At my school there are 2-3 Deputies

I had to talk to one of them, and he came in from patrolling the street my school is on

He didn't have one of those fancy tough laptops 

He had a regular dell laptop with the Intel Core i5

 

Any ideas, it seems pretty weird

 

My department does the same. It may be the fact that toughbooks range anywhere to a couple hundred to a couple thousand dollars, while Dells are usually in the hundreds.

My department does the same. It may be the fact that toughbooks range anywhere to a couple hundred to a couple thousand dollars, while Dells are usually in the hundreds.

ah, I see

At my school there are 2-3 Deputies

I had to talk to one of them, and he came in from patrolling the street my school is on

He didn't have one of those fancy tough laptops 

He had a regular dell laptop with the Intel Core i5

 

Any ideas, it seems pretty weird

 

A military grade Panasonic Toughbook costs between $2,000-$3,000. A small department isn't going to get those sort of things replaced often, if they even get them in the first place. If you are a police chief and you are able to go before a town committee and successfully explain why you need a set of $3,000 laptops to run license plates, hats off to you. The department I'm in a citizens academy for has a small fleet of cars, and one (ONLY one) of them has a license plate scanner, a device that checks plates, vins, registrations and license statuses automatically. It costs $21,000. I'd also wager that his Core i5 is faster than the "fancy tough laptops", as the Panasonic Tougbooks won't usually be running lightning speed hardware because it would generate a lot of internal heat that would make the product less durable. So most laptops you see in police cars are going to be very old and very slow. If I had the software, I could probably run license checks faster on my smart phone.

It's pretty likely that the police also use Dells for normal office laptops; they may be a city standard vendor, and having all laptops from the same company makes IT simpler.

It's pretty likely that the police also use Dells for normal office laptops; they may be a city standard vendor, and having all laptops from the same company makes IT simpler.

+1 to that. They also provide bulk discounts. Why do you think so many schools use Dell computers? It's certainly not because they're the best PC company in history and they're super-duper reliable.

+1 to that. They also provide bulk discounts. Why do you think so many schools use Dell computers? It's certainly not because they're the best PC company in history and they're super-duper reliable.

oh,ok

The reason for a tough book is because mainly it has a hard shell with a shock mounted hard drive that won't skip or give you problems if the device is bouncing or being hit. However that's really only useful if you throw the damn thing down a few flights of stairs and use it while its tumbling. If the officer's driving gives a laptop the similar experience of it falling down flights of stairs......maybe.....he/she should revisit the academy :p unless he/she is in a pursuit like off road or something. In which case I can't imagine why you'd be trying to use a computer......

 

Plus yes, simple dell's are much much cheaper than a tough book :p. Tough books are more ideal for active military use like out in the field and what not lol.

The reason for a tough book is because mainly it has a hard shell with a shock mounted hard drive that won't skip or give you problems if the device is bouncing or being hit. However that's really only useful if you throw the damn thing down a few flights of stairs and use it while its tumbling. If the officer's driving gives a laptop the similar experience of it falling down flights of stairs......maybe.....he/she should revisit the academy :p unless he/she is in a pursuit like off road or something. In which case I can't imagine why you'd be trying to use a computer......

 

Plus yes, simple dell's are much much cheaper than a tough book :p. Tough books are more ideal for active military use like out in the field and what not lol.

The PCs in the cruisers are on at all time regardless of whether they're in use or not, which means that the hard drive is constantly active and therefore susceptible to damage from driving forces.

The PCs in the cruisers are on at all time regardless of whether they're in use or not, which means that the hard drive is constantly active and therefore susceptible to damage from driving forces.

 

Violent driving is what can damage the hardrive, sharp turns or trying to stop on a dime things like that. Normal driving however won't so much, hardrives are much more stable than a CD drive....

 

But I don't see why they don't all go SSD, that would elminate this problem all together and are much cheaper than tough books. However.....SSD's do not last as long as HDD's due to the fact that the cells can only be written over/rewritten a certain amount of times before they 'burn out'.

Violent driving is what can damage the hardrive, sharp turns or trying to stop on a dime things like that. Normal driving however won't so much, hardrives are much more stable than a CD drive....

 

But I don't see why they don't all go SSD, that would elminate this problem all together and are much cheaper than tough books. However.....SSD's do not last as long as HDD's due to the fact that the cells can only be written over/rewritten a certain amount of times before they 'burn out'.

Simple pot hole bumps make hard drives skip, and violent driving is common in police cruisers, even if the patrolman isn't in a pursuit. My body felt like it nearly went out of the windshield during my first ride along when the FTO jammed on his brakes and flipped a u-turn to go catch up to someone to pull them over.

And they don't switch to solid states because Windows XP and Windows Vista don't work properly on them, and because they cost too much.

I've never had my gaming pc in a car before but my mac seems to hold up fine when I go on road trips around europe and I toss it around the car to my sibs when they want to use it. Although I do see the risk of the skip, don't want that to happen while on the job.

 

And my ride along with a Trooper did the same :p.

 

I don't see why the toughbook seems to be the only laptop with a shock mounted hard drive. That's really the only reason PDs get/use them. Unless they intend to throw them about. And yes, SSDs are to expensive and don't last as long. They also rarely have enough money to upgrade OS's.

Macs are generally extremely well built, and many of today's standard Macbook models and even yesteryear's models of Macbook Air's have SSD's. Many components inside are not only soldered in place, but also glued, which help holds things together, along with anywhere between 50-100 screws in some cases. HP and Toshiba both had wide use anti-shock technologies in their laptops, but in my opinion their sensors tripped too quickly/easily shutting the PC down or crashing applications at inconvenient times. Those PCs had their own ideas of what a violent action or a drop is. So now a lot of them don't come with that feature.

You're also missing an important point: If the city's standard laptop is a Dell Latitude, then when a cop's laptop breaks, they can issue him a new one and take the old one for repairs. OTOH, it'd be really expensive to add Toughbook repair capabilities to the IT department; they're probably specialized on Latitudes. Police don't drive super-armored vehicles that are impervious to damage from being driven hard and bumping into stuff; they drive vehicles that can be repaired and are easy to handle a fleet of. Laptops need be no different.

True, I've got a late 2011 which is not a solid state. But I see your point. Also cp702 is right, the cost of repairs would be more so on any other systems.