Panasonic Toughbook CF-W2

Pick up this notebook and you won't be thinking 'tough'; the silver plastic that covers the lid feels like it may collapse at the slightest knock. But this just shows how deceptive looks can be, as the Toughbook is surprisingly sturdy. Underneath that plastic lies magnesium alloy, which is used throughout the chassis, and the CF-W2 lived up to Panasonic's promise that it will survive a 30cm drop when we did our own test.

Anyone familiar with Panasonic's old range of Toughbooks will also be surprised by just how good looking the CF-W2 is. This brings us to the Toughbook's other unique feature: the optical drive, or rather its opening mechanism. A whole quarter of the upper casing, including the circular touchpad, lifts up to reveal a CD-writing and DVD-reading combo drive. While this seems like a gimmick, it's quite a good one and allows Panasonic to keep the overall thickness of the CF-W2 down to a minimum, providing more sleek edges and further improving its looks.

However, two problems arise from this: there's no way of getting a disc out without switching the CF-W2 on and it drastically reduces the real estate for the keyboard. Panasonic has made the most of a bad situation, arranging the keys as best it can, but touch typists should look elsewhere.

The aforementioned circular touchpad is a bit of a mixed blessing, as while the pad itself is responsive and easy to manage, the positioning of the buttons and their slim size make them rather irritating in use. On the plus side, though, you can still use the pad when the optical drive is open.

The CF-W2 holds its own on the port and feature front. As the screen folds round the back when opening, all the ports flank the left and right sides of the Toughbook. Two USB 2 ports, headphone, mic sockets and a VGA out occupy the left side, while a Type II PC Card slot sits above an SD card slot on the right. Rubber flaps bring further protection to the modem and 10/100 Ethernet ports.

Considering the Toughbook's size, this is quite an impressive collection of ports, and don't forget 802.11b WLAN is also built in. If you're looking for a notebook to slip unnoticed into a bag, there are only a few competitors, with Fujitsu's P5020 (see issue 111, p56) being the most obvious.

On the surface, the P5020 should pull away. It has a higher spec - with a 1GHz Pentium-M processor, 512MB of RAM and 60GB hard disk compared to the Toughbook's core spec of 900MHz, 256MB and 40GB - and it costs £200 less. But when it comes to portability, the Toughbook holds all the aces.

For starters, the Toughbook is 100g lighter at 1.3kg -Êand when you get to ultra portables, every gram counts. But even more important than that, the CF-W2 offers exceptional battery life. Even under our intensive test, where we push the processor demands to 100 per cent and set the screen level to maximum, the Toughbook held steady for three hours - one of the longest times ever recorded. And where the P5020 gave out after four hours of light usage, the Toughbook produced a mighty showing of well over seven hours.

However, if you're looking for a powerful notebook, the Toughbook will undoubtedly disappoint. The 900MHz Pentium-M processor was only enough for a score of 0.73 in our benchmarks, which looks mediocre compared to the majority of notebooks and was 10 per cent slower than the Fujitsu. Then again, the CF-W2 is still more than fast enough for running the kind of programs people are likely to use an ultra portable for - it was tasks like media creation and database work that pulled the Toughbook down.