Vibration

Unless you are never going to take your computer out of the box, you need to expect that during the life of the machine that it will be exposed to some shock and vibration. Similar to a car or truck, some suspensions are designed for four-wheel driving off road, and others are only for sealed road.

Most manufacturers will have already tested their equipment against being dropped in a laboratory, but it’s in the real world, out of the office ‘off road’ that your computer will ultimately be tested.

Rugged computers by design have a thicker surface area, so are more likely to soak up a certain amount of vibration before it starts impacting the internal components like circuit boards and ports etc. but the devil is in the detail.

So a good question would be to ask what rugged environmental standards has the computer been tested against? You should be able to find these in the technical specifications for any particular product to see if it has passed MIL-STD-810G for shock/vibration etc. But has the testing been completed by 3rd party organization, or passed tested in house?

Rugged environmental testing ratings can be confusing, and we have seen some unscrupulous manufacturers skip this type of testing to try and save money.

Everything looks and sounds great when you look at the marketing material on a manufacturers website, but if you buy that equipment and find out that the computers are repeatedly failing without any apparent cause, then it isn’t fit for purpose. We have seen a high-end customer purchase low cost machines that were supposedly ‘enterprise ready’ for use in a production environment fall apart due to vibration on forklifts, so suggest it is worth taking some extra time to consider what vibration could do your machine, especially if it is continuously in transit on any type of vehicle. And what your warranty includes when a machine fails.

Otherwise you might be the one getting the shock when it doesn’t work out.