Dell today officially stepped into Panasonic?s turf by unveiling a fully rugged version of its Latitude laptop, the XFR D630, aimed at military personnel, police officers and other folks that need a computer that can hold up well to pretty much any damage inflicted upon it.



Like Panasonic?s Toughbook, the XFR D630 is built with a thick die cast magnesium alloy chassis, a sealed keyboard, and port covers along the sides ? all meant to stand up to dust, moisture, drops, and extreme temperatures.

Starting at $3,899, the 14.1-inch laptop is available with a variety of dual-core Intel Core 2 Duo processors as fast as 2.4 GHz, includes an 80GB hard drive and can be equipped with as much as 4GB of RAM. Dell claims that not only the new Latitude offers 23% more system performance than its Toughbook counterpart, it also offers up to four times the graphics speed.