CF-19 MK4, the experience so far

Hi all,

I'm the recipient of a base model CF-19 MK4 from my company, and I've been given free reign to mess around with it.

It came with an XP downgrade, so the first step was to update to Win7 64.

Panasonic only had the 32 bit drivers available at the time so much frustration was had trying to find working drivers. It was a relief when the 64 bit stuff was released.

I rang Stirling IT, the agents for Toughbook service in Australia to try and get a Win 7 system recovery disc. $99 for a DVD? Bite me Panasonic.

I found that manually installing the drivers, while diligently following the order recommended, resulted in some loss of functionality. Firstly the screen brighness was reverting to the Windows setting after the video driver was installed. Driver rollback seemed to fix it. Same with the Wifi and bluetooth, where in both cases the stock windows drivers seems far less buggy.

The next step is to try and add WWAN which this version (CF-19RHRAX2M) doesn't come with. I've added a GOBI 2000 module so the hardware is all there, but the bios version doesn't support WWAN. There is a version available to download from Panasonic which I assume would contain full functionality but it won't install over the bios I have, which is exactly the same version number.

I'll have to beg borrow or steal the correct version from Panasonic directly, or wait for another bios upgrade to be released.

Anyone else playing with one of these yet?

 

I have had the honor to play with all the MK CF-19's. I have played around with the Touch and Dual Touch version as well as all the different keyboards. I HATE the rubber one.

 

Hey, check this out from me and with help from others. Love my CF-19 MK IV. This was actually easier than I thought. Did you find a use for every part you received with your GOBI? I had parts I had no idea where they were supposed to go.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/panasonic/572537-enabling-gobi-my-cf-19-mk-iv.html

 

But have you had the pleasure to use the emmisive one for the 19??

Samantha has one on her 19 MK1 and loves it!

 

Yes, that's my favorite one. The Rubber takes to long to get used to, but that's just my experience.