Inexpensive refurb or used ruggedized laptop?

January 29, 2016 5:59 PM

Can you suggest a ruggedized laptop in the same vein as the Panasonic Toughbook, able to run Win7 but perhaps a couple to a few years old and relatively inexpensive?

Looking to buy refurbished or used via Ebay or other venue. Other criteria: decent to good battery life and ability to swap in an SSD if it doesn't come with one pre-installed.

posted by killdevil to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

I picked up a used ThinkPad T-420 recently (from craigslist) to replaced a used ThinkPad T-400 that I've used and traveled with for 5 years. The T-420 came with Windows 7 on a spinning disk. I swapped that out for an SSD, and installed Linux. Swapping drives was very easy. For a smaller form factor, check out the Thinkpad X-201.

Thinkpads are built like tanks. A work T-420, which had an SSD, survived a bicycle crash with only scratches and dents to the case.
posted by dws at 7:09 PM on January 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

Laptop Closeout — from whom I've bought a couple of machines — sometimes has them, but are currently out of stock. Swapping components on mil-spec machines can be an orgy of compression gaskets, shock mounts and weird tooling, and may not be something you take lightly.
posted by scruss at 5:10 AM on January 30, 2016