Durable Laptop Suggestions for the Desert?

glarbl_blarbl asks: "My brother is assigned to the 82nd Airborne in the US Army. His last laptop was a Sony Vaio whose power jack and hard drive both failed after about three years, and it didn't see anything worse than a state college dorm. He has just been ordered back to Iraq, and as the family computer geek I have been trying to help him with some general advice - but I have no experience with laptops in exotic environments. Does anyone know which brands/models would be better suited for life in the desert?"

... or at least an ATA flash drive

[deanpole]

If a ruggedized laptop is too expensive, and you try a disposable $1000 laptop, consider replacing the hard drive with a flash device. Besides eliminating most of the moving parts, it will reduce heat and increase battery life.

Here is my first froogle hit [logicsupply.com] but many others exist. Many modern laptops can boot from a cheaper USB flash device too, but an external gizmo may be undesirable.

Re:Just get 5 cheap ones instead

[Grab]

I doubt your average squaddie has enough baggage allowance to carry 5 laptops.

In a dusty, sandy environment, the most important thing *has* to be that it's sealed. If not, you can guaranteed that all the shit that gets inside it will kill the fans, CD/DVD and possibly hard drive in pretty short order.

Plus a ruggedised laptop will be squaddie-proof - throw it across the room, drop your bags on it, throw it out of the truck or whatever, it'll survive. The same could not be said of any five regular laptops! :-/

Grab.

Grab.