Product Reviews

If my memory serves correctly, Panasonic's first hardened notebook, the CF-25, was developed with the needs of the field engineers and repairmen of British Gas in mind. Fortunately for the rest of us, Panasonic has since recognised that you don't have to be an engineer to destroy a notebook. The result is a shift in presentation: while the CF-25 was unashamedly butch, its latest successor now has a name as well as a code, and has gone from anodised black to a trendy metallic silver finish. Enter the Toughbook, the 'business ruggedised' (says Panasonic) accessory for the white-collar hard man.

Joking aside, Panasonic has a valid point. It's a sad fact, but too many notebooks just aren't robust enough to cut it in the real world. The Toughbook, on the other hand, is built to take it right on the chin. So despite the initial price premium, overall cost of ownership (for that, read repairs) could be lower than that of more conventional machines.

As you'd expect, Panasonic has favoured magnesium alloy rather than moulded plastic for the case and lid, so accidental knocks won't result in cracks, and the screen should be safe from crush damage too. Dropping notebooks is, of course, an occupational hazard, to which end Panasonic sensibly furnishes the Toughbook with a very solid yet comfortable carrying handle.

The keyboard and mousepad are splash-proofed - and the designers have minimised the number of cut-outs to avoid weakening the case. There's a multipurpose bay at the left, which can house either the default floppy drive or options including a 24-speed CD-ROM or an LS-120 drive.

The battery and hard disk are stored under the hinged palm-rest to preserve the case integrity as much as possible. Access is easy enough,

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although you'll need to have a coin or key handy to unlock the slot on the left-hand side. This unusual but highly secure approach is very much in keeping with the overall design objectives.

As with previous Toughbooks and the original CF-25, the hard disk is enclosed in a polymer gel wrap to give the best possible protection against shock damage. According to Panasonic, all the potentially detachable motherboard components are sealed in place to prevent them working their way loose through vibration and shocks. Despite the extra weight from the carrying handle and the alloy casing, the Toughbook is a manageable 3.1kg, which is less than I expected, and while it may be tough it has a reasonably compact footprint and the case's thickness doesn't compromise on comfort.

The keyboard has a rather light action, which seems a little out of place on such a solid machine; I'd also have preferred to see larger Backspace and Enter keys. Typing is comfortable enough, but the mousepad is annoyingly insensitive and patchy in its response. This is a pity as it offers the potentially very useful secondary feature of signature capture, allowing you to sign documents as if on paper.

The review sample had a 12.1in 800 « 600 resolution TFT screen, although a 13.3in XGA version is also available. The screen size and resolution are fairly basic by current standards, but the panel is reasonably bright and also supports undithered 18-bit colour.

Power management is initially handled by controls in the BIOS (which supports the new ACPI standard), with the usual key combination triggers for suspend and power management disable. The lithium ion battery should keep you going for two to two and a half hours under normal conditions.

In my opinion, there are one or two things that could have been done differently, like the inclusion of a CD-ROM drive as standard and not as a £199 extra; the same applies to the optional cable for running the floppy drive externally. You could also argue that the Toughbook isn't very impressive speed-wise, which is true, but this isn't always the prime consideration as far as notebooks are concerned. To be fair, the Toughbook's durability is of sufficient merit in its own right to take the sting out of performance shortcomings and, to an extent, the relatively high price too.