Panasonic Toughbook Laptops
I’m lucky enough to have never dropped a laptop. And my one encounter with spilled coffee resulted in no casualties. These are real world risks faced by everyone with a laptop and to a lesser degree everyone with a computer. Recognizing this risk and a number of high risk situations where people might need a computer, like construction sites and rain forests for example, Panasonic designed the Toughbook. It’s sealed against liquid and there are a number of rubber bumpers to cushion the blow. The most recent iteration of this concept is a convertible tablet PC. Surprisingly it only weighs about 5 pounds. Durability doesn’t come cheap. The tablet PC version demoed in my video starts at $3000. Of course, replacing a laptop in extreme situations adds up quick, making it smarter to buy the right laptop the first time rather than trying to perform damage control after it’s too late.
http://media.pmcmovies.com/panasonic_toughbook_ctia2006.wmv
You’ll have to pardon the video quality, I shot it with a Sony DSC-T5 digital still camera during the CTIA ShowStoppers event. Next time I’m bringing my DV cam.