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Panasonic Toughbook 51 anyone?

post #1 of 10
3/5/05 at 12:32am
Thread Starter 
Looking for a tough notebook to sit in a floor mount on my 4x4 truck cab by day for GPS mapping duty. And show DVD movies at night in the camper.
The Panasonic Toughbook 51 seems to fill those purposes, but can't find any reviews of it. Anyone out there have one or any of the Panasonics toughbooks???
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post #2 of 10
3/5/05 at 12:47am
There tough, but there pricy.
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post #3 of 10
3/5/05 at 2:13am
Toughbooks are well named. They are THE best built laptop computers in the industry with the absolute best warrantee. If you have a problem anywhere in the world anytime during the first 3 years after you bought one, Panasonic will fix it for you on the spot, as I understand it. However, like MyDayStrong said, they're expensive. Count on double or more the price of a comparably specced notebook. If you're only using it for GPS and watching DVDs, though, I wouldn't buy a notebook computer at all. You can save lots of money by getting a portable DVD player and a GPS unit. Just my two cents worth.
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post #4 of 10
3/5/05 at 2:33am
they are more for military and law enforcement use, they are not fast at all but you can throw them off a cliff, they have a magnisium alloy casing, same material ferarri uses for their rims, its ultra tough, ultra light, ultra expensive. i dont recommend the panasonic for personal use.
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post #5 of 10
3/5/05 at 3:01am
Thread Starter 
Well, there's more to traveling in a camper then GPS and Videos, I use my laptop for email and internet with cell phone hook up, still photo work, and mapping, I already have a stand alone GPS wired to my current laptop running Delorme Topo and Microsoft Streets. And since I'm retired, there' a lot of road out there...

Western washboard roads in fishing and hunting country are very hard on PC's even with a shock absorbing floor mount. I see the base price Toughbook 51 at $ 1674.00 with the Pentium M, 1.6 Ghz and 40 GB shock mounted hard drive with 15" XGA screen. That's $ 900 cheaper than what my 5 year old Gateway 9150 cost me in 1999, and it's a full Magnesium case with floppy and DVD-ROM\CD-RW. I know I could get an all plastic model with more bells and whistles for that, but I'm not even using all that this puny 300 Mhz, 6.3GB Gateway has now...

I would really like to hear from someone using one, and about Panasonic's technical support.
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post #6 of 10
3/5/05 at 3:25am
The 51 isn't a ruggedized case - it may have the magnesium alloy case and 'shock mounted' hard drive (read: internal gel/foam pads), but it's nowhere near a real toughbook. At almost 7 pounds and 2 inches thick, it looks like just a heavy laptop with normal specs at a high price.

It's also not military standard, which means it hasn't been ruggedized (or semi-ruggedized) for drops or spills. (Something even the Twinhead N15RB has).

It's only a toughbook in name, really. The real toughbooks, which most here in the thread mention, are the expensive but durable ones. You're paying a lot of extra money for a gelpad under the hard drive and an alloy case with no drop testing, which would come in handy in a shaky situation.
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post #7 of 10
3/5/05 at 3:09pm
my asus has a gelpad thingy under the HDD, what EXACALY can it really do? its not very big and i dont think its going to absorb alot of vibration
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post #8 of 10
3/5/05 at 4:57pm
It's for shock absorbtion.
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post #9 of 10
3/5/05 at 9:41pm
Thread Starter 

Twinhead?

Must admit, have not seen Twinhead products before. Interesting, meets more mil-spec then "toughbook" at lower price. Anyone seen a review of them or using????
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post #10 of 10
3/5/05 at 11:32pm
Thread Starter 

Need new thread now

Guess I'll start a new thread " Twinhead"
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