As we've informed you over the past couple of months, AIS (or American Industrial Systems) has been pretty busy in 2009, combining the “rugged,” “touchscreen” and “Intel Atom” concepts in a wide array of variants that target especially those specific applications where ruggedness really is an important issue, such as agriculture, transportation, as well as fleet and asset management applications.

And now, AIS is back with two more such products, namely 8.4-inch and 10.4-inch rugged computing systems that make good use of the Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz processor for a variety of purposes, all of which, however, involve some pretty adverse environment conditions. And since these thing are likely to receive quite a hefty amount of shocks, they come equipped with either solid state drives (SSDs) or compact flash-based solutions.

The ruggedized panel PCs are constructed of aluminum-magnesium alloy housings for maximum protection. Specialized vehicle mounting brackets are available or use the standard VESA spacing holes for quick and easy mounting. Additional enhancements are available such as Anti-corrosion coatings, wide voltage range input, Sunlight Readability Enhancements, and Touch screen integration to customize the panel PC to the customer's exact requirements.

Furthermore, AIS has taken these rugged systems through some pretty serious testing procedures, the final results proving the fact that they are very well protected against shocks, vibrations, extreme temperatures, dust, water and so on, thus making sure that these devices will be able to work no matter what. For this reason, the rugged panel PC is not only limited to vehicle and agriculture application, as its sturdy design allows it to be deployed in marine, military, mobile communication, and warehousing applications.

Unfortunately, though, AIS has not offered any pricing details regarding these rugged systems, but, to tell you the truth, we weren't really expecting it to, given the nature of the target segment.


We are just a few, but there are many of you, Softpedia users, out there. That's why we thought it would be a good idea to create an email address for you to help us a little in finding gadgets we missed. Interesting links are bound to be posted with recognition going mainly to those who submit. The address is .