Nice for hacking around with, but ...

I've been reading the forum and messing around with a couple of CF-28 toughbooks that I paid too much money for and one that was dirt cheap.

These things are nice to monkey around with, and I see a lot of people agonizing over how to add GPS, wireless modem, etc, and I have to wonder if it is really worth the effort, unless as the wise man said, 'getting there is half the fun'.

I just got a brand new Viewsonic Viewpad 7 android device for $300. It has built in: a nice size screen, GPS, WIFI, bluetooth, cellphone, cell data service, 32Gb storage, and about a million free apps. Plus you can stick it in a (large) pocket. It is pretty tough, but not waterproof, but then again neither is the CF-28 toughbook.

I'll keep playing around with the toughbooks, but if what you want is a device with all the bells and whistles I'm afraid I'd have to say the toughbooks (even the later models cannot provide celllular service) are basically obsolete.

 

That is exaclty the point with most of the mods you see in ths forum.

All Toughbook models are waterproof with the rubber keyboard- short of taking it diving with you.

The CF-29 model on up all have cellular options. Even the CF-28 had it, but the technology in those is no longer supported by cellular carriers. But even with cellular, the Toughbooks are not meant to have all the bells and whistles. They are a work machine. You wouldn't drag race a dump truck against a sports car either.

I agree, the Toughbooks are not for everyone. They are slower than anything of comparable age, they are heavy, and they are not too fancy. They include only the options that help field productivity or convenience. BUT, they will take conditions that will send other laptops running home to mommy. If that's not what you are looking for, you will hate Toughbooks. As for most of us around here, we love them for all of the reasons everyone else hates them.

 

I have a grand daughter 14 years old and she would tell you different. Ever since she seen my CF-29 she wanted it so on her birthday she took it home. That was a year ago....she thinks its so cool and her friends do to and her younger sister can't break it like she did to her fancy Dull which was only a year old. Her friends think she has a cool grandfather..... bells and whistles you can have them

 

Not to probe the depths of your ignorance too deeply, I will restrain myself to one suggestion. If you check the dates of the vast majority of the CF-28 thread posts you might notice that they were posted long before you ever heard of the Android OS, "smart phones", or most of the crap on the market today. Obsolete implies "no longer suitable/usable for the intended use". None of my many toughbooks qualifies for that definition. Suit your self, but you can probably find a more receptive audience for that codswallop elsewhere. As for tough, drop your Viewsonic, without benefit of an Otterbox or similar, onto concrete from about 5' or so, report back, preferably with pictures.
CAP

 

Good one Cap

Toughbook 1 / Viewsonic 0

 

KGround, I don't quite understand. Toughbooks are rugged notebook computers, their ruggedness is what distinguishes them from normal notebooks. If you argue that touchscreen devices like the Viewpad make rugged notebooks obsolete, then it seems you are implying that the Viewpad makes notebooks in general (both rugged and non-rugged) obsolete, since rugged notebooks functionally subsume normal notebooks.

Depending on the usage this may actually be true for some people, in particular those who never really had a need for the full capabilities of a notebook computer, but who had to buy notebooks because no other device met their requirements. However, generally speaking I don't see notebooks becoming obsolete anytime soon. My work is IT-related; while I know many colleagues who own smaller touchscreen devices, they only use them once in a while, not for "real" work. I have an Android phone myself - I use it sometimes to write an email or to SSH onto a server when I don't have my Toughbook in reach, but I would not want it to be my only machine. I see it more like a Swiss army knife, it is handy and ok (barely) to get something done in a pitch (and I appreciate it for this), but I'll use the proper tools any time if I can.

At some point the small devices may able to hook up to all kinds of periphery (at least monitor, keyboard & mouse, or they need to come up with an interface way better than small touchscreens) and have the CPU power to run various operating systems (maybe within virtual machines) and compile and run software, and then I will be happy to leave my notebooks for my future phone.

 

Better yet, drop your naked Viewsonic corners-down on an open ToughBook. Then drop a naked ToughBook corners-down on your Viewsonic.

There, in a nutshell, is why we love them, and will continue to love them, long after the battery burns up in your tinkertoy and it no longer serves any purpose because your carrier has abandoned it. That should be in about 2-3 years; my ToughBook has underwear older than that.

mnem
"We call them Dells."

 

There can only be one crusty ol' tinker dwagon.

 

my drawers are off to the dwagon! Hey guys we love our old instruments! We salute you and one upmanship has just taken on a new meaning!....Driller

 

You are talking about 3-4 year old threads. There was no GPS in phones or laptops at the time other than Toughbooks, and when we started doing these mods to the CF-28's, it was still pretty high tech.

If you don't want obsolete, quit digging around for old threads. If I started a topic, or was a heavy poster in a thread... You know it was old as hell.

Even still, my only laptop (Yes, I'm down to one) is a CF-28, and it does things that my iPhone cannot fathom. Having a touch screen that is 9x the size is important to me for why I actually got involved in toughbooks in the first place (Vehicle laptop for Megasquirt operations).

 

If I only had a Nickel for every time I heard that one!

 

I know I do! I carry it around with me everywhere...oh, wait, we were talking about Toughbooks weren't we? Well, I usually take that with me also!

 

I started collecting Toughbooks since 6 months or so.

My first one was a 2nd hand CF-27 MK2 (300Mhz) model. I loved it.

Then i bought 3 CF-28's (600Mhz with touchscreen / 800Mhz without touchscreen / 1000Mhz with touchscreen and wifi) and i love them.

Its nice to use them, they are tough and can handle my punkrock attitude, and i use them to play games.

So, even when the CF-28 might be obsolete nowadays, i love them, because for me, its all new.