There are two kinds of notebook geeks: the anal-retentive guy who keeps the plastic screen protector on his notebook at all times, and The Abuser. You know the type: The Abuser throws his unprotected notebook computer into a messenger bag and rides 10 miles over a dirt trail to work. Within a month, the lid looks like it tangled with a Brillo pad and the hinges are creaking.

It’s The Abuser that the rugged Getac M220 will appeal to. Built to Mil-Spec standards, the M220 is rated to take drops, spills, and sand like no normal notebook would without splintering to pieces. Everything on the M220 is designed for survivability, from the magnesium-alloy shell that’s about as thick as an Abrams tank’s armor, down to the rubber seals over all the ports.

That’s right, there are rubber seals over all the ports, sockets, and other crannies where water or some other unwelcome element could sneak into your rig. The M220 isn’t completely waterproof, but it will take a good dousing of liquid if you happen to be computing too close to the surf on a beach, or in the vicinity of a water-balloon fight.

Getac stuffed the M220’s invincible shell with a low-voltage, 1.4GHz Pentium M 738, 1GB of DDR RAM, a 40GB hard drive, and an optical drive, all hooked up to the Intel 855 chipset. These aren’t top-shelf parts, but Getac’s explanation for not using more powerful components is sound, relating to the notebook’s water and debris resistance: In order to keep the chassis sealed, Getac designed the M220 to be fanless—something you can’t do with the hotter Pentium M models. We can forgive the 40GB HD as it can be upgraded to a 100GB model, but we simply can’t forgive the pathetic optical drive. Our unit came with a CD-ROM drive! We didn’t even know they made read-only CD drives anymore.

To judge the performance of the M220, we compared it with the Compaq NW8240 we reviewed in July. The M220’s CPU runs about 30 percent slower than the Compaq, so the 33-to-37 percent slower scores in Premiere Pro, Photoshop CS, and Divx encoding were expected. In 3DMark03 we got an abysmally low score of 91, thanks to the integrated 855 graphics chip. Our standard DVD playback test wasn’t applicable, as the M220 lacks a DVD drive.

But do you really buy a notebook like this to play Half-Life 2 out in the field? No, you buy a notebook like this so you can take it on an Africa safari to edit your digital images, without worrying about breaking the machine.

To test just how rugged the M220 is, we flipped it off a desktop onto a carpeted floor half a dozen times, sprayed it with liters of water, covered it with dirt, and froze it alongside our Hot Pockets. And in the ultimate Pepsi Syndrome meltdown we dumped a large cherry Slurpee on the M220 and washed it off with hot water. Did the notebook survive? Yup, and without a scratch.

Still, we were put off by a couple usability issues: The mouse buttons are particularly stiff and made our thumbs sore in one afternoon. The handle, while useful, is poorly placed—when the notebook is used on your lap, the handle either flips up and blocks access to the keys, or folds down, where it jabs you in the crotch. It’s not a comfortable way to use a computer. Nevertheless, the M220 is one hell of a tough customer for people who are more interested in portable survivability than playing games or burning optical discs.
—Gordon Mah Ung

Month Reviewed: Holiday 2005

Verdict: 9

+ Predator: You'll break from rough use before the M220 does.

- Aliens: Difficult mouse buttons, and the handle is poorly designed for lap use.

URL: www.getac.com

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