M34: your thoughts?

I have recently discovered the M34! and am thinking about getting one for my 10 year old (I really want to get him an 18 or 19, but the m34 is 1/3 the price).
I realize I could google the heck out of it, but wanted to know what you all thought of these units, and or your personal experience with those units.
I've read the panny/config site, and am versed in the basics of the units, as well as the toughbook wikispaces page, and some of the forums.
I would be looking at the 1ghz+ with the touch screen, and/or/maybe GPS.

what was thier primary use (cops, military, inventory mgmt)?
are they IP68? IP???
Magnesium case?
How would you compare it to a 29?
hard to get parts for? heartland?
easyish to mod? add gps? swap hdd?

I'm just looking for some quick and dirty. i'm gonna go poke around a bit more now.

 

I've played with all of these, and not sure a M34 is a good fit for a 10 year old, as the screen is way to small for what they want to play. I have two nine year olds, and they wouldnt want it. The ones I had were used as base units for PDRC setups in patrol cars and were windows 2000.

As far as 18/19, I've just finished configuring and started shipping today 12 cf-18s to the Dominican Republic for two after-school programs. I'm pre-staging these with travelers and were going to set them up and show them how to use them in March. For this application I picked the cf-18 because they are: 1. small enough to sit on the floor with the kids (these are younger kids). 2. can rotate and be used as a reading tablet. 3. are compact enough to be collected at the end of the day and locked away in a cabinet for safekeeping. At the same time, we'll be setting up another twelve cf-29s, but for older kids at another two sites that will have desks (we will build) and a dedicated lab room. So given the choice....

I would go for a 29, big screen and easy to play angry birds on.

If you still arent convinced, I have an old m34, screen is going out but works, and I will gladly send it to you to play with. If you like it, then send me back $30. if not, just send it back.

And a gps installed for a 10 year old? Not sure thats a good idea, considering my kids, one would probubly be following the arrow, looking at the screen as they walked off a cliff or into the street.

my two cents....

Sam

 

A decent 1GHz M34 cost $150-$200 or so. Look around you might find a decent CF-18 Mk1 (900MHz) or Mk2 (1.1GHz) for just a little more.

Most I've seen were mounted in the trunk of a police car. Heavy wear on the outside, great inside.

Yep, with rubber port covers all around.

Much more compact, of course. Keyboard is tiny, smaller than an 18. Slower and cannot take as much RAM -- 1.25 GB max of PC-133 memory -- expensive and slower than single DDR of early 29's. Hard drive is buried inside, must pull bottom plate to change anything. Biggest problem is small battery that was discontinued many years ago. Hardly any can be found with good working cells. Even a re-cell provides about 3-4 hours max, less than the 4-6 hours for a good battery in a CF-29. Another big problem is the display is only 800x600. And don't get the transflective type unless you must work outside because the colors suck. WiFi isn't very good, believe the OEM is the problematic Intel 2100. Even with an Engenius card the range is only so-so, I think because the antenna is an early single element design that's not very effective. And definitely don't get a pre-C model (slower than 1 GHz) because they rarely have wifi and even those that do really suck.

Rubber backlit keyboards do exist but are rare.

On the plus side, the touch screens are very reliable and rarely have problems like many of the CF-29 and CF-18's do.

Not too hard to find on the Flea. Never tried Heartland.

Most mods are difficult because cramped space. Teo has added GPS but he's quite talented and can probably put a GPS in a toothbrush.

 

I'm thinking that a decent CF-28 would be a lot better for a kid. The screens are pretty small on the 34s and there really is not a lot of room for any mods inside.
CAP

 

Cool. U guys are the best.
I haven't been ran off here or anything, but i think I'm gonna go for a (newer) 18 or 19. I just saw the m34 and it seemed pretty cool.
The cost may be a hair more, but it's just cooler anyway.
For now, I gotta wrangle up the regular bills, then I can work on a little here and there fer a unit fer the kid.

I might want one, too, though...... dam potato chips.

 

As noted earlier, the M34 is well suited to vehicle remote mounting, accessed via the PDRC.

Not having had or used a CF-18 or -19, my only question would be the durability of the swivel screen for usage by a 10-yera-old.

That's the very reason I have three CF-M34s.

 

The swivel was also one of my concerns. not that I think it would be...abused? but just reach it's operational limits. I think my 10 year old would hit it's rated twists and turns in 1 day, just because it was cool to transform it....

 

A group of kids the DR using the last batch of cf-29s we sent down, part of an after school program for poor kids taught by international volunteers. When dealing with multiple kids per computer, the larger size of the 29 works well. Oh, I think there were some 28s as well.



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My opinion on CF-M34 is that; It is one of the best unit created by panasonic. It can easily beat the cf-18 and cf-19 in terms of portability and durability. The CF-M34C unit is more powerful than CF-18MK1 unit. It has 1.0ghz, Ram can be upgraded to 1.2Gb(DDR PC 2700, 200pin) and all of its port are more secure. If you are handy enough, you can integrate GPS, bluetooth and even a PCMCIA 3G modem on PCMCIA with an antena mounted into LCD. You can also upgrade the wi-fi card and its antena into a more powerful that its builtin one without sticking those long range depole ugly antena. As a matter of fact I used SMC dual band card and a wi-fi padle antena from CF-30 unit.

ohlip

 

Details; we want details (with pictures, of course ) ! :yes:

 

Ok! here is the intial photo that I saved for gps installation using the EM408 engine. More photo will follow.

ohlip

 

....nice....