CF-19 Mk3 confusion.

Hello. I'm contemplating buying a CF-19 Mk3 Toughbook. Before I spent good money on it I would like to find a few facts from you experts
The full model number is: CF-19KHRAXAM.
Configuration from Tough Wiki:

K- Intel Core2Duo SU9300, 1.2 GHz processor, vPro (Centrino2).
Question: Will this run Win 7 PRO, 64 bit and Win 8 in the future?
H- 10.4" Touchscreen.
Question: Is this 1000 nit, LED backlighted display? (from Tough Wiki: Screen
brightness note: All Mk1 - Mk3 units, Touchscreen is 550 nits, Non-Touch is 1000 nits.) Would you know what's in this machine?
R- 160 GB HD, 2 GB RAM, Dual RF.
Question: Can the RAM be expanded beyond 4 GB? Is 8 GB possible?
A- Bluetooth.
X- wireless ready.
Question: Will it take newer GOBI, or Gobi 2000 is the maximum?
A- Vista COA, Win XP downgrade.
M- North American model.

Thank you in advance for the answers, Regards, Voytek.

 

"from Tough Wiki: Screen brightness note: All Mk1 - Mk3 units, Touchscreen is 550 nits" - NOT true. It's 1000 nits, LED.
8GB works well - look at my signature. Win 8 x64 - look there too
Don't know about Gobi - I think there is no sense in this upgrade. It's much cheaper to install HSDPA modem and have CDMA one as a spare. And easier to use than Gobi IMHO

 

Looks like a nice laptop. And C2D processors could last a while. they are much better future proof as the preceding CD processors.
Touch is good, Dual screen like I have are a nice extra to sign documents etc but for most users it's not needed.
I would also look to install a HSDPA modem and not a CDMA.

 

Hello. I wish I had money for one like you have I was looking at CF-19 before, that's why I had the emissive keyboard. Now again I'm a little tired of the size and the weight of CF-30. Smaller screen and smaller keyboard was a negative for me. How is that for you? I will not go with anythig else today in "new" Toughbook but LED backlighting, had a lot of problems with inverters. Will the LED last beyond 10K hours? My questions about GOBI was because I'm from Canada and wireless choices are limited and I'm planning a little of traveling as well. Regards, Voytek.

 

Hi Voytek, my 19 is my workhorse these days, it's bought for my business and I hope it to last a good 4-5 years of daily (ab)use. It gets dragged along everywhere and I type alot on it. But I have to say, if I would do it again, I would buy a really nice looking mk3, buy a new original battery if needed, add a 150-250 SSD and be as happy as can be. The mk4 and mk5 might be a bit faster, but how often do you use that? And the mk5 might be IP65 instead of IP64, but you can have a this mk3 with the additions I like for around 1000-1200 euro's. The mk5 would be 4 times as expensive. You can travel a lot for 3000 euro's.....

The smaller keyboard is nice, no problem for me, but I know Rob despise them and I like the a lot. The emissive is really te best. The regular (non-backlit) keyboard has much more cross-typing ( you want to hit the y and also hit the t). I type a lot on it, reports, minutes from meetings, emails and posts here. Now when I get back to a full sized keyboard, I really need some time to adjust. (I'm a 10 finger blind typer, learned it when I was young on an old mechanical typewriter and it has been one of the most usefull things that I've learned beside my driver license).

The screen on the mk5 is really nice for texts editing. It doesn't have the high resolution of an iPad, but the letters are large enough, it fits enough lines and when I'm outside, I can read my texts back asl well. And when I'm in the office I have a 27" IPS screen with a good resolution for working in large excel files.

LED's are a bit unkown in terms of durability. They have the potential to last 100.000 hours, as is often stated, but then you have to under-drive them quite serious. When you operate them at 120% all off the time, they will fade quite seriously. But the old fluorescent CCFL tubes do fade seriously as well. So led's being more energy efficient, capable of producing much more light and less fading over time when used with some care are certainly a jump forwards.

GOBI, when I look at the spec sheet, it supports quite a lot.
RADIO SUPPORT
EV-DO/EV-DO Rev. A 800MHz* √
EV-DO/EV-DO Rev. A 1900 MHz* √
HSDPA/HSUPA 800MHz* √
HSDPA/HSUPA 850MHz* √
HSDPA/HSUPA 900MHz* √
HSDPA/HSUPA 1900MHz* √
HSDPA/HSUPA 2100MHz* √
GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850MHz √
GSM/GPRS/EDGE 900MHz √
GSM/GPRS/EDGE 1800MHz √
GSM/GPRS/EDGE 1900MHz √
Standalone GPS, AGPS, gpsOneXTRA™ √
That should do quite well all over the world, I guess.
What I didn't get was if there was just WLAN in the unit you're looking at, or also a WWAN?
If a GOBI 2000 is inside, leave it. It will work nicely and has all the connectivity you want/need. And for the higher speeds: mobile network Mb's are expensive, certainly if you're traveling and you don't want to buy into a dataplan for a year orso. The speeds of the Gobi 2000 are good from what I've read overhere.
If there isn't a WWAN card inside, I would try to fit one tat could have been installed at the factory. That way you can easily get recovery discs for it. Makes life a whole lot easier if you ever need them.
On the other hand, I have the new erricson unit and that is really nice I have to say. Works well, no problems so far (about 6 months of use) good speeds and good connections, even where my iphone reported no network or a GPRS only network.

Battery life. I've seen some reviews that are a bit negative on the battery life. But if I work with he second lowest screen brightness, keep the energy profile on saving as much as it can, I can get well over 9 hours of indoor typing and (wifi) internet use. For outdoor use I get around 5 hours. Both are really more than enough for me. When using full brighness and watching a DVD, I get around 2,5-3 hours of use. But it's no media machine for me.
My battery is now 6 months old, basicly charged every night and used down to 10-40% almost every day. It still holds up nicely.

Size and weight. The 19 isn't a macbook air 11". It's a bit less wide, but much thicker. And the air weights 1kg, where the 19 weights 2,35 kg. But compared to the CF-30/31 it's small. And even tough it might not be netbook-sized, it packs easily into almost any backpack and most other bags. And you don't need a padded sleeve, hard-sided compartment in a torsion proof bag to be sure it will be safe. Any bag will do and a seperate compartment is nice for keeping it from scratching. When traving it's a big pro because you don't need a computerbag that screams "LAPTOP INSIDE, STEAL ME, STEAL ME!!!

So IMHO a 19 mk3 is a very nice traveling machine. Think about a 120-200Gb SSD to make it much snappier, but besides that? Looks good!

Hope my posts hasn't become too long, but I'm just trying to help a bit

 

You don't need high resolution display under Windows OS. Cleartype works and fonts are optimized. iPad needs that screen really.

Can you take photo and publish your own opinion about the screen of MK5 under different conditions? I'm interested how it looks under direct sun with full brightness and with backlight off

I agree MK3 is a very important step over MK1/2 - backlight is muuuuuch better. Also it has enough speed for it's tasks.
I will upgrade to MK5 when MK5's price is under USD 1000

 

I can do that, but it will take some time. This week I'm so busy I hope I can sleep. Do remind me about it next weekend, I'll do my best!

More subjective: the screen is the best I had in terms of visability. so low that you hardly can read it in pitch dark (altough it works perfectly after your eyes low light adapted) and so bright I can read it today in full sunlight at 13h00. You do have reflection, but if you tilt/shift the display a bit it's readable. I have used the ipad, thunderbolt display and macbook air displays, they all look better in terms of color representation, pictures look much better and movies are clearly not where the CF-19 shines. But when you want a screen you can read almost under any circumstance? This screen beats them all!
When compared with e-ink: this might be a tad better readable in sunlight (but not that much) but e-ink annoyes the hell out of me when I flip the page (blink-blop-blink-puf, there is a new page!!!) and the color screens I've seen so far are horrendous. Also you can't really use e-ink as a computer displays so it's a very bad comparison.

The resolution of an iPad is very high, but also the colors are much better represented and the letters are much sharper, even sharper than in cheap books. What I wanted to state is that even though this display is much lower in resolution it is still very good usable and people shouldn't have doubt about it because others can brag about their high resolutions etc.

 

Mine is bright enough too, but I have to use backlight to read under the sunlight. It your screen readable without backlight under direct sun?

 

Never tried that. Or at least I didn't register that. I could try that as well.

Edit: just tried it. Sun is a bit veiled by some very high clouds, so it isn't as bright as ti can be. I cleaned the screen really, really well and with the backlight at it's lowest you are under some angles able to see somthing. But it's just like sitting in a well lit room and turning the lights so far down that you are just, just able to see something. With a white background it is a bit better, with colors/black it is much more difficult.
When I have the time I'll post a new thread with a good review of the mk5 screen.

 

Ok, thanks
This behavior is like mine MK3. Just want to see difference between MK3's 1000 nit and MK5 "6000" nit

 

How do you turn the backlight on and off? Is this just the brightness setting? Great review Alec.

 

That is one thing so far that is annoying, you can't turn off the backlighting, it stays very, very low at 1 nit. But sometimes it is handy to be able to turn backlighting completly of. Perhaps you can adjust that in the bios, but I haven't found it (nor looked really hard for it )
backlit in the keyboard is off, level 1, 2, 3 and 4. Neither of them are very high, but in the dark it is really sufficient.

 

You can use Concealed Mode for backlight off. Just don't freak out when NOTHING turns on, and the power swich just makes the the screen blink once.

Not that it's happened to me whatsoever.

 

Update. As I said yesterday it was a veiled sun, very high, thin clouds. today there are some clouds and in between there is lots of sun. When the sun is burning (left back, about 7 o'clock about 45 degrees above the horizon) it shines directly on my display and I can read and type this thread without a problem. Turning up the backlight makes it better, but not even that much. So in pitch dark and burning sun (under the right angle) the 1 nits setting is quite good!

 

I just looked in my Bios, but did I understand it correctly that concealed mode backlight off, is everything off and not able to set it higher?

 

You can set the screen backlight to OFF or MINIMUM I think.

 

Hello,

Do you success to use concealed mode with a CF-19 MK3.

I have a Cf-19 KDRAHWF with Windows 7 home 32 bits French and a AZERTY Keybord.

On the bios, in the Concealed mode configuration, Concealed mode is Enabled and LCD backlight, LEd, sound et wireless radio are on OFF.

When i use Fn+ F8, nothing opened.

 

Did you install the drivers?

 

Not sure here, but Toughwiki.com is right now: Mk 3 19K,L,M,Q

(maybe N,P)
Intel Core 2 Duo SU9300 1.2GHz vPro (Centrino 2) 1000 nits (TS) 8GB max
2.5" SATA L/N = no WiFi, N = No Absolute

Also, FWIW - I just added the MK5 info. Working on getting the MK6 info too.