Quality
Performance
Cost

Pick any 2 and expect the 3rd to be a horrible trade off ;)

That sad I'm interested in rugged laptops - not necessarily military grade, just tougher than your ordinary consumer units and of course cheap and reliable :D
Pointers..?

The stock windows distribution lasts a few seconds before it is either removed or clamped down. You don't have time to be fiddling with linux source code when the people you are designing for are getting shot at:)

Soldiers like stuff that they can use without much training, so they prefer windows which they have used before - same with UAVs which they now control with Xbox controllers.

The key factors for a decent rugged laptop would be standards compliance - see Panasonic Toughbook which is the benchmark for military spec laptops. If it has MIL-810F compliance and it is cheaper than the Toughbooks (CF-19 in this case) then we will buy them.

Bottom line - if you don't know what you are talking about, don't comment.

shouldn't it be using Linux? Is the military really that retarded, that they'd trust a Steve(Jobs or Ballmer) to keep them secure? If they would use Linux, they wouldn't have to trust ANYONE, they could delve into and tweak the source code to their heart's content.