Panasonic w5

Hey guys- I'm most likely going to purchase this machine, though I really can't find too much information than otherwise stated in the description. Does anyone know about Panasonic models made in Japan? A close friend of mine suggested I use www.dynamism.com to purchase it. Any input?

 

First of all you are asking where to buy an item and yet yu have not indicated in your sig or your post anything as to where you are located.

So you arent exactly helping us to help you.

When I had the W5, I bought it at Dynamism.com. For someone living in the USA, Dynamism may be the best choice, although their prices are rather expensive. Why? they have a local tech support in Chicago avilable via phone and e-mail and if anything goes wrong under warranty, you send it to them in Chicago on their tab and they send it to Japan to be fixed on their tab.

Since then I moved from the US and when I got my current Y5, I did it via Conics.net, who generally have by far the lowest prices for these things. The catch with Conics is that if something goes wrong under warranty, you have to pay to send the broken computer to them in Japan and they pay for the rest of shipping.

That said, it is Toughbooks we are talking about here so repairs are not common.

There are others like geekstuff.com, portableone.com (they do US models only not Japanese ones), Kemplar.com, chaseandcompany.net, kurnspatrick.com......but all these are "tweeners": they have neither the rock-bottom prices Conics can offer nor the customer service advantages Dynamism gives (if you live in the US, that).

 

Sorry about that country mix up- I'm from the US, formally of Chicago but currently at Indiana University. The reason why I'm interested in this is because my father owns the W4, and is VERY happy with it.

With the updated processor and incredible battery life, what's not to love besides the high price?

I'm going to check out Conics.net right now, though I have one more question. How do you like the screen? From what I've heard and experienced, it only seemed of average quality.

 

Another quick post...

I'm assuming the W5 has two RAM slots available for upgrade?

 

The quality of the screen is good (on the W5 and Y5 that I have experience with): it is matt, not glossy, colour is accurate and detail is good.

However it is not a a bright screen (the max brightness you can get is like "nornal" setting on most laptops) and I think this is mainly what people interprit as "not good quality". In other words if you are conditioned to enjoy glossy, bright Fujitsu or Sony screens, well this is not the same. These laptops seem to be built to prioritise low power consumption in most thing.

Also from what I remember reading, in order to reduce battery consumption, panasonic uses some sort of diffusion layer. Result is that the "Sweet spot" is a bit smaller and you may find at times you want to tilt the screen up tor down to a better angle. But then it is fine.

Another thing which I think creates this perception is that Panasonic has been a bit sloppy with the power setting. If you have the laptop on max brightness while plugged in, then you go cordless, it reduces the brightness. Now you can of course dial this back up.

But....the oddity seem to be that often when you plug back in, the brightness doesnt always automatically return to max, even if you had dialied it up when cordless. Soemtimes it does and sometimes not. So if you are not really observant you can end up working on lower brightness than was available to you.

No. Only one slot available to the user for after-market addition. There are usually two factory versions one with 512MB soldered to themotherbaord and one with 1GB soldered in. The other slot is free.

So with this be careful because if someone sells you a 1GB version, make sure it is a factory 1GB, because if it has a 512MB soldered in and the rest in the extra slot, then you will have get rid of what you paid for AND buy a 1GB stick to reach 1.5GB level.

The 512MB Microdimm for this laptop is barely within "reasonable" price territory - they 1GB is just plain usurious. They are odd form factor of Micro-dimm that is used on very few laptops and is expensive.

For Toughbook Mircro-dimm memory add-ons, its a simple choice - buy it from Conics.net - they are the cheapest on this, without question. MemoryX.com claims they have it but it isnt cheaper and they dont give full specs so you could buy something you didnt mean to.

 

Thank you so much for all the information; I was about to buy two DDR2 PC2-4200 1GB sticks from newegg.
http://conics.net/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=86{14}39{41}245{11}46{9}39{8}80{7}16{4}92{17}54{40}223

I thought it would work from what it said on the specs list. I'm sure 1.5gb will be enough...what little photoshop I will do on it should be fine, right?

Are you happy with your panasonic product?

 

I was not happy with my W5K. For me, it felt:
1) screen size just a tad small and its resolution too low , making for a cramped desktop
2) processing power far too slow -this was a crucial flaw, which became very annnoying especially when mulitasking.
3) the user cannot upgrade the HDD on W5, which you can with the Y5, saving you a lot of money and giving you better options.

Otherwise the W5 could have been a great computer - great battery life and very light, great build quality and 100% silent with no fan at all.

Note that my W5K was a single core with win XP. Even browing with BitTorrent in the background proved to be annoying at times with it.

The latest W5 is dual core, but I am not convinced that on such a weakly powered processor, the new Dual core will be any better, especially if you want to run photoshop - at least with any kind of responsiveness.

So I got the Y5M and am much happier with that. I wish it had bluetooth and built-in HSDPA but otherwise this is close to a perfect laptop. Processor speed is much better and it is still only 3.3lbs versus 2.64 for the W5. Main tradeoff is that Y5/Y7 needs a fan and isnt silent, unlike the W5.

Personally I would recommend the Y5/Y7 myself. In my personal opinion it is more of a complete laptop and yet very little is compromised in portability.

For someone who was going to type office docs and browse only, that is fine, the W5 will more than meet your needs. But when you mention Photoshop, that would concern me.

But I am only one perso - and a very opinionated one at that. It would be helpful for other people to pipe up about their experience with the W5, with regards to photoshop or other processor/graphics intensive duties.

 

I run Photoshop 7.0 on my 1Ghz CF-28 with a 100GB 7200rpm drive and 512MB RAM... It works very well. Speedy enough for me! Even my 800Mhz lappys do well with the same configuration.