What do you use your panasonic toughbooks for???

I just been wondering what everyone uses there toughbooks for????
like me i normaly only use it when am out camping/hiking/paintballing..etc...
most of the time just for running gps software....
but does anyone use it everyday taking it too work???
how about playing games etc....
i know thousands of games that work perfect on the toughbook from streetfighter too golden axe.....
what about sufing the web????????

 

I bought mine specifically for marine navigation. I run Maptech Offshore Navigator, and I have electronic charts for all the waters I sail in. Touchscreen, backlit keyboard, and water resistance make this perfect, better than color chart plotters costing thousands.

 

I used to take mine into the office... When I had a job! Heh... (I'm looking now!) Until I find a job... I'll use it to plot the overthrow of the free world!

Mine is used mainly for experimentation... To do things people say can't be done. (See my earliest posts) That won't fit! (It does) That won't work! (I make it work) You can't do that! (It happens.) I figured if I screwed it up I could still sell it for parts. Now it flys faster than any 800Mgz machine I've ever used. I try to keep the apps down so I don't clog resources. There are the main ones I must have... Office 2003, Photoshop, All my phone hacking software, Resource tracking apps, WiFi & wardriving apps, etc.

I wanted a laptop that could take a beating and come back for more... I found it! I'm thinking about putting mine up for auction on ebay and trying make enough between that and a few other things to get a CF-29. The Centrino would be a lot faster... I need speed!

 

cf-29 well dont want to sound bad about it my uncle has one, he works for BT(british telecom), and too be honest it isnt worth the penny the cf-28 runs programs much faster than the cf-29, i had it for the weekend caus thats when my hard drive died, and used it with a external gps, and it was running very slow even after tweaking it, for the money i would rather stay with the 1ghz model running that with 1gb of ram much be perfect, dont take me wrong there are afew programs out there that will run slightly faster on the cf-29 but the software i use runs perfect on the cf-28......
and for the mean while i wouldnt change it for the world,
best thing you can do is buy a cf-28 with gps

 

I'm a journalist so portability and battery life are key.

The W5 was fantastic - could leave the AC unit at home, use it on and off all day long and not even check the battery guage.

Switched to the Y5 for bigger screen/desktop resolution. Battery life is still fantastic, though not quite the "untethered" experience that the W5 was. But the tradeoff for the better screen is worth it considering it is still under 3.4 lbs..

 

how long battery life do you get off one full charge???????
if you been using it all day????????
also if its been on standby???????

 

I get 2-3 hours on the main battery and up to 6 hours with both... ANd that was running intensive stuff... Antivirus, etc.

 

Main intentions are mapping, GPS plugged in, staying connected when on the road, and word processing when away from the desktop. I am sure more uses will crop up, like storage of information for when geeky questions are asked around a campfire when wifi is miles away. Who knows where it will evolve to.

gb

 

Mine is going to be used for mapping in my jeep. and for music to plug into my aux jac on the radio. I hope to mount it upside down overhead and just use the touchscreen when I need it. Hard wire it all to the fuse panel. I have pivot software to flip rotation on the screen but its also fliping the touchscreen sensor...still have to look into that issue but so far so good.

 

I bought mine to program my fuel injection computer, and so I can do tuning in the car.

Why did I need a toughbook? Because I'm sure it'll end up sliding into the dash a few times, and I've had it under the hood more than once. I've also thrown more tools through the window than most people would imagine, and if this was a Dell, it'd have a screwdriver through the back side of the screen already.

 

I bought mine to keep in my truck for Geocaching, and maybe a little wardriving. I also use it at work, (I'm a firefighter), after hours to surf the net and do my emails. We have a wireless setup at work owned by the shifts.

 

i take mine to the auto shop every day, alot of chrysler dealership repair life is online and the dell 2600 ended up with broken lcd lid repaired then sold it to get into a p3 700 cf-48 gave it to the wife and now i have the speed i need p4 1.8 cf-48 to also run 45gig of tunes

 

I'm an experimental archaeologist, and the old CF-27 is used mainly for recording thermocouple temperature data from a datalogger in experimental pottery kiln firing. So it needs to be connected for long periods of time, and tends to get covered in dust, ash, and sometimes rain.

And I was so impressed with it I just bought a W4 as a main laptop. That goes everywhere with me and the toughness is a bonus in a 1.3kg laptop.

Dave

 

I had a former sheriff's car, a Ford Crown Victoria. Replaced the stock stereo with one with line-in, so I could use my toughbook to play MP3's. Later I added GPS navigation. Given my driving style, I needed a toughbook. Occasional spilled drinks, hard corners/stops/acceleration, no problem!

I have a cf-28 600mhz touchscreen with a toshiba 120gb hdd. I modded it with a mPCI 250mW 802.11b card, and a custom 'pigtail' 30+ inches long. RP-SMA antenna jack is at the top-left corner of the screen where the stock retractable was. Only 2 complaints: I need a retractable 2.4ghz antenna and an 'automotive' hdd. Current one gets near 50c on warm days, despite lower-than-stock power usage.

 

I program machinery in local manufacturing plants. The working conditions vary greatly.. Sometimes I walk up to a nice clean panel with a retractable shelf, other times I'm balancing the computer on a piece of running equipment belching sparks, hydraulic oil, and coolant Needless to say those are the days that I'm REAL glad I've got a toughbook! the other problem is 99% of the time, I've got several cables connecting the computer to the machine, and it never fails that some idiot will trip on something and send it all careening to the floor. With my panasonic I can pick everything up, cuss the guy out, and pick right back up where I left off!

 

I use mine to turn my truck into a mobile office - I own & run a specialty Coffee and Espresso equipment sales and service company. I put on about 65K miles a year and primarily use if for invoicing through quickbooks and printing invoices (just have a regular printer in the truck for now but going to upgrade to a pentax thermal printer soon) I also us the toughbook for reflashing eprom's on some of the high end grinders I use from Germany and it works great since I have to use the printer port for the patch cable I have. I will soon be able to plug into the high end superauto espresso machines to. My dell does not have a printer port and is way to fragile to have sitting on an espresso bar with steam and water all over the place.

 

What is this world coming to when you have to flash-upgrade the firmware of a coffee grinder

 

I here you - cool thing is as they make this stuff more complicated and the hourly rate goes up - why do you think it cost $6 bucks for a Latte - I can't wait to get the interface for the super auto espresso units - they have a straight up computer in them - Italians just don't want guys like me in them

 

I was looking for GPS laptop and something the kids could use to watch DVD's in the car.

 

I use two CF-29's as part of a flight test data acquisition system for tests on a C-130 aircraft. I have experienced various failures from other laptops in the past so I speced out toughbooks with touchscreens so that I would not have any failures to collect data in flight.

(The other machine in the picture was for non-critical data)



I liked them so much I bought a used CF-72 for my personal computer. It is not as tough as the 29's but I think I am going to like it well enough.

 

Quickcat... What type of data do you get? I'm intrigued... Thunderstorm, engine data, parts... what type of data? I would assume you are in the military...

I'd love to fly a C-130 for some reason... Just one of those iconic aircraft.

By the way... What's with the old nixie tubes in the machine behind you? That's vintage 60s-70s stuff what do the machines do exactly?

 

Actually I am a flight test engineer for a civilian outfit doing modification work on C-130's. I use the Toughbooks as part of a data acquisition system for performance based flight testing. We are recording things like airspeed, altitude, aircraft attitude, angle of attack and sideslip and such. It is great work. As far as the "older" looking gauges on the switch panel goes...we had a requirement in a program a couple of years ago to use instruments with certain specs and those were what we could get in time. I have since grown fond of them. I hope that answers your question, I am not sure what a "nixie" tube is.

 

Great picture! Nixie tubes are the red tubes giving you numerical values in the instrument behind the laptops.

You must have a fun job! I'm jealous!

 

Those are LED displays on some signal conditioners we were using. I replaced them with better equipment since that picture was taken.

Thanks, I do love my job.... most of the time.

 

Two thumbs up for the coolest toughbook application to date

 

I love my toughbook CF-28 1000mhz 512ram 40gig. I've upgraded It a bit to include the new 40gig drive.
I've also Installed two LCD Mounted WIFI antennas to go with a new Intel2200 wireless card. I've also changed the keyboard to the Black cf-29 version.
I'm a Helicopter mechanic working in the middle of the Canadian nowhere most of the time. I keep all the manuals and parts listings for all the aircraft on this thing.
I try not to abuse it, but it did get rained on the other day, and promptly fell off a ladder into the sand. Actually almost every night the fog rolls in and covers everything with precip.Toughbooks are great I only wish they had one with a graphics card. I'd love a gaming notebook but theres just noway it would survive.

Thats me at work in northern saskatchewan, My next upgrade will be a gps so i know where

 

That's at least second coolest toughbook application i've seen! I'd love to see pics of your wifi antennas if you get a chance.