Tough Notebook Challenge: Which Notebooks Take A Beating And Keep On Booting?

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Four tough notebooks. A desk, an electric cord, a cup of soda and a stairway.

Oh, the possibilities for disaster.

The CMP Channel Test Center put rugged notebooks from Toshiba, Acer, Dell and Panasonic through a series of real-world disaster tests to see which would survive and how each would stand up. Two survived to the end. Two made it part of the way.

An Acer TravelMate 4720, a Panasonic's Toughbook CF-Y5, a Toshiba Tecra A9-S9017 and a Dell Latitude D630, each were put through our tough notebook challenge tests: being pulled off a desk by the power cord, dropped from three-and-a-half feet, having four ounces of soda spilled onto the keyboard and then, the grand finale, being dropped down a flight of stairs.

Slide Show: When the Cola Hits The Keyboard -- The Tough Notebook Challenge

Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard, invited to provide notebooks that could take part in the test, each declined participation.

The environment used for the tests was typical of an office. The desk furniture and carpeted floor in the test area provided real world conditions for three of the five tests -- tripping over the power cord attached to the notebook, spilling soda and dropping the notebook. The tests done on the desk simulated various accidents users can have when working in an office. Before the notebooks were banged up, engineers ran PassMark tests. All of the banging-up and spilling was done when each notebook had the power on.

The tripping-over-the-cord test simulated a user passing a desk,accidentally tripping over the cord and having the notebooks fall to the floor. The test itself was easy to do, but hard to watch. The trip test consisted of pulling a power cord while attached to a notebook.

Spilling soda on the notebooks was the most fun and hardest for the notebooks to pass. Because soda is a good conductor, any pin size hole located between a keyboard and the inside of a notebook can short circuit the electronics.

The drop test simulated having a notebook fall from a person's hands. The distance of the drop was about the height of the desk -- about three-and-a-half feet.

The last test simulated dropping a notebook bag with the notebook in it down a set of stairs.

The tests were each monitored by two solution providers: Nick Gigante, an account executive with Future Tech Enterprises, Holbrook, N.Y. and Shiv Kumar, executive vice president of ZSL Inc., Edison, N.J. After each test, Gigante and Kumar gave us their expert opinion on whether the systems survived. The VARs looked for cracks in the LCDs and body. They shook each notebook to see if anything got loose inside them. They booted the notebooks to make sure that the notebooks could power up. They also moved the mouse and used the keyboard after each test, to make sure that the notebooks were usable.

Here's what happened:

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