Accumulative Operating Hours survey

The madness has set in. I just got a CF-29LTQCPBM (mk4) off eBay. Pretty nice condition externally, (not as nice as my 7 year old mk2 TB) but has 9950 hours on it.

If you don't mind me asking, how many hours per year do most machines "accumulate"? I guess what I am really asking is: Is this about average wear & tear?

 

I have seen some cf-29s with 40-50 thousand hours on them.

 

So mine is still in its infancy. Good to know. I'd hate to think I bought a ToughBook on its last leg.

 

Toughbook, last leg? BAH... Either they grow a new leg or run around like the 3 legged dog. Never missing a beat or noticing that the leg is missing.

 

I think I got a cf-29 mk4 with 25K hours and several with 12K and they all run fine. Even came across several with less than 40 hours. Timex , tick tick tick tick............Driller

 

My CF-19mk2 averages about 4600 hours in a year, so I'm close to 14K hours now. No problems so far, I hope it keeps working.

 

I just got one from ebay with 0 hours. It is brand new, and mk5 TS model! It was also nice that it was $115!

 

Hours? We don't care about stinking hours!

 

We do when we are talking about backlight brightness! I sat my old one next to a new one I was setting up for somebody else. That made me order a new one for myself.

 

Now that you mention it, how long, on average, do touchscreens, and LCDs last (in accumulative hours)?

 

I have one CF-30 MKII that has 96,789 hours on it and the only thing so far that has been wrong with it was the hardrive failed on it and one of the keys broke and that was all easy fixes.

 

The reason I asked about the touchscreen, is because I recently bought a CF-29 mk4 and everything worked fine, except the touchscreen. It had the "crazy moving cursor syndrome". I disabled the touchscreen in the BIOS until I got the driver installed. (Yes, I installed the drivers in the order that the Panasonic pdf file says to.) Once I installed the touchscreen driver, and rebooted and turned the touchscreen on in the BIOS, the touchscreen sort of worked. The Windows "start" button was the only part that worked. After a day or so, the touchscreen did not respond any more at all. So, I am presuming I have a worn out/broken touchscreen, which seems common in the CF-29 mk4s.

That brings me to my next (related) question:
I have seen an entire CF-29 screen assembly w/ TS, and pull up antenna on eBay, but fear it also has a touchscreen doomed to premature failure. Has anyone bought that whole screen assembly from Heartland? If so, will I have to cash in an IRA to pay for it?

(Let me know if this is too OT and should have it's own thread.)

 

I don't know the cost from heartlands, but I believe ohlip and most likely some of the moderators could repair it for you for less outlay. I've had good luck with purchasing a mk 2-3-4 with TS and swapping them out and have seen some on fleabay for 75-100 buck range and just did the swap that way as well. most of my mk4's with TS have worked fine and the mk5 units were the ones that seemed to be more prone to failure, just my experience..Driller

 

I'd have thought you must be able to somehow fake/overwrite the hours counter using the same method for entering the model number and serial number.

 

I had wondered if it was possible to reset the counter. You can sometimes get an idea of it's condition by pictures people post on ebay, and mk1-3 don't have counters anyway. Most auctions put pictures of the bios screen, and you can see the hours there, so unless they know how to reset them, if its even possible, and they want to scam you, it is a good indication of its use.

Backlight time is my main concern. NEVER buy anything with a "red tint" on the screen, the backlight is almost dead. You can replace screens, but it is such a hassle that I would only do it with a new panel, and they are expensive and hard to find.

 

maybe I just got lucky in some of my swaps on the screens, I've done the entire assembly and just the screen itself swap and it wasn't impossible just a bit time consuming. Always looking for a reasonably cost efficient repair/upgrade to extend the service life of the cf-29, cf-51 and anything pana has to give us.....Driller

 

I took Driller's advice and bought a TS (edit: actually the whole screen assembly) off eBay. The lid was scratched, but the screen was flawless. So I swapped the outer lid for the one that came on mine. Now I have a great CF-29 mk4 with working TS, GPS, WWAN, & WIFI. This unit looks and works great!! I am enjoying it immensely!!

Thanks to this forum's member advice, I have a $5000+ (in it's day, which was admittedly 4 or 5 years ago) ToughBook for a fraction of that price. One day I hope to pull a CF-30 out of my hat. (Gotta save my pennies.)