Here’s a demo video of the U1 . Obviously the actors are Panasonic employees, which makes the video’s acting quite comical. Nonetheless, it’s still a good demonstration of what the U1 is capable of.
A clamshell view of the F8
There’s something deceptively fierce-looking about the Panasonic ToughBook CF-F8. This business-ruggedized laptop comes with a handle, daring you to mess with it. So when I snatch it off the Test Center workbench, I’m surprised at how light this tiny ToughBook feels. I expect it to weigh a ton, but it’s a mere 3.7 pounds. Yet inside the hard-plastic case lurks just enough power to handle most conventional tasks. Unfortunately, its price tag may put it out of reach for many people seeking a business laptop.
Since the CF-F8 is supposed to take a beating, I’ll touch on the design first. The reasonably spaced keyboard provides a satisfying amount of give. Yep, in an age of supercool, cut-out Chiclet keys, there’s nothing wrong with an effective (if basic) spill-resistant keyboard. I’m not a fan of having the Del key hiding down by the arrows, but that’s a matter of personal preference–just like the small, circular touchpad. I actually don’t mind swapping a square for a circle. I only take issue when the touch zone is so small; put two fingers together, and that’s about how much room you have to work with for navigating. The two mouse buttons fare a little better, since they’re a good size and they feel responsive (though a bit plastic and hollow).
The CF-F8 comes reasonably well equipped for the on-the-go workaholic. Beyond Bluetooth and Gobi, you’ll find some legacy I/O ports. A PC Card slot and an SDHC flash-card reader sit on one side next to the audio jacks, while the other side has a few old-school outputs (VGA, ethernet, and modem jacks) in addition to three USB 2.0 ports. Though it is nice to see that many USB ports, it would be even nicer if they weren’t all stacked right on top of one another. That may not seem like a big deal, but the second you need to affix a slightly oversize dongle, you’re taking a neighboring USB port out of the picture. And don’t count on having any video chats, either–on the model we received, no Webcam was in sight.
I will say, though, that I like how this machine stows the DVD-RW optical drive under the right side of the wrist rest.
Closed right side view of the F8
When the drive isn’t in use, the system automatically powers it down; but flick the toggle, and the lid pops open. You drop the disc in at a slight angle (a switch from older ToughBooks), and that angle makes removing the disc later a whole lot easier, too.
Now, the usual trade-off when it comes to ruggedized laptops is that you’re sacrificing performance for all of the durability (an enclosed case means that the system needs lower-powered parts that won’t overheat). Not so with the CF-F8. Our review unit came with an Intel Core 2 Duo P9300 CPU and 3GB of RAM, running a 32-bit version of Windows Vista Business, and it scored an 88 in WorldBench 6. At that speed, the CF-F8 is more than fast enough to tackle all your work tasks. Just don’t expect it to be a laptop you’ll be playing around on as well. Though the screen looks good (which I’ll get to in a second), the machine’s lack of a dedicated GPU means that you’re saddled with lackluster graphics performance. At least the laptop managed to hang on for a hair under 6 hours in our battery tests.
Also in the CF-F8, you’ll find a number of other improvements over ToughBooks released a year ago. Whereas a machine last year got by with a muddy display and measly 1024-by-768-pixel resolution, this laptop looks a whole lot better. On the CF-F8’s 1280-by-800-pixel panel, colors pop a little more and don’t get nearly as washed out. Even so, brighter images start to blow out on the matte screen. As for sound, the two grill speakers on the sides of the keyboard, while a marked improvement over a crummy mono tin can, still come off as shallow. In the end, you know that this is a business machine, not a multimedia marvel.
On the software side, the CF-F8 provides a fairly minimalist (but good) set of applications. You get Roxio Creator LJB and Roxio BackOnTrack for data backup and disc creation, and the control panel has an option for the “Panasonic Power Plan Extension Utility,” which will let you squeeze as much extra life out of the machine as possible. The system comes with a PDF manual, as well.
Though it has its drawbacks, the Panasonic ToughBook CF-F8 is certainly a good choice for the disaster-prone businessperson. However, its cost–our configuration sells for $2499–ensures that only well-to-do klutzes will be able to afford this machine.
We (Forbes) dropped the Panasonic CF-30 “Toughbook,” kicked it, stood on it and tried to back over it with a Volkswagen JettaTDi. (That left a mark–on the pavement.)
We poured Diet Coke on the keyboard. Then we used the lid to crush the can.
Nalin, a white tiger from Six Flags, pounces on the CF30
You might think this is unnecessary testing for a laptop. Advertising is always brimming with over-the-top claims. We’ve heard about “durable” notebooks before. But the ones we lug to press conferences seem to be as touchy as a bunch of squirrels. Surely, Panasonic’s claims of toughness are, well, over-the-top.
We found, however, that Panasonic’s Toughbook performed as promised. Fair enough. So we came up with some tests that were decidedly unfair.
We used the Panasonic Toughbook to serve Doritos. Then we crushed the chips to dust between the keyboard and the screen, the same screen we used as a dartboard. The darts poked holes in the screen’s protective coating, but the display underneath remained undamaged. Not a single dead pixel.
So we presented the $3,460 Toughbook to Nalin, a white tiger who lives at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, Calif. Nalin treated it like a cat toy, knocking it to the ground, gnawing on the screen and licking every inch of its surface. He must have smelled those Doritos.
Nalin gnawing on the CF30
The tiger chewed off five keys, but that turned out to be just cosmetic. We could still type without them, and were able to glue four back on later (we made sure Nalin didn’t swallow anything). The fifth just snapped back into place.
Next, Liz, a 10,000-pound Asian elephant, stepped on it, stood on it, dropped it onto a concrete slab, stood on it again–balanced on three legs–and then tossed it around some more. Liz put two small cracks in the laptop’s magnesium alloy lid and popped the hard drive out.
The drive slid right back in to the Toughbook’s chassis, which rebooted without a glitch. The screen was undamaged, although it was hard to see through the tiger hair and congealed drool.
That’s when we remembered: We’re allergic to cats.
10,000 pound elephant test
Five days later, we turned from tests to something better described as execution: We took the laptop to the Jackson Arms firing range in South San Francisco to shoot it with a Ruger Mark III .22 pistol from 15 yards.
Dell declined to loan us a rugged laptop to shoot, saying they didn’t have the “inventory excess to participate this time around.”
Panasonic, meanwhile, was about to have one less notebook. We removed the battery to minimize the mess, and aimed.
Goodbye, Mr. Toughbook.
Or so we thought. We put a bullet through the laptop. Then we booted it up. We were able to log in. Our test file was still there. The screen had a hole in it, but was still usable.
Uh-oh Mr. Toughbook
Spooky. Panasonic has built a laptop that was starting to look more like Grigori Rasputin than James Bond. It took cyanide, a stabbing, a beating and four bullets before the Russian mystic was finally drowned in the icy River Neva. Anyone got some holy water?
Don’t call the Toughbook the anti-Christ, however; call it the anti-netbook. Panasonic’s customers, typically cops and firefighters, the military and businesses want to keep their ownership costs low over the entire lifetime of their gear. No matter what.
As a result, the CF-30 is the product of a business model that’s the opposite of that behind today’s wave of cheap, disposable netbook computers.While the $300 machines you’ll find for sale at Best Buy are available in a wide array of colors and styles, they all come from the same place: low-cost contract manufacturers.
Gotta Love those custom bullet holes!
Panasonic, by contrast, was an electronics manufacturer long before it got into the computer business. It builds many of the components you’ll find in other companies’ laptops, including displays and batteries, says Rance Poehler, who leads Panasonic’s North American computer business.
So rather than outsourcing, Panasonic can put its factories to work building not just tough laptops, but tough parts for those laptops. The Toughbook 30’s hard drive, for example, is itself a minor marvel of engineering: It’s designed to withstand being ripped out at a moment’s notice in the field and is encased in a padded metal shell all its own.
That kind of durability costs more, but customers say it pencils out well enough that they’d buy a Toughbook over a typical notebook. Morris Materials Handling, which sells and services overhead cranes for heavy industry, buys refurbished Panasonic 18s that have seen use in the military for a little more than half the price of new ones. The laptops aren’t indestructible–a 50-foot drop from a crane did one in–but the technician was able to pop out the hard drive, slap it into a new unit, and get back to work.
I think it's missing a couple of keys....
Durability, however, is about more than taking a drop or a surviving an elephant attack. Henry King at ArborMetrics Solutions, which keeps trees and other foliage out of the way for utilities across the U.S., has deployed 70 Toughbooks. Just the road vibrations caused by putting a laptop in a car and driving 40,000 to 50,000 miles a year to service its customers’ infrastructure has killed many laptops, King says. By contrast, Panasonic’s hard drives can suck it up.
As for our test laptop, it had been through enough. It was time to put the beast down. The Toughbook CF-30 is elephant- and tiger-resistant. It can take a .22 at close range and continue working. We needed something that would leave a bigger hole.
So we borrowed a Springfield 1911 in .45 ACP. Most cops use comparatively dinky 9-millimeter pistols. This classic 39-ounce piece is more hand cannon than handgun.
I don't think the screen is salvageable
A shot with the 1911 from 15 yards took the Toughbook down. To be sure it didn’t stagger back up, we followed up with a .44 magnum revolver and a solid lead slug from a 12-gauge shotgun. Then we packed up the Toughbook and sent it back to Panasonic.
Pansonic Toughbook CF-27 On Fire
“One of our deputies drove to our patrol office and went inside for roll call. The brakes on his car must have been locked and heated to a combustible temperature and caught fire while the deputy was in the building. It wasn’t until a citizen passing by noticed the flames coming from the engine compartment that the fire department was dispatched.
The deputy had a Panasonic Toughbook CF-27 mounted in the the driver’s compartment of the car. It was estimated that the temperature inside the driver’s compartment reached upwards of 1000 degrees. The dash board was melted and everything in the glove box was incinerated. The laptop screen was down and the computer was off at the time. The fire department extinguished the flames, drenching the laptop with hundreds of gallons of high pressure water.
After the fire was out, the laptop was removed from the vehicle and placed in a plastic garbage bag. No attempt was made to dry or clean off the computer. I was given the computer two days later and put it in the back of my truck because it smelled so bad of smoke. After it had aired out for a week I took it into my office to see what I could salvage from the computer. I was doubtful there would be anything usable. I noted the back of the laptop had experienced such intense heat that it melted some of the ports. Just for fun, I hit the power switch and was shocked when I saw the hard drive and battery lights come on. I watched in amazement as the LCD lit up and the computer booted to windows without a hitch. These are the TOUGHEST computers in the world! This is the reason why we have been loyal Panasonic customers for the last 10 years!”
-Sgt. David Northcraft, Information Technology Manager, Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office