CF-31 Review:

Rugged PC Review.com - Rugged Notebooks: Panasonic Toughbook CF31

I'm not so fond of this new fan system... I think fanless is the way to go! I garuandamntee that this fan will get CLOGGED with mud and other crap... I'm sure Panasonic will replace a million fans before they realize the mistake they made...

 

kinda sounds like the sheet hit the fan, or it's about too......Driller

 

If you use standard voltage CPU's to meet the market requirements on CPU power for the device, then you need to adequately cool it, which unfortunately means the fan. The fan chassis (if I remember right) can put up with a lot of gunk, but is also easily serviceable.

On a side note, I'm pretty sure you can disable the fan in the BIOS which downgrades the performance of the device enough to be able to passively cool the device. I've got a CF-31 at work, so I'll check in the morning on that point.

 

"Thermal design power is the maximum amount of power a computer's cooling system needs to dissipate and is used by Intel as a measure of power efficiency. So while the new chips run very efficiently, they can still generate a lot more heat than the old ones, and that heat must be dissipated. So bye-bye fan-less design. Panasonic doesn't point this out specifically, but mentions their new "hybrid cooling system," where hybrid means that a fan is helping the internal heat piping to dissipate the heat generated by the processor. That's not the end of the world; Itronix has been using fans for years, and they're totally waterproof, and so is the one in the Toughbook 31. It's still less elegant, but thus is progress. The Panasonic website shows a video of the fan handling both water and muddy gunk " (see below).


-Ibid.

 

Well...despite what that review says, if Panasonic had stuck with low voltage processors as it has done before, then the fan system probably wouldn't be needed.

Problem is most people are demanding ever faster computers, whether they are actually needed or not (and in most Toughbook markets, probably not).

 

The problem into what I have seen and for future reference is that when the fan is on standby mode and it doesn't necessary need and then collect dust, moist substance, gunk or whatever. It will be stuck on it and a posibility of holding the fan not to rotate and then overheating the system without knowing by the user.


ohlip

 

YES! This is what happens in 100% of the case's I've seen with other lesser computers at my company while servicing them... ESPECIALLY with smokers, where tar gunks the fans up... The users don't even know, and then, they have a BAD CPU which costs them $200 in parts and labor (but mostly labor intensive as you all know) and they can't believe it! ALL BECAUSE they use there laptops in there laps where is sucks dust from their pants!

- Rob - befuddled!

I think this is a BAD move by from Panasonic!

However, agreeing with Pinecone in that the market demands all these high-@$$-off-the-wall-performance machines, where people DO NOT NOT NOT need the performance but THINK that they do because they are FOOLED into thinking that they don't have the latest and greatest! Unless you are a gamer... Then you wouldn't be into Toughbooks now would you???

CF-30 - the LAST GOOD Toughbook Panasonic ever produced!

P.S. I'm looking at it more and more every day (and YES, I STILL want a CF-31), and I'm NOT seeing much of an advantage of getting a CF-31 OVER my CF-30, OTHER than the HDMI port (Which I PROBABLY won't use much anyways even at that!!!!) The machine pretty much looks the SAME, but has MORE little rubbers that will just get broken (OBVIOUSLY).

~Rob - befuddled even more!~

 

While it is true that gaming requires the most from any computer (along with some of the CAD and other CPU/RAM intensive programs), there are more and more customers requiring the faster CPU and greater RAM. The military especially is running not only more extensive programs, but they are also running more of them at once. In the USAF the switch to faster computers and Vista has almost been completed at most bases and they are already talking about moving on to W7 as soon as they can ensure that all their proprietory programs will run on it. More and more of the military is becoming highly reliant on computers and the older (non dual core) processors and less than 2GB or RAM just cannot keep pace.

 

They just got vista working now lets see how W7 is gonna be. Too bad you can't use readyboost on DoD computers...