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Notebooks for Rough People

Posted by Roblimo on from the takes-a-licking-and-keeps-on-computing dept.

snack writes "Hey guys, I was surfing around, and somehow I came across Panasonic Tough Book. These things look uber cool, magnesium casings and all. They've also got shock resistant lcd's and hard drives. Water proof, and dust proof. Very very kick ass." Okay. Finally I'm gonna jump on the Slashdot "I gotta have one of these!" bandwagon. (My tongue is hanging out as I type.) Update: Yes, we know hardened laptops aren't new, but this is an exceptionally slim, light, and cute one. -Roblimo

1 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. I've got one, a CF-25 by ratchet69 · · Score: 3
    I got an older CF-25 (the full mill-style one.) It's the first model, with plastic(!) doors over the PCMCIA slots. I understand that they went to Aluminum with the CF-27. Also, this one is only waterproof from the top, as there are some non-sealed holes on the bottom for the floppy release, etc. There is a very heavy handle on mine, which I use to tie the Eithernet cable to so it doesn't pull out when I trip over it. There's a plastic glare shield over the screen that seems to protect it ok.

    I have the 12" dstn, which works well and uses a CT 65550 with 2MB ram, and works ok with Xfree. I understand the TFT CF-25's used a neomagic chip with one meg.

    I've yet to get the cardbus to work with a 2.2 kernel, I'm using pcmcia-cs-2.9.12 with kernel 2.0.37. Oh, yah, and the serial port drops bytes, and I've read (on deja) that it drops bytes in some dos apps, too.

    Also, the bios didn't understand my Linux partition, kept prompting me to stick in my Windblows cd, so I now boot a tiny dos partition, which runs loadlin. Poo!

    I've opened mine up, and all the internals say "(c)IBM" all over them. It's pretty heavy duty inside. It's not just a mag case, the main body is a very heavy casting, with a mag cover that covers the disk and batt. compartment on the bottom, and a cover on the top deck that might be plastic. The HD sits in a jelly-like molded compartment, and is not screwed to anything. It took three minuts to stick in a bigger drive. There's a spot in the bottom for a SO-DIMM, which Panasonic claims is proprietory, but a generic worked for me.

    On the good side, I've so far spilled coffee on it, carried it in a duffel with lots of other junk, dropped it down the stairs, stepped on it, dropped it off my desk while running, and dropped it from five feet a bunch of times to scare my co-workers, all without damage (although the black paint does scratch off eventually.) I'm kinda hard on laptops, and this one is holding up much better so far than any other one I've owned. The big benifit to me so far is that I just don't worry about breaking it, or bumping my bag into walls, or whatever.