What would be a good Toughbook for..

I am looking to get a cheap laptop for my in-laws. will see lite use but want it to be rugged.
$250 or less.
They will use it for to get on-line (wifi) .
some word, excel and some printing. Maybe some preschool games for the grand kids.

I was looking at the CF-27
1 How hard is it to add internal wifi
2 what is the largest hard drive. looking to have a 20gb + drive
3 how much memory can be added.
4 How reliable are the CF-27

open to suggestions

Thanks,
Peter

 

The 500 MHz CF27 is hard to beat on a price-to-performance basis. Internal wifi? realistically it's not gonna happen. just use a PCMCIA card in one of the slots. Largest HD? Not sure, but I have a PII-333 CF27 running a 60GB. How much memory? Well, unfortunately the only P3-500s you're ever gonna find have a paltry 64MB on board (even my 333 has 128!) and I'm not sure if it'll recognize a 256MB stick. I should try it one day. They can certainly accept a 128. How reliable? I'm pretty satisfied with them!

 

Are there any PCMCIA cards that you would recommend?
Wireless router would be on the second floor and laptop would be used mostly on the first floor of the house.

 

Pretty much any of them will be ok, really. I've used netgear, cisco, orinoco gold, proxim, and several generic cards, myself. Can't say any one of them has been much better than the others. If you stick with a newer brand name card, the drivers will be more readily available

 

Cards without options for external antennae tend to lose reception after a couple of walls.

Personally, I've tried EnGenius EUB-362 EXT Wireless USB with great results. Strong and stable connection 3 floors down. Rig it up with a 10dbi antennae and with a good line of sight, you'll still reach your router 500m away.

 

Thanks for the info

 

Somebody else had a 27, and had troubles with some wireless cards - the toughbooks.wikispaces site mentions issues with some atheros based cards. Don't know if it is a fact or not, but something to keep in mind.

With a CF-28 I've used both a Belkin and a Trendnet PCMCIA card and had good results around the house with them (garage to second floor). Currently I've got a mini-pci wifi card installed (Intel prowireless b/g) and am happy with it.

 

I use a Linksys card and it works very well on my CF-27 mk2.

Bob