Panasonic’s Toughbooks get tougher

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

Panasonic are today launching the latest updates to their Toughbook laptop range. The fully ruggedized CF-30 and CF-19 Tablet models have now reached mk3 status, while the semi-ruggedized CF-52 crashes the party in its newly revamped mk2 guise.

Take a quick glance at the photographs and even the most avid of Toughbook laptop-spotters would have trouble noticing any revolutionary changes, but as Panasonic were keen to stress, the new models show the all the hallmarks of a subtle, careful evolution.

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First look: Panasonic’s 8-series Toughbooks

Thursday, October 23rd, 2008

Panasonic has today unveiled the latest refresh of its Toughbook range. Three models have been launched – the 12.1in CF-W8 and CF-T8 models and the all-new 14.1in CF-F8.

They don’t just look tough, however. All the Toughbooks boast the usual 76cm drop resistance, and are rated to cope with 100kg of weight bearing down on their lids. Meanwhile, the keyboards and trackpads are designed to withstand accidental water spillages thanks to a neat drainage system which funnels water away from the delicate components.

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First look: Sony’s all-new ultraportable – the TT

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008

We caught our first glimpse of Sony’s legendary TZ-series back in 2007. The first moment we clapped eyes on Sony’s VGN-TZ11XN/B was the beginning of a love affair to remember.

Picture the scene – before netbooks were even a distant, cheeky glint in Asus’ eye, Sony furnished us with a ground-breaking business ultraportable that weighed in at a frankly, unbelievable 1.2kg. Its svelte figure was hitherto unmatched by the opposition, and its looks were married with 7+ hour battery life and surprisingly capable performance, courtesy of its low-voltage Intel Core 2 Duo processor. 

Since then we’ve seen the incremental TZ21 and TZ31 refreshes come and go, but now Sony has completely revamped the series. The TZ has evolved into the TT.

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First look: Toshiba Portégé R600

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

At first glance, there’s very little to distinguish the R600 from the R500, but the devil is in the detail. For one, Toshiba has strengthened the base – protecting the all-important motherboard – by adding ridges for extra rigidity.

It also claims to have made the screen better protected, with Toshiba’s interesting spin being that the lid’s flexibility – which might initially make people feel that the R600 is a bit fragile – actually increases its reliability. Certainly we gave it a good old flex and it stayed in shape, which is fortunate as this was the one European sample.

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First look: Samsung’s ultraportable X-series – the 13.3″ X360 and 14.1″ X460

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

With netbooks stealing all the headlines in the sub-2kg market, it’s refreshing to see that the big manufacturers are still making premium ultraportables for £1000+ budgets. After all, netbooks might be fine for surfing the net or tapping out the odd email, but still don’t offer a combination of power, screen resolution and features which can truly replace a fully-featured ultraportable laptop.

It was only last week that we took a good, hard look at Sony’s latest business-focussed ultraportable, the VGN-Z11WN/B, and now hot on its lightweight heels is Samsung’s newly refreshed X-series.

We managed to get a closer look at two models from the range, the 13.3” X360 and the 14.1” model, the X460.

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First look: Toshiba Qosmio F50-10Z

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

While we have seen a trickle of Centrino 2 laptops arriving in the PC Pro Labs of late – the Sony VAIO FGN-FW11ZU and Advent 5511 are two of the more recent examples – the new Toshiba Qosmio F50-10Z has to be one of the most exciting, at least based on first impressions.

The keyboard, for instance, is surrounded by a chrome border which extends to the pair of unusually-shaped mouse buttons, and the panel of touch-sensitive controls above the keyboard glow white, rather than the more reserved blue we’ve seen from Dell’s XPS laptops.

Audio is provided by a pair of harmon/kardon speakers – similar to those in the Toshiba Satellite P300 – and volume is altered by a circular control just below the keyboard. Predictably, it’s chrome-covered and bordered with bright white light. There’s also a huge Qosmio logo that arches its way across the lid, as if you didn’t know that this extroverted notebook had been designed, from the ground up, to entertain.

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First look: Acer’s new TravelMate laptops

Thursday, July 17th, 2008

With the launch of the Centrino 2 platform, we’re expecting to see a flurry of activity from all the major manufacturers as they refresh their current ranges – or launch entirely new ones, as we saw from Sony yesterday – that are able to proudly bear the Centrino 2 sticker.

Accordingly, Acer has launched an updated range of TravelMate notebooks that fully embrace the new platform. Five laptops run the size gamut from 12.1in to 17in screens, but all promise plenty of power thanks to the inclusion of new processors. The 17in TravelMate 7730G includes the Intel Core 2 Duo T9600, T9400, P9500, P8400 or P8600 – with clock speeds ranging from 2.26GHz to 2.8GHz.

The rest of the specification promises more than enough performance for business users, too: there’s 2GB of RAM, the chance to include GeForce 9000M-series discrete graphics and one or two hard disk drives, with sizes ranging from 120 to 320GB. The entire range supports draft-n wireless, and the 6593G, 6493G and 6293G can all be equipped with optional HSDPA connections.

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First look: Sony VAIO BZ-Series

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

Aimed at mainstream and, dare we say it, slightly conservative business users, the BZ-Series – which replaces the BX-Series -  doesn’t come with some of the features boasted by the rest of the new VAIO range.

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