If I had a car and it had a computer, I would want that computer to be the Rugged Mini Fanless PC from Tangent. Designed for use on “factory floors, in the field, mounted to carts or vehicles, or in other harsh environments” the little ‘puter can withstand shock, dust, vibration, extreme temperatures and electro-magnetic interference. And in this latest version, the company’s even done away with a traditional hard disk drive, replacing it with a Compact Flash drive. That’s one less moving part to worry about.

The box weighs only 4 pounds and uses just 6 watts in standby mode, 24 watts when turned on and idle and 44 watts in full use. It runs on Windows XP Pro and you get a choice of Intel Celeron M, Core Solo or Core Duo processors. It also uses a Cisco LEAP-compatible Wi-Fi receiver so you can get your wireless on.

The Rugged Mini is available now directly from Tangent.com with a starting price of $1,195. Kinda pricey, but it’s a specialty computer so you gotta expect that.