So what could make a beautiful sunny morning on the shores of Lake Michigan even better?  The answer is simple: Destroying a Toughbook….for science.

Last week, two representatives from The Rugged Store – Aaron “Laptop Destroyer” Kukielski and Claes “Cameraman Extraordinaire” Adler – took a CF-18 Panasonic Toughbook and tried to kill it.  Justifying our actions as “rugged tests” we had to admit to ourselves that we didn’t want to just test it, we wanted to obliterate it.  Starting off with the hazards we knew it could take, we quickly escalated the violence on the poor unit including but certainly not limited to: the “frisbee onto concrete” test and the fan favorite “I’m going to jump on it till it breaks” test.  In it’s defense, the CF-18 was almost a decade old and still put up quite the fight; It not only passed it’s IP65 certifications and drop ratings with flying colors, it also passed tests we fully expected to trash it.  Like all good scientists, we documented each step of the way from working unit to derelict junk..and had way too much fun doing it.

Check out our twitter and youtube next week for the first video episodes of what (we want) to turn into a series: Death of a Laptop.