Panasonic Toughbook 19 and 30 upgraded

Panasonic did a makeover of Toughbook 19 and 30, puts Intel technology up to date.

Toughbook 30 and 19

Panasonic is adding new features and functionality to its line of rugged Toughbook laptops, designed for use in more strenuous environments. The Toughbook 30 is a rugged notebook, and Toughbook 19 is a rugged convertible tablet PC. These both laptops have been upgraded with extended battery life, increased on board memory and lower reflective screen coating to improve brightness. Both Toughbooks now have 1000-nit brightness displays and anti-glare and anti-reflective screen treatments. They have also been updated with Intel's latest Centrino 2 platform, which should allow for improved security and remove management thanks to Intel vPro technology.

The updated Panasonic Toughbook 30 laptop is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo SL9300 processor running a 1.6GHz processor and offers a maximum of 4GB of DDR2 (double date rate 2) RAM and a 160GB SATA (Serial ATA) shock-mounted hard disk drive.

The Panasonic Toughbook 19 tablet features the same 4GB of main memory and hard disk drive storage capacity as the Toughbook 30, but this laptop is paired with a Intel Core 2 Duo SU9300 chip running at 1.2GHz. In addition, Panasonic has incorporated touch-screen capabilities into the display of the Toughbook 30.

However, Nicholas Kolakowski of eweek observes that the updated notebooks still feature the rugged characteristics that make Panasonic Toughbooks a unique but pricy alternative in the enterprise notebook market. Panasonic's Toughbook 30 rugged laptop sells for $3,649, compared with $3,749 for the Panasonic Toughbook 19 convertible tablet notebook.