Panasonic displayed five new Toughbook laptops at Rockingham Speedway in the UK today.

It is replacing the ultra-macho CF-29 and CF-18 with the CF-30 and CF-19. It is also joins the corporate brawl with three new business laptops, the CF-W5, CF-T5 and CF-Y5. These don't conform to the same strict standards the uber-rugged versions do (i.e. no military use standards, mud or sand tolerance) but they do show impressive water resistance and Panasonic's high calibre drop-it-and-it-will-survive feature.

The corporate machines should appeal to important business people needing a little extra reliability. Panasonic claims its rugged laptops are so well built they only show a 3 per cent failure rate per year compared with 25 per cent on average for all laptops.

Its laptops are designed to be upgraded every fives years compared with the industry norm of three.