HP made a ridiculously tough laptop for schools
HP made a ridiculously tough laptop for schools
‘Middle school students can be as tough as active duty’
HP has made a laptop that it says stands up to military
standards of toughness, a feat that it claims is necessary for another
tough environment: schools.
Its new laptop is called the ProBook x360 Education
Edition. It essentially takes what would otherwise be a low-end
convertible laptop and turns it into a device for schools by adding in a
few of helpful hardware and software features and a rugged build.
Gus Schmedlen, HP’s head of education, says the the laptop is “tested to military field standards,” specifically the MIL-STD-810G standard.
There’s no organization certifying that the ProBook x360 does in fact
meet the standard’s requirements, but HP says it’s been pushing these
laptops off of desk-height tables and onto concrete and steel floors to
ensure that it built something that won’t immediately fall apart.
The laptop’s keys are also supposed to be resistant to
being picked at, and the keyboard is meant to withstand spills of about
12 ounces of liquid.
Schmedlen says a laptop’s ability to withstand
mishandling is critical to schools. “Middle school students can be as
tough as active duty” members on laptops, he says.
Rugged devices usually end up being bigger and heavier
than typical consumer devices — that’s true here, too, to a point. The
ProBook x360 has an 11-inch display, but it has a size and weight closer
to what you’d expect from a 13-inch laptop.
That said, HP is still claiming that it’ll be the
“thinnest rugged convertible” out there. There isn’t necessarily a huge
field of those, but what’s out there right now isn’t very good.
The laptop comes preloaded with classroom management
software, and it’s been designed with a pair of other features that HP
says were made from educators’ feedback. The first is an LED on the back
lid of the laptop that lights up when Wi-Fi is enabled, letting
teachers know if kids are browsing the web when they shouldn’t be. The
second is an optional camera built into the keyboard’s palm rest, which
is meant to be used for filming while the laptop is folded around in
tablet mode.
Pricing details aren’t immediately available. The laptop
is meant to be sold directly to schools, though there’s a possibility
that third-party retailers could offer it to consumers, too.
Leave some comments...
Posted By Abayomi Ismail
source: http://www.theverge.com
Aucun commentaire: