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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.

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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.

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.)

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