PSA: Toughbook, £250

Just got a flyer in the inbox, Id love an excuse to get one of these:

http://www.morgancomputers.co.uk/product_detail/12615/Panasonic-Toughbook-Tablet-CF18-1-2GHz-Touch-Screen-1-5GB-60GB-XP-Pro/

Yes, the spec is pretty low, but that’s not what Id get it for. Just thought some of the rufty-tufty, lumberjack, sheep-wrangling, outdoorsy folks in here might be tickled by it 🙂

Good for internet in the bath I heard.

We have them at work, they’re not that tough.

what are you doing to them?

hey, and bit quick on the delete button there Drac 😉

If you threw that much water on it then it’d break.

We used to get issues if we took them out in drizzle!

bubble is well and truly popped then. 🙁

what are you doing to them?

We use them for patient records, they get bumped and dropped. The buttons fall off, screens crack, inners break. The promotional videos for them are utter rubbish they don’t put up with much at all.

Edited what edit? 😉

I used to service the 18’s 19’s 28’s 29’s and they are very very tough. At a sales pitch one of our guys put his laptop on the floor drove over it and booted it up without a hitch. We won the contract .They are tough as hell and the abuse the BG engineers give them is testament to that.

The 18 is properly outdated now, but many happy memories of rebuilding them.

Eta Drac, user error matey these things withstand most things. The keys falling off is laughable, must be when your wiping them incorrectly 😉

Withstand most things except falling off the mount, being closed with the styler on the keyboard and some spillage. Tougher than a normal laptop but not as tough as the claims.

Drac – Moderator

what are you doing to them?

We use them for patient records, they get bumped and dropped. The buttons fall off, screens crack, inners break. The promotional videos for them are utter rubbish they don’t put up with much at all

We have them at work too – Bloody awful things. We have a lot of problems with the batteries failing, keys falling off easily and HDDs killing over. The new models are hardly an improvement.

Won’t fit into my Camelback.

we have / had ones like that. Have watched one drop kicked across the room into the bin.

there were a few software issues…

At a sales pitch one of our guys put his laptop on the floor drove over it and booted it up without a hitch.

One of ours had a transit reversed over it, it was very, very broken afterwards.

If you treat them like a hammer/tool of choice then there is not much that you can do to stop them being broken. If you treat them with respect, keep the bungs in and do not throw them around then they will work. We use ours out in all weathers, including rain so heavy that I had to keep tipping the water off to read it, and they do what we need them to. They are the only thing that we can use in such circumstances and are much better than the previous tough laptops that we used to use.

The CF18 are well out of date though.

If you treat them with respect, keep the bungs in and do not throw them around then they will work.

So like any laptop then, the idea behind them is they should put up with being dropped and abused they don’t. I was disappointed having done the training to introduce them and being told how tough they are, in reality they aren’t.

are they, ahem, genuinely “splash” proof ?

My team use CF-19’s and I use a CF-52. They don’t half take some abuse.

my team

Power Rangers?

They are not bad, however our employer likes to ruin laptops with rubbish software. I dropped mine onto concrete after it decided to exit the van after me. It just added some grazes to the lid 🙂 Ours get used in all weather and get bashed about as they are carried from van to worksite to office. I also remember using it (albeit rather carefully) to knock a screwdriver through plasterboard after bruising my hand 🙂

Ours all got swapped out recently so they are probably reconditioned models from a large telecoms company 🙂

They are nice in that there are no real cooling issues or fan noise, pretty silent, and although the touchscreen is no where near the standards of a smartphone, it is nice to use. I suspect it hasn’t got the performance, but would be interesting to see if Windows 8 is even compatible with it?! For those that hadn’t noticed, the screen spins 180 degrees and then closes and the screen flips, onscreen keyboard and stylus etc to make a basic tablet.

The 52 used to be my workshop laptop (but the did hold a buffer of all of our mighty toughbooks)
You should see what the AA boys do to the 28/29’s just another tool for them. Literally.

hora – Member

Power Rangers?

No. Queens Park.

Not all if them are traditional touchscreen either, several models. Finger use touch, stylus specific with mouse click and some other one BG didn’t use.

We worked out over 10 years ago that it was better VFM to run a fleet of normal laptops that were massively cheaper to repair / replace than the Toughbooks. If something looks tough and claims to be tough, numpty users will test it. If it looks like their laptop, they look after it.

I dropped my brand new CF-18 down a customers stairs on the day I got it. The strap handle just came off in my hand as I picked it up and away it bounced. The little plastic screen cover on the side snapped off, so I gaffer taped that back on, and I kept it like that until they were took back out of use.

I had a CF-21(I think) before that, in a Samsonite brief case with a little printer fitted to the back of it. You could kill someone with that. We used to run about with them on the front seat of our vans on a little desk contraption until somebody rolled one and nearly took their head off with it.

We also had a Panasonic P2 mobile phone, that was awful.

Trouble is, produce sonething of this ilk, call it “tough-whatever” & its an invitation to try & prove the mfr wrong. I mean, how the hell do you end up driving a bloody transit over it…!!!
🙂

how the hell do you end up driving a bloody transit over it…!!!

I know a man who did! He put his tools in the van, went back in the house for his laptop, as he was coming back to his van, the customer shouted of him as he’s left something, he put his stuff down, ran back, then came out, jumped in his van and drove off, straight over his laptop that was in front of his van.

I know a lad who drove off with his on his roof too, That one is still in use I believe.