Inspecting gadgets

ACN rounds up the latest and greatest executive gadgets, from HP’s military-spec laptop to the latest Dell desktop.

HP EliteBook 6930p

It’s a bold move, naming your newest creation the Elitebook – tantamount to painting a big fat juicy red target on your back for other vendors to take potshots at.

HP isn’t scared, though – and its new EliteBook 6930p is literally, tough enough to take on all comers. The “aircraft-inspired” – their words, not ours – laptop has been beefed up with a magnesium alloy chassis and anodised-aluminium exterior rated to US military standards of extreme temperature, humidity, dust and shock. You’d best not look too closely into those standards, though, and just assume this notebook will survive a fall well, rather than expecting it to live through being run over by a Challenger tank.

While the spec sheet is an unexceptional read – a range of Core2 Duo processors up to 2.8GHz, up to 4Gbytes of RAM and 160Gbytes of HDD space with all the usual connectivity present and accounted for – what’s more interesting is some of the clever ways HP has differentiated the Elitebook.For instance, it boasts a built-in start-up OS, QuickLook, which can run e-mail and selected apps without running the complete Vista start-up cycle. The Elitebook’s webcam also doubles as a business card reader – very handy for the travelling executive who doesn’t have time to manually enter info.

Finally, for those of you who worry about losing sensitive data – well, worry some more, as the Elitebook claims to have US Department-of-Defence-level file-deletion capabilities to protect sensitive data. All of this may be a little overkill for the discerning exec who just wants to watch the occasional inflight film – while battling ninjas obviously.