NEC FC-N22A for true road warrior

In the office.
And on the beach

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You can throw it in the dust, submerge in river, drop it on the rock and it will still work. NEC ShieldPRO FC-N22A is lightweight laptop for serious conditions.

There is a difference between home and business notebooks, mainly in their ruggedness. As the home notebook is not intended to be moveable every day, business model must work at home, in the office and on the road. That is the reason why similar models with similar technical characteristics have dramatically different prices.

NEC ShieldPRO FC-N22A

To solve the problems or moving here and there, manufacturers make notebooks of alloys, build a cage that encloses hard disk and LCD screen, and that’s fine for the beast from the office. But, if we want to visit the nature and take our electronic friend with us, new problems arise. What’s good for the office is not good for the forest or mountains covered with snow. A few drops here and there will seriously affect the life of a computer, and that’s bad if we really need a PC in those situation. So-called industrial computers are well-known for some time now, but Japanese company NEC bring all those amenities to us in their new rugged laptop.

NEC ShieldPRO FC-N22A

NEC’s engineers with Mr. Satoshi Nakano as a brain, decided to follow the military standards of U.S. Department of Defense and they came up with a very interesting laptop. While office computers usually are happy with temperatures of -5 to +45 Celsius, NEC ShieldPRO series will work at temperatures from -20 to +50. It can fall from 90 centimetres, dust and water doesn’t bother it and it offers a decent speed.

NEC has experience with building robust computers, mainly for use in factories and similar enemy environment; they start to build rugged personal computers some 20 years ago. Now, the company presented ShieldPRO model FC-N22A. The chassis of FC-N22A is made of lightweight and robust magnesium alloy, and it has a floating structure that protects the hard disk. NEC’s engineers were thinking about screws, too. More screws, more way for water to drop in. Thus, they reduced their numbers and devised a sandwich structure that prevents the entering of water and dust. Fanless design of FC-N22A is another very interesting detail. CPU and chip set are enclosed in a copper water pipe, and enclosure is designed to increase heat dissipation.

NEC ShieldPRO FC-N22A has Intel processor Core 2 Duo ULV U7500 beating at 1.06 GHz, maximum amount of memory is 4 GB, operating system is Windows XP Professional, and display 12.1-inch TFT. Its weight is only 2.5 kilograms thanks to use of advanced materials, and that makes FC-N22A the ideal companion on your trip to nature. Add to that maximum battery life of 12 hours and you’ll get the picture why this beast is worth every cent of its 2800 euros.

May 12, 2008

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