thanks for watching techwiki click the subscribe button then enable
notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any future videos
we've all been there you're up late working on a report
playing some overwatch or just catching up on those netflix shows
you're too embarrassed to tell anyone you watch you reach for your drink without looking
and bam a torrent of mountain dew spills into
your laptop and try as you might you never get it working quite right
again the solution well i could say it's to be more careful next
time but you guys know what you clicked on let's talk about the ruggedized
devices out there that can survive way more than a bottle of soda
companies like gtac panasonic and dell
offer laptops that look less like what you're using to watch
Techquickie in class right now and more like something the president might use
to order a military strike but just how tough are they and what
specifically allows them to survive in extreme conditions
to start let's talk about how they resist two of the most common
environmental hazards water and dust
since water droplets and dust particles are very tiny fully ruggedized laptops
employ strategies that go beyond screwing on an enclosure to keep them
out the electronics inside can be sealed via
techniques like injection molding which can not only protect against rain or
water splashes but also allow prolonged use in very humid environments
think about a soldier deployed in a tropical setting
and sometimes engineers even fill enclosures with non-conductive silicone
to ensure that nothing can touch your sensitive components a technique called
potting potting is also an effective way to
protect the electronics inside from our next hazards falls and vibrations
you can think of it like wrapping a fragile item in bubble wrap before you
ship it some ruggedized laptops don't
fully pot their electronics though instead coating them in a thin layer of
waterproof material and installing aluminum stiffeners which can also help
to absorb a shock before it reaches a pcb or other sensitive component
but what about heat doesn't all this sealing and reinforcing prevent heat
from exiting the chassis great point
it turns out that not only are some of these sealants chosen for their
thermally conductive properties so the sealant itself can carry heat to a
cooling surface but manufacturers can also place cooling
fans strategically so that water can't
hit the motherboard through outside vents usually this means placing a fan outside
of the sealed inner electronics chamber or running heat pipes through the
chamber wall and sealing up the cracks of course the simple fact that modern
mobile processors run much cooler than they did a decade or two ago helps too
our next hazard is less obvious heat is
bad for electronics but what about cold
devices working in extremely frigid conditions can end up with water
condensing on their sensitive components causing them to short out
for that reason some ultra rugged laptops even integrate small heaters so
that let's say researchers studying penguins
in the antarctic won't have their computer freeze
at an inopportune moment okay so then penguin scientists sure but
who else needs this kind of stuff well part of the reason that ruggedized
computers exist at all is that they're designed to a military spec for use by
armed forces and defense contractors
some are even tested in acidic environments and against gunfire
vibrations to ensure that they can withstand the harsh conditions of the
battlefield the hardiest laptops are even built to
an ip spec of 69k which you can learn
more about up here meaning that not only are they fully dust proof they can also
survive high temperatures and even high
pressure spray downs if they need to be washed
so pick some combination of these protections plus a toughened glass
display which you can actually learn more about here or a touch screen that can be used with
gloves on add powerful backlights and a high contrast panel technology so you
can see what's happening on the screen even in bright sunlight and you got
yourself a laptop that can go pretty much anywhere you can
sounds great rugged laptops for all
okay hold on a second ruggedized laptops do have some common
issues a big achilles heel is io
although ports can be protected with tight ceiling covers or plugs they are
still a potential point of ingress for outside contaminants especially when you
open them up to use them and while some manufacturers have somewhat mitigated
this problem by keeping the i o electronics in a separate chamber from
the main housing kind of like our fan example earlier this still means that
your ports can be damaged in harsh conditions even if the rest of the
system stays usable and unsurprisingly all this ruggedness can
come at quite a cost especially for
fully rugged military-grade models which can go for over ten
thousand dollars each and that's without
the latest core i7 and sli graphics
cards but with all of that said if you're
finding yourself constantly playing league of legends around your messy
roommates who don't seem to care about what they spill or where it goes
can you really afford not to get one
tunnel there vpn it's super easy to use
they've got apps for iOS Android pc and mac they've even got a chrome extension
and all you gotta do is pick a country turn tunnelbear on and boom your
internet connection gets encrypted with aes 256-bit encryption and your public
ip address gets switched to some
anonymous one so you know whether it's an advertiser looking to profit from
your data or your isp wondering what exactly it is that you're browsing and
downloading that all that stuff gets anonymized and tunnelbear
gets past all the annoying details that typically come with using a vpn for
personal use no port configurations dns router settings nothing like that it
does it all in the background they've got a top rated privacy policy they
don't log user activity and you can try it out for free with 500 megs of free
data no credit card required if you like it all you got to do to get
a year of unlimited data and save 10 percent on it while you're at it is go
over to tunnelbear.com Linus
so thanks for watching guys dislike like leave a comment with a suggestion for a
future video check out our other channels and subscribe