Dell Latitude E6400 XFR soaked with firehose, image courtesy Dell via Flickr

Not long ago Dell made their first foray into the ruggedized laptop category, taking some of their popular business laptops and turning them into something that belongs in Mad Max. NotebookReview recently got their hands on a Latitude E6400 XFR, the ruggedized version of their 14.1-inch E6400 business notebook, a direct competitor to Lenovo’s ThinkPad T400.

Overall they were quite impressed with the machine. While they didn’t have a tiger chew it up or shoot it with a pistol, the folks at NBR did leave it running in a freezer, splash water on it, and throw it to the ground several times, all without incident. What’s more impressive is the array of ports, high brightness LCD, and blazing performance of a standard voltage Core 2 Duo and NVIDIA discrete graphics. Battery life takes a toll, but Dell planned ahead for that and offers a 12-cell slice battery that should attach across the bottom of the machine. Hit the link below for the full review, or check out posts related to rugged laptops.

Source: [NotebookReview]