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First impressions with the Toughbook 5 series
Having conquered the military market Panasonic is now aiming for business users wanting tougher notebooks.
There are a few different models, but the laptop that really caught my eye was the CF-W5. It only weighs 1.37Kg (including battery and wireless card) but is a super tough laptop.
I observed it withstanding water being poured over its keyboard continuously for a minute without the laptop flinching. It achieves this water resistance by being a well sealed unit and it has a hole through the middle of the keyboard, allowing much of the water to drip straight through it.
It then took the full weight of a 95Kg man standing on the top of the closed unit – would anyone else out there trust their laptop not to crack under that kind of mass?!
Panasonic claims 40 per cent of all laptop damage happens because they were dropped when being carried. In response to itself, it says the 5 series will remain operational even after several 30cm drops onto a hard surface. In many instances the laptop will survive 76cm drops, and the hard disk should always survive at this drop.
It has fantastic looks and a great little mouse pad with a scroll feature reminiscent of the iPod's.
I've seen a dozen Toughbooks and back light bleeding is the biggest problem on all of them. On further investigation this is because Panasonic takes an LCD panel from the manufacturer and fits its own, much brighter, backlight. Its backlights aren't a perfect match so the screen looks very uneven.
I wasn't allowed to test drop any of the laptops to verify their claims but we will be getting retail models in for review in the next two weeks.
Posted by Emil Larsen on November 14, 2006 | Permalink
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Posted by: sej33 | 19 Mar 2007 20:08:13
