A few months ago I had the pleasure of touring Itronix's new facilities in Spokane, Washington. The official purpose of the trip was to get an idea of Itronix's path after having been acquired by General Dynamics in September of 2005. Now being part of the US$20 billion-plus conglomerate's C4 Systems, Itronix will be viewed quite differently, and that will also affect the product lines. One of the highlights of the trip was an early non-disclosure presentation by the company's director for the rugged notebook line, Anne Mettler, of a major new product, codenamed "Titan." The machine was going to be called the GoBook XR-1, the first product to be sold under the prestigious General Dynamics brand.

So the XR-1 "Titan" is a new rugged notebook computer that will replace the aging GoBook III. That is a tall order as the GoBook line has a long and illustrious history that includes two Pen Computing Magazine Editor's Choice awards as the best high performance rugged notebook. We always appreciated Itronix's resolve to give its customers state-of-the art performance and technology now rather than letting them wait until a chip generation is already almost obsolete. Where the company had perhaps compromised a bit too much was in the somewhat pedestrian design of earlier GoBook models. Emphasis was clearly on performance and functionality, and less so on dazzling good looks. In the meantime, Itronix has realized that industrial workers, too, appreciate good-looking gear and worked with a major design firm on the new machine.

Setting the bar very high

I learned additional facts. Environmental sealing is at the IP54 level. There are no external antennas (as the older GoBooks had) despite the unit's ability to accommodate no fewer than four radios. Users can turn off individual I/O devices. There is a programmable hardware "Turbo" button. Early testing suggested excellent benchmark performance, exceeding that of the competition. But perhaps the most amazing achievement is the significantly lower weight compared to the predecessor GoBook III. I was told how the Titan team was informed that they had to shave off almost two pounds compared to the older machine, down to 6.5 pounds. Initially no one thought it could be done, and yet they did it. The final design, actually, weighs 6.8 pounds, as it was decided to go for a more powerful 9-cell battery as opposed to the originally specified 6-cell powerpack.

Getting the review unit

Stunning good looks

A first pass around the XR-1

Another advantage of this design approach is that ports can be where they should be instead of where there's room on the motherboard. As a result, the XR-1's interfaces are neatly and conveniently grouped together. On the right side (see picture below) are three USB 2.0 and a serial port on one side of the media bay that usually houses an internal optical drive, and an IEEE1394 FireWire on the other. On the left you find VGA, audio in/out, RJ45 Gigabit LAN, an RJ11 jack for the internal modem, power, and a PC Card Type II slot. You can order the machine with an optional Smart Card or Express54 card reader. The bottom includes a docking connector.

Versatile Media Bay

Keyboard

Handles

Materials

A look inside

The underbelly

Hard drive enclosure and heater

RAM and WLAN compartment

CRMA and other wireless

I should also point out that Itronix always pays special attention to minimum interference and maximum radio performance. That is achieved via proper design, proper shielding, and proper antenna routing and management.

Thermal engineering

However, while the fan removes heat, it makes sense to design the overall system so that heat is dissipated optimally and so that there are no areas prone to overheating. Itronix engineers meticulously studied the heat load on test units by means of an infrared camera and via numerous sensors attached throughout the insides of the computers. That revealed heat flow and hot spots, allowing the engineers to reduce or eliminate them during the design process.

The picture to the left shows the infrared camera pointed at a GoBook XR-1 prototype running various applications and test programs specifically chosen to exercise different parts of the system. The monitor on top grapically shows the heat load data and how it changes over time. The result of this extensive thermal analysis is a remarkably cool-running final design.

Ruggedness

Display and touch screen

Processor, subsystems, and battery life

The XR-1's 1.87MHz Intel Core Duo T2400 processor, 667MHz frontside bus, 2MB of L2 cache, and DDR2 RAM are all state -of-the-art, as is the ATI M22-CSP/32 external graphics controller. There's always a price to pay for performance, and the XR-1's Core Duo setup is a bit on the power-hungry side. Whereas the GoBook III's Intel 745 CPU, also not exactly an economy chip, consumed 24 watts, the XR-1's Core Duo needs 32 watts. To handle that power load, the XR-1 has a powerful 9-cell 80 watt-hour (7,200 mAH, 11.1 Volts) battery that's good for four to six hours. Add the smaller 41 watt-hour secondary battery and that increases to seven hours or more. You can't argue with that.

Security

Software

Bottomline

The GoBook XR-1 has clearly raised the bar for high performance rugged notebooks by a considerable margin. It has done so by offering a near perfect balance of performance, versatility, ruggedness and good industrial design. Yet, the XR-1 is smaller in every dimensions and lighter by almost two pounds than its direct predecessor, the GoBook III. That is a remarkable accomplishment. And one that is certain to give the competiton a very tough challenge to meet.