uh.. what happened to Apple? [underwhelmed by MBP]

[kelon111]

I believe its a bit more complicated. AFR is basically an estimate of the chance that you will receive a dud from the factory. It doesn't mean that a component with a low AFR will on average have a much longer life expectation then a component with high AFR - rather, it simply means that its less likely to fail within one or two years from manufacturing.

Besides, comparing a Toughbook and a MBP is like comparing a tank and a general purpose commuter. Most of the original criticisms (high price for the components, limited storage options) apply to the Toughbook even more then to the rMBP. The Toughbook is tough, but its also insanely expensive (twice the price of the rMBP), extremely heavy (more then two times compared to the rMBP) and SLOW. It performs on the level of the MBA, while being 4 times as heavy, having half the battery life and over two times more expensive for the comparable configuration. I don't think that the slightly increased reliability is worth almost $2000 extra for the majority of users

Which models are you talking about?

The ones that can easily take a 6 feet fall are quite heavy but the semi rugged or business rugged ones can be a lot lighter.

Look at this one for example

An amazing 33% thinner than the previous model, but still with a class-leading 14.5 hours of standard battery life — and only 3.1 lbs. The Panasonic Toughbook® SX2 is made with tough magnesium alloy, has a shock-mounted hard drive, 12.1" HD+ display, webcam, DVD player, supports both USB 3.0 and 2.0, analog (VGA) and digital (HDMI) video, the latest SD card standard (SDXC), and a easy to use circular scrolling touchpad.

BTW Panasonic laptops have a lot of user removable parts and come standard with a 3 year warranty.
Since Panasonic doesn't solder as many things as Apple does to the board , that gives the end user more flexibility when it comes to repairs and upgrades.
You could replace the hard drive that it comes with with an enterprise grade SSD if you wanted.

 

[disasterdrone]

Oh come on. Even a millimeter wouldn't create enough space. Now you're just trying to convince yourself it could have happened.

A mm would absolutely create enough space.

Size is:
Height: 0.95 inch (2.41 cm)
Width: 12.78 inches (32.5 cm)
Depth: 8.94 inches (22.7 cm)

So the area is 737.75cm2, so a 1mm increase gives you something like 737.75cm3. Slightly less, of course, since these are exterior dimensions.
A standard laptop drive is 9.5x70x100 mm, giving it a volume of 665cm3. Plenty of room with just 1mm extra. Now, of course, that doesn't account for the interface, or other adjustments internally, but my point is that is absolutely the kind of amount of increase we're talking about. Frankly whether it is one or two mm doesn't matter to me at all.
Since the battery is fungible, I seriously doubt we're looking at much more than a mm max.
Of course, putting two slots for the new type of drive would be much, much smaller.


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They could have left a 17" option with more internal space but didn't. Even the old designs made no effort to accommodate multiple drive bays.

Wrong. The old designs come standard with two SATA drive bays. One was filled with an optical drive as standard.

 

[iChrist]

oh, i remember, that only happens on MacBooks.. interesting how those PC guys made a product that simply cannot be faulty, what magic is this?

No, it happens with PCs as well. It's just that you don't have to pay $2000-3500 for a high rate of defects and B-rated panels.

 

[linkgx1]

No, it happens with PCs as well. It's just that you don't have to pay $2000-3500 for a high rate of defects and B-rated panels.

This is so trur . I hate when people always criticize non Apple products for being cheap and yet wuicly dismesses when an expensive laptop has just as man if not more flaws

 

[FrozenDarkness]

http://www.panasonic.com/business/toughbook/why-toughbook-failure-rates.asp

404 Error and marketing materials. Love it.

 

[whitedragon101]

Look at this one for example

The link is dead

 

[leman]

Which models are you talking about?

The ones that can easily take a 6 feet fall are quite heavy but the semi rugged or business rugged ones can be a lot lighter.

Look at this one for example


BTW Panasonic laptops have a lot of user removable parts and come standard with a 3 year warranty.
Since Panasonic doesn't solder as many things as Apple does to the board , that gives the end user more flexibility when it comes to repairs and upgrades.
You could replace the hard drive that it comes with with an enterprise grade SSD if you wanted.

Sorry, my bad, I've been looking at the fully rugged model. True, the SX2 looks much better, but still - $2,529 for 4GB RAM and a slow 320GB HDD? Upgrading it with 16GB RAM and a 512SSD will boost the price to around $2900 - a similarly configured 13" rMBP (which is significantly faster) is $2250 with AAPL. How many people would want to pay $700 for a marginally more durable laptop which is also slower?

If anything, your examples show that you can't have everything in one package. Light, fast, durable, cheap, aesthetically pleasing - pick two Although durable and aesthetically pleasing are often mutually exclusive

P.S. For some reason there are no failure rates for the SX2 model. I wonder why.

 

[Wuiffi]

P.S. For some reason there are no failure rates for the SX2 model. I wonder why.

Statistics don't work with n=0 (I know your question was rhetorical, but I still wanted to answer it ^^)