When you look at the market for standard-size rugged notebook computers, it's primarily a race between offerings from Panasonic, Getac, and GD-Itronix. Dell has ruggedized versions of some of its commercial notebooks, and there are some Taiwan-based OEMs that have been making inroads. Getac, however, is definitely one of the major players, and it's probably fair to say that Panasonic and GD-Itronix are their major competition.

In terms of dimensions, weight and display size, rugged notebooks in this class have 13.3-inch displays with the old 4:3 aspect ratio, and they weigh around eight or nine pounds. The B300 has a footprint of 11.9 x 10.3 inches (the substantial magnesium handle with a group of indicator lights in its base adds another inch and a quarter), and our latest review machine weighed in at 8.75 pounds, including handle and battery. The B300 is also about 2.4 inches thick, so this is no ultra-thin or lightweight. Size and weight, however, are about standard in this class. You don't slip a computer like the B300 into a briefcase, but this fully rugged warrior is really only a couple of pounds heavier than today's commercial full-size wide-screen notebooks.

When they originally designed this fanless machine, Getac engineers faced the challenge of dissipating the heat of a fairly powerful processor. They did this by using a total of almost three feet of copper heatpiping that removed the heat generated by the primary chips. Amazingly, despite switching to a faster chip with a 50% higher thermal design power (25 versus 17 watts), Getac managed to stay with a fanless design, and how they did it becomes obvious once you remove the inside of the bottom cover. It uses the same thermal engineering principles as used in the original B300: heat spreader plates press against the CPU and chipset via thermally conductive material, the heat spreader plates connect to copper heat pipes, and the copper heat pipes are secured to the Magnesium alloy backplate. While the overall thermal design method remains the same, heat is spread (and dissipated) much more efficiently by expanding copper heat piping by about 50%; the B300 uses about 48 inches of copper heat piping versus only about 32 inches in the older unit. Outside, a sheet of thin, hard plastic is glued onto the surface, either to provide additional protection against scratching, or to make for a cooler touch when held in your hands.

Below you can see the original B300's thermal design solution (left), and the significantly beefed-up solution of the new B300 (right) that allowed operating a 2GHz Core i7 processor, and now an even more powerful 2nd generation 2.3GHz Core i7 CPU, without fan. That is remarkable.

The bottom of the unit consists of a contoured magnesium alloy plate with a continuous O-right style seal along the entire perimeter. It is held securely in place by 18 small Philips screws (they come in different sizes and some have washers whereas others do not; standardizing would be better). The whole assembly has an industrial high-tech look that always differentiates Getac machines.

The sole door in the bottom plate has eight rounded corner -- no mere rectangles here -- and is also neatly and precisely sealed via foam pressing against an o-ring-style metal lip. The door is secured with six small Philips screws and provides access to the unit's two SO-DIMM slots (in our unit populated with a single 2GB DDR3 1066/1333 module).

The hard disk caddy (see image to the right) is a remarkably intricate affair consisting of a metal outer housing heavily padded with different types of foam and neoprene. The optical drive in our unit was a Sony Optiarc AD-7717H DVD/CD rewritable drive.

The battery is a powerful 11.1 Volt/8,700mAH 96 watt-hour unit (up from 87 watt-hour in the last generation B300) with a built-in battery gauge that shows charge status via five green lights upon pressing the button next to it. You can't see the charge meter when the battery is installed in the unit, but it comes in handy when you carry spare batteries around. The battery can be removed if the unit is plugged in, but it is not hot-swappable.

As a full-size rugged notebook, the B300 comes with a full complement of ports, all of which are protected either by rubber plugs or hinged doors. The pictures below right show the left and the right side of the B300, both with the doors open and closed.

On the left side of the unit are the Media Bay and access to the main battery. The Media Bay is protected by a hinged door that snaps closed when two hooks engage. A spring-loaded lever releases the hooks. The door seals tightly when closed. The battery compartment has a double-locking mechanism. First you move a small lever to unlock the main lever. Then you move a larger lever to fully release the door. Both levers go hard and it is unlikely that they'll ever open by accident.

On the right side you find access to the hard disk, expansion ports, and a variety of other ports. The hard disk caddy sits behind a double-lock door like the one used for the battery on the other side. The door closes and seals securely, but it cannot be locked, and thus provides potentially unwanted access to the hard disk. On the other hand, military and other customers often require the ability to quickly and easily remove the hard disk. A hinged plastic door with a rubber pressure seal protects the stacked PC Card Type II and ExpressCard 34/54 slots and two USB 3.0/eSATA ports. A compartment next to it has separate microphone and headphone jacks, a IEEE1394 "FireWire" port, an HDMI port, a springloaded SD card slot, and an (unmarked) RF switch that turns all installed radios on or off. Next to that is yet another door that protects and seals the RJ-45 gigabit LAN jack as well an the RJ11 landline jack for those who still use modems.

What's new here is the even fuller commitment to the USB 3.0 standard. USB 3.0 is the next major rev of the Universal Serial Bus that's theoretically up to 10 times faster than USB 2.0 (4.8Gbps vs. 480Mbps). In addition, USB 3.0 allows reading and writing at the same time, uses less power (but can supply more power when needed), and is backward compatible with USB 2.0 (but you need 3.0 cables to take full advantage of the new speed and features). Now what's eSATA that two of the B300's USB ports also supports? Essentially an external version of the internal SATA bus that is almost exclusively used for external hard disks. eSATA is fast, too, maxing out at 3Gbps.

Along the backside of the B300, which is unchanged compared to the original design, are the individually sealed power jack and an also individually sealed USB 3.0 port. The better part of the backside is taken up by a large hinged door that covers two 9-pin DB9 serial ports and a 25-pin video port. The cover has an integrated sliding door that provides access to the expansion bus connector even while the main door is closed. On the right side is a Kensington lock slot, and there are two D-rings for a carry strap.

Most of the doors have metal hinges that are screwed onto the body and the actual door via two Philips screws each, making replacements very easy.

The front of the unit does not have any connectors or ports other than two small speakers to the left and right of the LCD case clasp. There wouldn't be room for anything else as most of the front is taken up the large, impressive looking magnesium handle that is screwed onto the system side of the computer. There are, however, five indicator lights built into the right side of the handle base. They show the status of power, battery, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS.

The B300's 89-key keyboard is full-scale. It has black keys with white labels. Instead of using less legible blue for function key combos, Getac used white for those labels also, but placed them in little white square boxes. Here's what the two versions look like:

Below the keyboard is a small and slightly recessed (so you can feel its boundaries in the dark) touchpad and two mouse buttons. The touchpad is on the smallish side, but it's much more responsive than the one on its arch nemesis, the Panasonic 31. To the right is a fingerprint reader that has its own sliding door.

Both available keyboards have a red backlight that can be set to come on automatically. It's pleasant and clearly illuminates the keys in semi and full darkness. One potential problem is that when viewed from an angle, the red illumination peeking out between keys can overwhelm the actual illumination of the key.

Above the keyboard are five hardware pushbuttons. From left to right, they are:

• Power
• P1 function button (turned display on and off on our unit)
• ECO button for engaging power conservation mode under battery power
• High-Bright button (turns display to full 1,400 nit power)
• Light sensor (engages light sensor adjustment of display brightness)

The latter is likely why Getac yet again updated a machine that was already an excellent performer thanks to a 2.0GHz Intel Core i7-620LM processor (which actually remains available). But with Intel now calling its initial Core i5/i7 chips "previous generation" and the second generation Core chips using a 32 nanometer manufacturing process and now combine processor, memory controller, and graphics on the same die (as opposed to being separate circuitry on one package), Getac felt it had to act. Integrated graphics are faster, too, in the new chips, and there are additional power savings, new chipsets, and additional or improved Intel features (especially in HD video and such). All this made an upgrade almost mandatory.

As a result, the latest B300 models now come either with a 2.3GHz Core i7 2649M or a 2.5GHz Core i5 2520M processor. Our test unit had the i7 chip that can operate at up to 3.2GHz in turbo mode (Intel's turbo mode allows the chip to incrementally overclock itself if certain conditions are met). The picture to the right shows a promo pic of the new "Sandy Bridge" Core processors. The 2649M is part of the "mobile" lineup and, with a thermal design power of 25 watts, is considered "low voltage."

In order to get a sense of where the latest B300's performance level stands compared to its predecessors and its major competitors, we installed the CrystalMark benchmark suite that tests various subsystems and then provides an overall score. The results are below, and for comparison we added the prior and the original B300, the last Panasonic 31 we had in our lab (the latest models now have i5-2540 processors), as well as the recently introduced GD-Itronix 8200.

What does all of this newly enhanced performance mean for the new B300's battery life? The competition has set the bar pretty high in this class, with the Panasonic 31 and the GD-Itronix GD8200 both reaching well over eight hours of theoretical battery life in our tests. The first generation B300, too, was a power-mizer and managed to reach a theoretical maximum battery life of almost 12 hours, and the prior i7-equipped B300 benchmarked a theoretical maximum battery life of 8 to 10 hours, and around three hours or so in full-power mode with the display set to maximum brightness (which on the B300 is VERY bright).

Running our standard BatteryMon benchmark with the new B300 in ECO mode (radios off, LCD lowest, etc.) we recorded a power draw of as little as 6.5 watts, good for well over 14 hours. We then set the B300 to high-performance mode, with radios on, and the display to normal brightness. This only increased power draw to about 9 watts (the predecessor used 17 watts in this mode), still good for ten hours or so. We then turned on the super-bright backlight, and power draw rose to 21 watts (28 watts in the predecessor). Setting the machine to power saver mode, but leaving the LCD in full-bright mode, reduced draw to 25 watts.

Getac's own G-Manager utility also includes a Battery status screen and it pretty much confirmed the results we'd seen on BatteryMon. G-Manager showed a minimum draw that was a bit higher at around 7.5 watts, and maximum draw of about 23 watts. Given the B300's powerful 96 watt-hour battery, this would translate in a theoretical maximum battery life of about 13 hours, and still a good 4.5 hours or so in full-power mode with the display set to maximum brightness.

Below is a screen capture of the very useful Getac G-Manager utility.

As always, real world mileage will vary. Minimum draw in a test lab is not an accurate predictor of actual battery life. However, it appears that the power management of the 2nd generation Intel Core chips has once again improved dramatically. Combine that with Windows 7's good power management and Getac's own extensive power management settings, and this latest B300 is significantly more power-efficient than its predecessor. Getac's claim of 13 hours seems possible, and twice that via an optional second battery that goes into the media bay en lieu of the optical drive. Do keep in mind, though, that power settings do affect clock speed.

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