RM Mobile One vs Viglen Futura Durus

[dgsmith]

We may be looking to buy some more student laptops during the summer (quite some time off, but just testing the water at the moment), and noticed that Viglen do a similar unit here (it does look nearly identical) with all the usual rubber around the edges, shock proof etc.

 

Has anyone gone the viglen route? Is it at all cheaper than RM's Mobile One solution? Is there any price guides or would we need to get an account manager there to get an idea of costs?

 

Apart from appearance, is there any other difference or anything which would make them hard to implement (CC4)?

[Ric_]

That Viglen unit looks incredibly similar to the RM one. AFAIK the RM model is OEMed from ASUS so I wouldn't be surprised if they are the same.

 

Saying that, my RM Mobile One's lid catch broke at the weekend - so much for ruggedised!

[dgsmith]

You're right - RM OEM the Asus Z91E as you can pick up Asus parts (such as keyboard and battery) for them on ebay.

 

We also have trouble with the lid catch breaking - terrible, terrible design and makes the claims of being break-proof laughable (even when the kids haven't broken them on purpose too)!

[dgsmith]

If noone has seen this, then maybe it is time to start enquiring, even if just to get some like-for-like competition, as we struggle to find alternate quotes when buying student laptops, given RM use the "child proof" arguement, which to an extent is fair enough. Would be even better if these laptops are OEMed from the same Asus model!

[Ric_]

@dgsmith: The only other laptop of similar build that I've seen were the Dell XPS-series but I'm not sure if these have been discontinued.