Panasonic Toughbook 40 | Hacker News Reader

Panasonic Toughbook 40

connect.na.panasonic.com

212 pointsfidotron191 comments

After my daughter went through two laptops in high school (1st: "I closed a pen in it and broke the hinge" 2nd: "Dad! Someone ELSE knocked it off my desk") I found an ex-state-police toughbook, it even had a carrying handle. Plasma monochrome screen. Slow. But it ran all of the applications necessary for school.

Turns out it had a cool factor all it's own, and she really liked that laptop. She figured out she could neglect and abuse it. I even left the "property of " stickers from the state police on the thing, which gave it extra... something. It was still working when she gave it back to me before she went to college. I think I sold it for $100.

How could a monochrome screen work for a student? They typically have to look at assignments which often include color-coded graphs, data legends, etc.

I'm sure color blind people are capable of learning too

Colour blind doesn't mean someone sees in black and white. It means they have difficulty differentiating between two colours. Often red / green, but not always.

That is most common, but a tiny minority see no colors.

One in 40,000. Being completely blind is VASTLY more common.

So that's still somewhere between 6600 to 11000 people in the US alone. Assuming a range of 1/300000 to 1/400000 out of 331 million US Citizens...

So while rare, its not impossible to run in to.

That just proves one struggles with a lot of not well thought out assignments, not with all of them. That still means a badly designed book.

I grew up, as most of my friends, using a lot of xeroed exercise books and exercises notebooks. Monochrome copies, of course.

Never saw anyone having issues with that, weather 7 or 19 years old. If a kid struggles with monochrome computer screen, it means his learning materials are designed worse than post-soviet era 25 year old textbook.

BTW. I am eagerly waiting for better availability of eink monitors.

also, they're not the same colour to me in bright sunlight - one is light murky brown and the other is dark murky brown. under fluorescent lighting they are both the same shade of murky brown.

Red green does not mean that you ONLY have problem with those 2 colors. Means you will have problems with ANY color which is composed of some of the 2. Also there are Red/Blue Green/Blue... basically any combination. So relying in only colors is just bad design.

Turns out that this isn’t the critical ability required to do well in school. I take your point, I’m sure the monochrome screen would be a challenge sometimes, but literally never the difference between success and failure at the high school level.

my TI-84 screen took me pretty far

Relying excessively on colour is an accessibility no-go, and it also makes life harder for roughly 10% of colour blind people. Just dont be that stupid teacher and find better methods.

No, only the teacher’s book had colors. The rest of us were looking at the monochrome photocopies ;)

If anything is based solely in color for interpretation, it is not accessible. And has no place in a classroom. In Europe 10% of males have problems with colors. I figure there must be similar in the US.

I guess it depends on the school district. My kids were doing video and photo editing, using and creating spread sheets, using other software and accessing science web sites that I'm sure would be nearly impossible or extremely difficult to run on a monochrome screen.

Your daughter is stronger than most grown adult male laptop reviewers, who would dutifully complain about the weight.

Sure it will always be a boat anchor compared to a macbook air or a small chromebook but given his daughter laptop had a handle weight is less a factor if it removes the point of a protective sleeve + a backpack and you compare it with an entry level 15.6" laptop.

My son's first computer, back when he was 5 years old, was an old Panasonic CF-18 Toughbook that I bought from eBay for that purpose. The smaller keyboard was perfect for his little hands, and the computer survived countless drops, spills, and other incidents.

That was more than 10 years ago. He still has the laptop, the battery is long dead but it runs fine on AC power. Most of the time, it's used as a doorstop.

Oooh, I finally managed to coax my manager into getting me a ToughBook at a previous gig, after I'd churned through a Dell Mobile Workstation or two a year doing field work.

The ToughBook lasted years. True, the keyboard left a bit to be desired, the screen ghosted like you wouldn't believe and the colours were a bit, uh, off, not to mention ridiculous resolution - but killing the thing was essentially impossible.

It is the Land Cruiser of laptops. Expensive, sluggish, heavy, indestructible.

It even had a serial port (and, still does as an optional extra!)

Nowadays, I spend much less time in the field and use a T14. Has served me well thus far. Oh, and I can actually carry it around without thinking twice of it.

There are some Dells that are quite indestructible as well. OTOH, it’s usually cheaper to let someone kill a couple laptops than to get a single rugged one. Plus, not all parts of the dead laptop are destroyed, so things like memory and solid-state storage can be easily transplanted to the next victim.

This is true, as long as a day in the field without a working laptop does not cost comparably to a new laptop. Imagine your laptop cracking and ceasing to work when the helicopter that brought you to the interesting location has just disappeared in the distance.

To me, that's the real Toughbook market: when the supply chain is impractically far away and downtime is unacceptable.

This was my M.O. - something had failed on a ship somewhere or other. Sometimes, it was dockside (Hooray!), more often than not off some disagreeable coast, meaning I'd get airlifted out bringing anything I could conceivably need (and a few things I couldn't, just to make sure!) - then make sure it all worked before I left.

I always carried a couple of USB sticks with software, licences and documentation on them - one in my carry-on, one in a zippered pocket - and extra interface cables &c so that if everything went oops, I could just borrow a laptop at the client end, install my stuff and get going in a few cups of coffee's time.

Most interesting experience: A customer managed to store their spare parts ashore (!), and we found the reason a big oceanographic sampling system didn't work was because a very proprietary plug inside a data acquisition device hadn't been properly inserted during assembly, damaging the connector beyond repair.

We wound up having to disassemble a small DC motor (to get at the lacquer wire - very, very small cross section!) and hand solder jumper wires onto each of the 88 pins on the PCB.

Took us a few hours, each of which cost our client on the order of $7k in fuel and crew wages, but it worked in the end, ship's electrician and I taking turns getting those pesky, small wires in place without upsetting the work we'd already done.

Soldering .02" pitch connectors with a bog standard Weller iron is a character-building experience. It gets better once you've tacked a needle onto the tip, though.

The alternative? Taking the whole vessel back inside helicopter range, then airlift a $5 plug out (Oh, and a crimp tool! Might as well bring a spare plug, too. Just in case.) That would have cost significantly more than the downtime they had while we were soldering.

Having the spares aboard so that we'd be looking at them instead of for them when we figured out what was wrong? Ten minutes of downtime, $5 in parts, done.

>A customer managed to store their spare parts ashore (!)

I'm going to bet they /never/ had to use those spare parts before and thought they were dead weight.

Happens everytime. That box of cables you threw out last week because you never opened it in the past 20 years? Yeah, something just broke and you need one of those cables now.

Happens. Every. Fucking. Time.

And everyone wonders why I look like a chronic hoarder.

Oh, the problem is rarely the ship's crew - they know all too well that if something breaks and they haven't got a spare, they're up shit creek.

The problem is rather - I'll just let my prejudices roam freely, my apologies - beancounters who realize that it is a waste to keep X sets of spare parts on X ships, when they are hardly ever used - heck, much more cost-efficient to keep one set of spares in a common location, then dispatch as needed.

Except, of course, that 'dispatch' is non-trivial if you're, say, doing core samples along the mid-Atlantic ridge...

It definitely sounds like I won that bet. :V

The usual dialog:

— Why are you carrying this around? You won't need it.

— Exactly so that I won't need it.

(Works well with umbrellas, leathermans, band aids, etc.)

Curious minds: what's the best way to field heat-bond a needle onto a soldering iron?

I'm guessing mechanically secure it with something heat tolerant (steel wire) for most of the tip length + lube the interface with molten solder? Then crank it to 11 to get enough heat to the tip?

Maybe drilling a hole slightly smaller than the needle and cooling down the needle until it would fit inside the hole?

Or spin the needle inside the hole until it welds itself.

You make the length of the business end of the needle protruding from the tip of the iron as short as possible, wrap copper braid around tip+neddle, put on a very small hose clamp on top, then turn on the iron and give the copper braid as much solder as it can absorb.

Then you start soldering, after a few successful ops you figure this is going to be a walk in the park - and are promptly attitude readjusted by a blob of solder dripping off the iron and onto your PCB.

Did succeed in the end, though.

I was really impressed when touring a museum ship on how complete their on-board engineering section was. They could do fairly extensive repairs on very large components of the engine without needing to limp back to shore. Or, at least, fix enough they could limp back to shore.

A family member has a Toughbook for sailing. There are no repair shops at sea.

I still strongly suggest packing two laptops in that case. If you need them, you need them.

Certain APAC markets get Toughbooks that are derivatives of their JDM Let's Note models: https://ap.connect.panasonic.com/sg/en/products/toughbook/to...

Something that's a bit closer to a T14 in portability (albeit this is a X13 competitor - there's a JDM only 14" Let's Note).

Sadly, it's a few generations behind the latest 12" Let's Note model that have welcome improvements such as 3:2 displays (rather than 16:9).

Dell's rugged line has a serial port standard AND gives you the option of having an additional serial port! Now if they would only make a 4 serial port version then we could hook up the jet engine software we have without an adapter....

There's no OBD2 port for jet engines I guess? :)

No, but both Arinc 825 and OBD2 are based on CAN, so at very small expense some of them could have.

From the full specs PDF: https://ftp.panasonic.com/connect/mobility/TOUGHBOOK%2040%20...

I see: Optional Serial (True) D-sub 9-pin 6

Where "6* says:

    > VGA+Serial+LAN or USB-A+HDMI+Serial or USB-A(x2)+HDMI or Fischer LAN or USB-C+USB-A+HDMI in Rear Expansion Area are mutually exclusive.

Wow, I had to lookup Fischer LAN. Never heard of that before. It looks like a IP68-rated Ethernet connection! Ref: https://fischerconnectors.com/en/news-blog/high-speed-data-m...

I used to use Thoughbooks every day at work while I was working as an EMT. I kinda have a love/hate relationship with them. I loved their ruggedness. They can fall from the stretcher to the ground, you can sit on them and they even work when it's raining on them. But everything else is not that great. The keyboard feels awful, the touchscreen sometimes didn't work (which was awful because the application was designed for touchscreens) and the trackpad is tiny compared to other laptops. Still they're better than the alternatives that other cities used. Documenting with pen and paper is exhausting, iPad aren't as rugged and their on screen keyboard is even worse and smartphones just don't appear that professional.

100% better than the GETACs my ambulance service used, those were hot garbage, with even worse touchscreens (or it may also have been that my service was so cheap they'd buy them on eBay, and even buy partially broken ones and the Director of Ops would Frankenstein multiple broken ones together to get one working)...

I used both, but the thoughbook with Windows and the GETAC with Android. The touchscreen experience was much better in the GETACs I used. The thoughbook is good in the laptop format as linked but not the thoughbooks that are meant to be used as tablets - those die easier.

Do you think the keyboard is awful because it needs to survive incredible abuse and operating conditions (liquid spills, etc)?

-Probably, there's a (at least used to be) rubber membrane between key caps and switches to ensure water, coffee, hydraulic fluid, blood, assorted acids, dust, gravel etc. does not make it inside when you douse it in one or more of said substances.

(My last Dell Precision died after having been first on the accident site when a high-pressure manifold burst, courtesy of a sub-par weld - it sat merrily on a tank opposite, logging pressures, temperatures and contamination levels during an operation when suddenly, the manifold opted out of existence, blasted the Dell into the bulkhead, cracked the casing in so many places we didn't even find all the parts afterwards, dousing the remnants in hydraulic fluid (which, as it happens, is quite corrosive and reasonably carcinogenic, too.)

Had a similar thing happen to a ToughBook years later. Simply donned gloves, took it outside, hosed it down in lukewarm water for a while, rebooted and got back to work.

For all their shortcomings, ToughBooks are amazing at their intended use case.

(Oh, and before anyone asks - we set up the test rig, make ourselves scarce, and only then do we start the pumps and apply pressure. I am a firm believer in staying alive.)

We had toughbooks at my agency, that were then replaced by surface (non-pro) tablets when we got bought out by AMR. They had to put out notices not to set the tablets on the back of the gurney. I bent one into a U shape with the strut lowering the head for a bariatric patient. Smushed it right between the monitor and O2. It was the most annoying piece of gear we had. Went from not having to worry about your computer at all to having to baby it. I wouldn’t be surprised if they cost more in the long run.

The AMR software, MEDS, was also worse as it forced you to use their limited fields instead of a full written narrative, surely for better analytics. The previous software (zoll?) made it much easier to rely on the narrative to accurately note that the patient who called for chest pain just had bronchitis, even with a primary complaint of chest pain. Practically a daily call in the winter, and a super annoying chart to write with MEDS while trying to cover yourself as a basic. The only advantage of MEDS was that since it was all radio buttons you could just spam tab>space to fill out almost the entire chart for your average patient.

> The keyboard feels awful

So sad. I had a Toughbook CF-30 and its keyboard was one of the best I ever used on a laptop. Not mechanical, but it had a bounce to it that made it easy to type for a long time without getting tired.

In the next iteration (CF-31), they changed it to a chicklet style keyboard like those common on laptops nowadays, and there was no magic anymore.

Another think I loved about my CF-30 was how bright the screen could get.

Agree on the trackpad, that thing was small and never worked right.

Use fingernails. It's resistive touchscreen similar to Nintendo DS and pre-iPhone smartphone, without the screen part.

The backlit keyboard is compatible with the 30 and 31, and is what you are looking for.

Many years ago, at a previous job, I was issued a Toughbook. I loved that I didn't have to even think about babying it. I could just slap it closed when done and throw it (literally) back in the truck.

I didn't like the cost of the thing; which is still costly today. However! Just like back then, today, you can get REALLY good deals on used Toughbooks through eBay. Because they are niche and not many people want to carry an 8Lb brick with them.

>you can get REALLY good deals on used Toughbooks through eBay.

Wow you are right, I took a look and many are in the $200-300 range, though without a drive. I might just grab one to mess around with, and stick in a spare drive I have laying around

Just remember that being indestructible also means the cheapest ones are ancient as well.

I've taken apart a Toughbook to try to resurrect a dead hard drive. It was the most brutally annoying laptops I've ever had to tear apart.

I have SO much respect for those machines, but if it's being sold without a HDD, be prepared for some pain getting it open and then back together again.

One of these famously stopped a bullet. They're quite literally bulletproof.

https://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/mo...

It's not bulletproof if it didn't keep working.

Bulletproof vests need to be discarded after being shot.

A vest is bulletproof if you can shoot it and the human inside it keeps working. A laptop case is bulletproof if you can shoot it and... ?

...the human behind it keeps working.

Not without their laptop they won't be working.

You obviously need to replace it just like you would with a bulletproof vest ;)

I'd advise that human to invest in some body armor, for a variety of reasons. But it sounds like we're not talking about the same thing.

If a human gets shot - even wearing a vest - they usually need a break, don't they?

It's bulletproof if you can shoot it and the bullet doesn't pass through. You don't get to invent new definitions IMO

They are indeed a one-shot deal.

I appreciate the article’s rhetorical flair:

The bullet crashed through the LCD screen, giving the keypad a good slap in the teeth before wedging itself in the internal hard disk. Presumably it lay on the desert floor bleeding battery fluid for several minutes as its owner desperately tried, in vain, to save its life.

It is not known whether the laptop would have had a better chance of surviving the assault, had it been installed with the 'ultra-safe' Windows Vista operating system.

Gotta respect Panasonic for identifying an underserved market and crushing it for almost 30 years.

Yes I am surprised no one else went for it

Great example of riches are in niches

Not no one. There is also getac, durabook, rugged series of some dell laptops, there is (was?) itrinix and probably a bit more that I don't really know of :)

I’ll drop ruggedpcreview.com here- no affiliation but have checked once in a while for years; they have a lot of press releases, if not reviews, of the rugged PCs available.

Getac and Dell are active there, particularly for law enforcement. There's a good youtube channel[1] that compares them all from time to time.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/@Bobjohnson

I have a ruggedized Dell. It's not nearly as tough as the Panasonic I used, but it's tough enough. On the other hand, it is much more useable.

I don't know if that's a brand or model difference.

As someone who has to purchase rugged laptops for users at my job... Dell has nailed away with the Toughbook market for us. When I first started Panasonic was the only game in town but Dell saw the market size and has done a great job. Now I can just deal with one vendor.

They have 2 levels of "ruggedness" and the one that works for most field work can be purchased for less than $2,000 new through the Dell Business Outlet.

I've encountered a few of these over the years. On the one hand, they are impressively rugged. And easy to repair. But the ones I have laid hands on had terrible displays, terrible keyboards, and terrible touchpads. And this was back when ALL laptop keyboards and touchpads where far inferior to what they are now.

I'm sure some use them because they like the aesthetic, it would not be most people's first choice as a daily driver.

> I'm sure some use them because they like the aesthetic, it would not be most people's first choice as a daily driver.

Almost anyone who uses one does it because they work in an environment where nothing else would survive. Construction sites, mining, dusty or wet places, etc.

There's a niche group of people (particularly electronics distributor FAEs for some reason) who have them for the same reason many people own F150s: because they like to look like they work in that sort of environment.

Fascinating. I've never run into anyone with a vanity toughbook, but I can totally believe this.

Never run into vanity fully rugged either.

I’ve met people who used business rugged as daily drivers, they’re somewhat less hostile and still rather nice: spill proof, hotswap battery, handle and strap, not as solid as the fully rugged but lighter and better looking.

Still expensive as hell new.

There's another lower level of ruggedness, school / student laptops, Dell has a line of them; they're cheap ish and have a rubberized edge. Doesn't really matter if a student closes their laptop hard with a pen in it though (the hinge sheared straight off) or they use it as a punching bag though.

I have a CF-33 that I got used for about 600€ (plus something like 120€ for a replacement battery).

I use it as my "outdoor/garden/workshop" laptop that I can display CAD drawings on and stuff like that without worrying about getting wood splinters in it, or as a juke box/internet lookup-thing/spreadsheet when I work on a semi truck I sometimes drive (not for work though, purely for fun).

It does also double as my backup laptop in case the XPS13 I use for freelancing ever falls off the table or something, but I don't really see that happening anytime soon.

Granted, most of this I could just as well do with an old T-series Thinkpad, but there's something to having a carrying handle on the thing and being able to pull it off its keyboard base. Also, COM ports.

I used to have one to take to the local bar where I sat doing emergency sysadmin and software fixes; especially later in the evening, people would accidentally knock a pint over it and I didn't care at all. I often had clients call at 4 am when everyone could barely stand but I had to fix a down server. Good times.

> I'm sure some use them because they like the aesthetic, it would not be most people's first choice as a daily driver.

Aesthetic?

Durability and ruggedness are the distinguishing feature for these, and there are many people not working in offices who have that as a requirement for their "daily drivers".

Sure, some people might enjoy the aesthetic for its own sake, but that's not going to play much part of the product strategy.

I'm not gonna lie. Opening a massive Toughbook in a classroom full of puny Macbook Air and other ultrabooks felt GREAT, and worth lugging the 8-pound behemoth in my book bag. Plus, free rucking workout.

we used them because they guaranteed parts and repair for something like five or ten years. This was the number one reason we purchased hundreds...

No complaints, they were very stable. We tried other cheaper models and they would overheat etc.. ( used on large ships )

I started my IT career in emergency medical services. It was amazing to see the beating these computers can take. I have seen toughbooks (Panasonic, GETAC) survive after being run over by an ambulance, fall off the back of an ambulance at high speed, etc. They are very modular and easy to fix.

>First AI-enabled TOUGHBOOK PC

>(AI)-driven tasks for customers across law enforcement departments, federal agencies and utility companies.

What are the applications of law enforcement with AI in the field?

Likely some simple RAG-based document Q&A (e.g case files, statutes, etc).

One is writing police reports, according to a recent post on HN. Didn't read it though.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41358965

Ah! A way cut costs.

It’s well known that you always need to have two officers in a police patrol: one can read and the other one can write.

Processing media seems useful - have a squad car doing plate and face recognition for suspects, voice recognition and analysis for anything they’re talking about with people, etc. all would be things which could be really useful modulo legal concerns (e.g. it’s probably not a constitutional issue if, say, an officer is talking to someone and their laptop is pulling up information about people or places mentioned, but it’d be a huge issue if they were trying to search people’s phone data without following legal guidelines).

A really simple one: you know how Apple has a assistive feature for hearing impairments which warns users about ambient sounds like emergency vehicles or crying babies? I could imagine a police force wanting something like that simply to do something like logging gunshots, vehicle crashes, etc. and possibly triggering an alarm if the officer doesn’t say it’s okay within a short period of time.

Two words: Minority Report :)

Almost zero-to-none that we already have solutions for like voice recognition or license plate recognition.

> What are the applications of law enforcement with AI in the field?

"Please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply."

I was thinking more like demolition man. In a firm voice tell the maniac to lie down

(uncertain if you recognize quote is from robocop ED-209)

AI is even better at racial profiling than the police. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/police-facial-rec...

Not exactly law enforcement, but a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away we were running local AI to try and spot people lost in the wilderness from drone footage.

I imagine same goes for military now...

When you need to train that pytorch model in the middle of syria

If they have a specialised GPT they could run it locally during temporary internet outages.

I'm thinking computer vision applications, especially ones that can't be done on a smaller device – e.g. "based on video from these bodymounted cameras, determine the changing position over time of X, Y, Z."

I like how the Featured Specs include “Durability: Fully rugged” as if that’s an official specification.

The Full Spec Sheet is a bit more specific:

• MIL-STD-810H: 6’ drop, shock, bench handling, vibration, rain, dust, sand, altitude, freeze/thaw, high/low temperature, temperature shock, solar radiation, contamination by fluids, humidity, salt fog, explosive atmosphere

• MIL-STD-461G

• IP66

• Optional C1D2 (class 1 div 2) groups ABCD

I don't want to contact sales.

If you click "configure" there are prices. Seems to start at $4500 for lowest specs.

> Integrated tetra-array mic

That's definitely an uncommon way of saying quad microphone array.

It's an AI toughbook due to having a unspecified "1.4Ghz AI Boost NPU" which seems to be something Intel offers, and according to other websites, operates at 34 TOPS.

i'll be happy to pick one of these up used for 10% the price in a few years

Panasonic CF-31 i7 16GB 1TB already seems like a decent value at $640 https://www.ebay.com/itm/235658243945

That price should be divided by 10 since the CPU is 5th gen from 2015[0].

[0] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-5600U...

Best offer your $64 and see if you get it. My bet is no and the eBay seller knows a bit more about what it’s worth

Brand new ones are only up to 11th gen Intel last I checked. They stay on long term and stable parts so they can sell them a few years unlike normal business machines that get refreshes every year or so.

or similar https://www.ebay.com/itm/285907921261 with 500GB drives, should be an easy upgrade to 1TB if desired?

Found it kind of funny that the display went all the way up to 1200 nits, which would make it a pretty high-end HDR display, but it's not actually HDR.

Then I realised that these things are likely to end up being used in environments with completely uncontrolled lighting, so the display needs to overpower whatever other light sources you have around if you're going to be able to use it. Makes sense that designing for hostile environments isn't just about shock/dust/water resistance, but also stuff like that.

This. The big bright ball in the sky, for instance.

(This is a very real problem for my employer - we make stuff which is installed on ship's decks. We've always used Siemens displays as their service organization is second to none, long-term parts availability, global presence, lots of tame engineers on call, etc.)

However, they simply don't have any rugged screens which are really sunlight readable, I believe they max out at 900 nits if memory serves.

Result being that we designed a kind of shade similar to the ones graphic designers used (use?) around their monitors to keep stray light from messing with what they see on screen.

Would have preferred a screen with Raiders of the Lost Ark end-scene brightness, though.

I remember running into the old version of these super early in my little IT life, back when I was just at AIT; All that time playing with FCBC2's and Blue Force trackers ended up giving me an addiction to very graphically boring military simulation games, but I'm not complaining.

We also used to run HMMWVs over them on my deployments, mostly to prove points and win bets lol. That got stopped after an MRAP crushed one though - The rakkasans who know, know ;)

Those things are tanks. They're also very modular. Never owned one, but have seen them around a bit. I've also seen them run Linux pretty decently. ;)

This stuff is not for consumers. It's for the military. That's why they cost so much and put so much emphasis on features that seemingly don't have any purpose (a bar code scanner and modularity but bad specs? auth readers but a terrible display and keyboard?)

As someone in the military, these are everywhere - that's their main customer. When judging this product, realize that's what it's built for.

It’s for any job where care is not expected or possible, not just the military.

They’re everywhere in mines and factories, they’re used by first responders, they’re routine for race teams, field techs, surveyors, …

> First AI-enabled TOUGHBOOK PC

Have we now reached peak AI hype?

> Have we now reached peak AI hype?

We had already reached it with the "Oral-B GENIUS X with Artificial Intelligence" toothbrush.

[1] https://www.oralb.co.uk/en-gb/product-collections/genius-x

yup, this wins, by a long shot

> First AI-enabled TOUGHBOOK PC

Human: Toughbook AI, write me a draft report for this arrest.

Toughbook AI: Nice try! I ain't your secretary, wiseguy!

What are the use cases for the advertised barcode reader accessory that appears to shoot the laser out the side of your laptop?

https://connect.na.panasonic.com/toughbook/accessories/fz-vb...

To read barcodes

Probably a fair number of document, media, or small part inventory tasks where the laptop would be on cart. Sometimes easier to bring the barcode to the scanner than bring the scanner to the barcode.

Government procurement contracts for these probably wanted it since they need a way to inventory assets and this gives an all-in-one solution. Military and law enforcement are probably the main purchasers of these.

One possible use case would be for police officers to scan driver licenses when pulling people over. When I worked for a city IT department, they had to have separate barcode readers installed in the cars for that, so I imagine it'd be nice to have it integrated into the laptop.

It may be redundancy; have a dedicated reader but if it breaks you don’t need to go to the station for another one.

Inventory / part tracking comes to mind.

The barcode scanner drops the likelihood of typos in part and serial numbers

I've heard it said that an airplane is ten thousand parts flying in formation: keeping track of maintenance and replacement parts is important in many (safety-critical) industries, and so having a scanner that one doesn't have to remember, lug around, and fumble with [0] could be useful.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/s?k=barcode+scanner

For Public Safety usage most all ID’s now have at least a 1d barcode and most have a 2d barcode. When the usage environment permits their use, barcode readers permit quick and accurate data entry versus manual keyboard entry.

It's for public safety / law enforcement use cases. ID cards like driver's licenses have a barcode on them, they can read the barcode in their police software to look you up and get your warrants, driving record, etc and digitally ticket you.

Inventory tracking. This is a piece of military equipment, and a lot of that stuff is tracked with bar codes.

15 years ago, if you were a delivery company you might use something like a Panasonic Toughbook CF-U1 in each van. Rugged, built-in GPS and 3G, and it runs a full copy of Windows XP. You want a dashboard-mounted docking station? How about a docking station designed for 100,000 connect-disconnect cycles?

The barcode scanner, believe it or not, was useful to scan barcodes.

These days a smartphone is a much better choice.

To a degree, the dedicated barcode scanners is still a fair bit faster. So anything dealing with high volumes of barcodes like warehousing inventory or store stock management benefits from a dedicated scanner.

Not for scanning barcodes; I've seen them in action, they're noticeably slower and the image processing seems more involved than whatever magic is in barcode scanners.

You can also get "smartphones" (Android handhelds) with a true laser scanning barcode reader. We have them at work. Like Zebra devices.

They sure beat camera based ones yes (although they technically also use a camera but it's really optimised for the purpose)

Most of the couriers that come to my door also use these or similar, not standard smartphones.

The magic is just software. There are extremely fast barcode scanning libraries available, e.g. Scandit.

The barcode scanning in the Libib app (an app to keep track of books) seems quite fast, it is quite addictive to just zap the barcodes and see the book data added to the catalog.

It seems comparable to the laser based scanners used at library checkouts for example.

I work on Public Safety applications. Tracking the chain of custody for items collected by officers is very important. Many vendors have support for this. Officers can print labels from their car and begin maintain a custody log from out in the field. Officers can scan labels with barcode scanners or phone cameras. They also often use barcode scanners to scan drivers licenses with can have 1D or 2D information encoded in them.

Going through security, a TSA agent inspected my Toughbook and was really impressed by how cool it looked. I didn't have the heart to break it to him that the laptop was outdated at the time. It was just a laptop that you could drop, nothing special about it.

It would be cool to see Framework enter this market so that you could get a ruggedized notebook that's modular, repairable, and upgradeable through the whole stack.

Tough books are already modular and very repairable. Not really upgradable but that’s a minor concern given the market.

The testing necessary for the certs is expensive, and these are 99.9% procured by governments and large companies, complete waste of time and money for framework.

I still have a Caterpillar Tractor branded rugged phone. The actual maker, Bullitt, a UK company, went bust. The rubber cover over the USB charging port was the weak point, and I had two of those wear out. The batteries swelled up in two units because the phone spent most of its time plugged into a charger. Good idea, bad execution on the details.

When I was in college I remember seeing ads for military lunchbox computers with VME buses and SPARC processor boards.

Wish I could find one of those.

You're looking maybe for the Tadpole or maybe Macrolink. Both were bought by other companies.

Here's an article from 2000.

https://www.militaryaerospace.com/home/article/16710746/rugg...

Shame these are no more. Elegant tools for a more civilised age.

Vaguely related: Emperor Linux sells (sold? IDK if they're still in business) Toughbooks with Linux pre-installed: http://emperorlinux.com/systems/rugged/

I love these still have home-pageUp-pageDown-end keys column. This is so great to edit texts, but every laptop nowadays mimics Macbook, which hasn't (and has a turnOff key between backspace and f12, which everyone cargocults from Mac too).

On Mac Fn+Up, Fn+Down, Fn+Left and Fn+Right can be used as PgUp, PgDn, Home and End respectively.

Not the same thing

I tried a laptop with these, they don't always work in combos, like Shift+PageUp, or Shift+Ctrl+PageUp didn't work at all. It was so inconvenient that I just refunded it a day later and bought a Toshiba (they stopped making laptops at all, sigh).

I have a (second hand) one of these. The trackpad is a travesty. Borderline unusable.

But it can be used with gloves on.

the specs on the one in the article mention it's a multitouch RESISTIVE trackpad, so I don't expect it to be great, at all.

Try using a capacitive touchpad in the pouring rain.

if you search for panasonic fz40 on google or youtube, what do you get, results for the lumix camera or the toughbook laptop, both by panasonic, both having the same model number?

google gives me the laptop, youtube gives me the camera

Out of curiosity, has anyone ever used these types of laptops for programming?

Mostly useless.

They are hideously expensive, the specs are really not great, the keyboards and displays are meh, and the trackpads are obnoxiously bad.

They are for using in the field where damage is expected.

So you might want that if your programming is tuning car ECU during races, or you do your programming on a sailboat while crossing the Atlantic. Otherwise they’re just underpowered back-breakers.

Yes, we used them for a rocket launch in the desert. The main distinguishing feature is that these (CF-31 and related) are fully dust proof, the fan of a normal laptop will pull in dust and die. These were certainly slower to use, but we were just hacking around small bugs as they caused issues.

Do you mean that the fans are dust proof but small bugs may be too much for it to handle?

They mean they were were using the laptops for basic bug fixing in the middle of the desert, so although the CFs are not very snappy that was not too much of an issue (compared to not having a working laptop).

I did use a lighter version of Toughbook back in 2007 (bought it for weight of just 1.3 kg, and passive cooling). There was no annoying noise, but a slowed CPU, which made it slower than average. Mandriva Linux was too fat for it, but WinXP worked fine.

Unfortunately, they discontinued the lighter version.

Girl Talk used to go on stage with a Toughbook wrapped in cellophane

I wonder how those compare to Dell Latitude Rugged laptops?

Only 7.4 lbs! Surprising but also awesome.

Ah, yes, the original ultra-luggable.

sorta on topic, does anyone know of a sturdy, well built thin and low weight laptop?

I’ve used 3 X1 carbons(using an gen 8 ato the moment) and I’m very satisfied with them so far. But always looking for alternatives.

How are the framework laptops regarding weight and sturdiness?

The LG Gram SuperSlim. I’ve accidentally brought it hiking in my bag.

But it only comes with Intel unfortunately, and because of it it whines like a jet when browsing.

I like my framework, I dropped it from about 4feet onto concrete, the corder was dented and the fingerprint scanner broke. I spent the 100 dollars to get a new keyboard/trackpad/fingerprint sensor cover panel

(the dent location and warping of the panel made replacement of the fingerprint sensor individuallly not viable)

Past that everything still worked fine, no damage to screen (but that is just my particular drop)

I like it, and would rather have higher specs that can be fixed if shit happens than paying a premium for durability on older hardware.

Geeze, starts at $4500ish...

I'd love something like that. But they're soooo expensive.

I rather use an iPad with waterproof case.

oculus with a $20 bluetooth keyboard would be a better field computer

The point here is to bring the computer to the field, not to bring the field to the computer.

i don't follow. A wireless oculus , DC supply & bluetooth keyboard should be enough for the field.

I doubt that setup would last a week in a desert.

Leave it lens up for 5 minutes and they make a good BBQ starter.

sure, if you don't mind replacing it weekly.

Can't wait to share sweaty goggles with "Wet" Joe, who last washed his face for his wedding in 2006.

this was funny , i'll admit

In the first 15 minutes someone is going to set it down in the sunlight and mar the display

7.4lbs! Unless you're working in construction, or mining, or security or something like that, probably better to get something else.

Sometimes you need a self-defense device and laptop all in one.

When you knock a mugger down with one of those, he stays down.

These ruggedized laptops (I have a Dell variant) are the only way to get a sunlight readable display. It's true they're heavy.

I have the Dell variant too. Great laptop in general, but not as rugged as the proper toughbook

Dell Rugged vs Dell Rugged Extreme. Rugged Extreme is definitely as rugged as a ToughBook, but with that obvious very visible tradeoff in weight and size.

Yeah - I've used toughbooks in the past, and honestly they're 6x more likely to survive being dropped, but also 3x more likely to get dropped in the first place because they're so heavy.

Police, EMS, fire service, and military use them. The laptops are often mounted inside of the vehicles and need to withstand a fair amount of bumping around. A lot of them also specifically include RS232 ports to interface with industrial equipment as well.

I daily used a semi rugged for a while for shits and giggles. Actually wasn't bad to lug around, it had an inbuilt handle made it easy. And there was very little guilt about quickly slamming the lid shut so moving it around from place to place was actually easier then you'd think.

12 hours of battery life on something that size and weight is a joke. What did they fill the rest of the chassis with, concrete?

They filled it with the same dense material that is in your head.

Steel or composite. they are extremely modular and built to pound nails in for 300lb gorillas in work vehicles and still boot up the next day. If they are used to dig a hole you can hose them off as they are generally some level of water or chemical proof.

military, construction, field techs, police, EMT, contractors, mechanics and vehicles like semis and forklifts.

I'm aware that it's chassis is made from tough materials, and I even know what steel is. My point is that a 0.6" thick laptop[1] with the same processor boasts 18 hours of battery life as the standard capacity. Unless you're alleging that there is a 1.5" steel plate in that thing somewhere, I suspect theres some room in that 2.1" that could fit a better battery.

[1] https://www.newegg.com/p/1TS-0025-00CZ9

That space is being taken up to deal with stricter thermal, dust, moisture, RF, shock, vibration, etc. requirements. It'll run on one battery while you change the low one. I really hope you're kidding trying to draw any comparison to a Surface laptop.

> Certification: MIL-STD-810H, MIL-STD-461G, IP66 and optional C1D2

That's why they always seemed a bit overbuilt to me.. most field work does not require such rugged devices.

They are made for military use and similar areas with crazy requirements. Few laptops exist that can check their boxes.

If you design a laptop to these specs, you end up with a passively cooled rubberized metal box with an unpleasant keyboard.

A bonus feature is that you can use it as body armour.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com