Ruggedized ThinkPad in the Works

I've lately found myself inundated with advertising for Panasonic's legendary Toughbook line of ruggedized notebooks, meant to withstand, hot, cold, water, dust, dropping, and more. It's a strange push for the long-running laptop line... could it be because laptop giant Lenovo, especially popular with the same business buyers that might consider the Toughbook, is about to launch a rugged line of its own?

ThinkPads are already considerably more rugged than your average portable, and I can attest to their sturdiness from both personal use and from seeing the units dissected.

Lenovo's "real" rugged model is something else, though, a hugely beefy machine with rubberized bumpers, a handle, a thick magnesium case, and a wholly sealed chassis that can operate under running water (though, likely, not actually underwater). In other words, it's a machine on par with not just Panasonic but also military-standard specialists Getac and Itronix.

And that begs the question: Are one of the old guard ruggedizers actually designing or building the rugged ThinkPad? The form factor looks awfully familiar...

It may all be for naught anyway. The rugged ThinkPad is available only in China, at least for now. But click through and you can get a nice look at it anyway.