, life expectancy and total cost of ownership between rugged, semi-rugged and regular laptops?
Our fire/EMS customers generally deploy fully rugged Toughbooks for three to five years depending on their budget schedule. But we’ve also had customers deploy the same laptops for up to seven or nine years. In 2006, Gartner Inc. published a report benchmarking computer failure rates — the need for some form of hardware repair. They found that within the first year, business notebook PCs [regular laptops] failed 15% of the time. By the third year, those estimates escalate to 22%. PC Magazine, in its annual reader survey (September 2006) reported a 23% annualized failure rate in business notebook PCs. Life expectancy is greatly affected by how the laptops are being used. According to an October 2005 report by VDC analyst David Krebs, an average of 4% of rugged mobile computers used in harsh environments fail per year, while standard notebooks in similar environments fail at a rate of 36%. While rugged and semi-rugged laptops are more expensive, the total cost of ownership is the figure