Dell's latest tablet is designed for war zones
If your typical day involves saving someone's life or trekking around a glacier, a regular tablet may be a bit... dainty. That's why Dell has just buttressed its Rugged series with a brand new model, the Latitude 12 Rugged Tablet. The company is pitching it as an extreme tablet, saying it's "designed for performance and reliability in the harshest conditions." Specifically, it'll handle spills, mud, dust and sand, drops from over four feet, temperatures between -20 and 145 degrees F and even an "explosive atmosphere." As such, Dell sees it as ideal for the military, emergency response crews, industrial work and adventuring.
You can use the multi-touch screen with work gloves and easily see the 11.6-inch HD screen (1366 x 768) in bright sunlight. It has "quad-cooling" thermal management, and... okay, you get it, it's tough. But that's all irrelevant if it's a lousy tablet, so Dell equipped it with 5th-gen Intel Core CPUs, Windows 8.1, 12 hours max battery life and up to 512GB of solid-state storage.
There's also an optional full-sized keyboard cover and vehicle/desk docks that connect via a rugged "pogo-pin" interface. So how much? Dell hasn't announced pricing yet, but obviously there's a heavy premium to be paid for such devices -- its Latitude 12 Rugged laptop with an Intel Core i3 CPU and 4GB of RAM runs $3,649, for instance. Still, rival devices are also pricey, and if you need it, you need it.
