1. Introduction

Let's face it, all notebooks at one point or another get beaten up. No one actually intends to spill coffee on their notebook or have it fall off a desk, but it does happen.

That's where Twinhead's Durabook line of notebooks comes in. Rather than simply hoping that a notebook will survive day-to-day torture, Durabook offers the promise of a ruggedized notebook that can handle drops and spills.

The Durabook D14RY has a 14" standard aspect (4:3) display which is powered by an integrated Mobile Intel 945GM Express Chipset with 256 MB. During our tests one of catches (one on each side of the display deck) was the only piece to break. Twinhead says it will replace any of these that break.

Don't believe it? Well if seeing is believing then check out our video where Ben Meyer and Shelton Romhanyi drop the Durabook notebook six times from a height of 30 inches onto three layers of 1 inch plywood so it lands on its top, bottom and each side. They also spill liquid over the keyboard and to add insult to injury perform the legally questionable office assault test (you have to see it to believe it).

While notebook durability is the key selling point of the Durabook, ultimately it's performance that defines the usability of a notebook. We ran a number of tests on the D14RY including a new version of BAPCo's SYSMark v. 2007.

Next let's take a look at a table of Durabook D14RY features.

Join our discussion on this topic