C F - W 5 is o n e t o u g h b o o k There was a time when notebook computers were fragile flowers — look at
Being an ultraportable means it is also very light (1.2 kg) and compact. It measures 21 cm deep by 27 cm wide and the wedge shape is 2.7 cm thick
them wrong, and they'd break down. When Panasonic adopted the Toughbook name for its notebook line in 1996, it was not just a marketing
at the leading edge and 4.6 cm at the hinge. Out of the 12.1 inch display, you can get a respectable XGA (1024 x 768) resolution. The expansion and
statement — it was the company's line in the sand, declaring extra ruggedness would be the standard build for all its notebooks. As a result, Panasonic is one of the very few big-name brands you'll consistently see
communication options are what you'll typically find on notebooks: VGA out
Panasonic's durable, stylish ultralight
alongside the niche brands that market to the resource sector, police and military and other industries that give their computer gear a very hard time. When it comes to notebooks, rugged is a relative concept. A notebook that's tossed around with a salesman's sample kit will have a relatively easier life than one that sits in the cockpit of a military tank, and you find this sliding scale described with terms like fully rugged, semi-rugged, durable, etc. There are perils that rugged computers, however defined, will try to address. These are all the factors you'd expect to find in notebook hell:
connector, one PC Card slot, an SDHC memory card slot, two USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet and modem jacks, audio in and headphone jacks. The Centrino badge means that it carries Intel's WiFi chip (supports 802.11a, b, g), and a switch on the front edge of the machine allows you to turn the radio on or off. Another switch allows you to turn the optical drive on or off. The WO burner handles DVD-R, D V D - R W , CIVO+RW as well as OVD-RAM. Most notebook drives will use either a pop-out tray or a slot for media, but the CF-W5 has a hinged lid built into the right side of wrist rest that opens to
reveal the optical drive spindle. Even though this is a very small notebook, the keyboard is quite decent. drops and hard knocks, vibration, crush forces, water, dust, chemicals, The keys are full width, although more oblong than square, so it takes more precision to avoid inadvertently hitting a key in the row above. The biggest humidity and temperature extremes, etc. annoyance for me was with the shorter than normal space bar, so I found I At a minimum, Toughbooks are designed to give extra protection to two often hit the adjoining ALT key. The thin keycaps make the keyboard look main subsystems: the screen, which is expensive to replace, and the hard drive, which holds the most valuable stuff —your data. The semi-rugged CF- somewhat insubstantial — until you start typing on in. It is rock solid, W5 uses a magnesium alloy case, which Panasonic says is 20 times with none of the deck flexing you often encounter on low-end notebooks. In stronger than ABS plastic. The hard drive is mounted in a shock absorbing fact, the entire chassis is remarkably rigid. The screen lid, on the other hand, is flexible — I twisted it through a couple of centimetres of deflection gel. The CF-WS has a drop rating of 30 cm (about a foot).
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