Design
The CF-31 is a hefty small suitcase, measuring 2.9 by 11.9 by 11.5 inches and weighing 8.8 pounds, complete with a pull-out carrying handle on its front edge. The sides, bottom, and border of the lid are made of hard black plastic, with the lid and palm rest made of silver magnesium alloy. The handle has a hole and tether cable anchor to hold the plastic stylus for the touch screen.
Some touch screens are dim, but the Panasonic's 13.1-inch panel is exceptionally bright. Designed to be readable outdoors, it's almost too bright or washed-out indoors at its highest backlight settings, but offers vivid colors and sharp contrast at medium settings. It's an old-fashioned 1,024 by 768 non-widescreen with fairly narrow viewing angles, but the touch screen responds accurately to a tap of stylus or finger.
The chiclet-style keyboard has a clicky, medium-soft typing feel; Fn-F12 cycles through several backlight levels, though even the brightest is relatively dim. The Delete key is at the lower right, by the cursor arrows, instead of at the upper right where it belongs, but there are dedicated Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys. The touchpad is unfortunately tiny—roughly 2.25 by 1.5 inches—and requires too much force—a sharp rap—to register a tap, so we relied on its twin mouse buttons to click and the stylus or a finger to scroll or move the cursor large distances.
Features
The CF-31's ports and pieces are hidden behind hinged doors or panels that snap shut with a secure click. On the Toughbook's left side are the double-latched battery pack and a cupboard door revealing the modular DVD±RW drive; PC Card, ExpressCard, and Smart Card slots; and an SD memory card reader. On the right are the removable 250GB hard drive (320GB in current models) and HDMI, Ethernet, and two USB 2.0 ports plus the AC power connector. Two more USB 2.0 ports, a docking station connector, a VGA port, and headphone and microphone jacks are at the rear, along with a serial port.
Our test unit was also outfitted with a fingerprint reader for security and Gobi 2000 3G mobile broadband, as well as 802.11a/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Windows XP was preinstalled, with Windows 7 Professional—32-bit, not 64-bit—provided on DVD. We installed the latter for our tests; normally we'd gripe about a 32- rather than 64-bit OS for gamers and media editors, but we don't think people are likely to use such apps on a Toughbook. Indeed, we suspect most customers will either use specialized vertical-market software for the likes of patrol cars and utility crews or focus on customized in-house applications. We also think their laptops will be just getting broken in by the end of Panasonic's three-year limited parts and labor warranty.
Performance
We also think that most Toughbook users aren't interested in raw speed—they're more concerned with whether their laptops can withstand drops from three feet while operating (ours did, with no ill effects aside from the display flopping down) or other abuse (such as standing on ours). That said, the dual-core Core i5-540M-equipped CF-31 with 4GB of RAM proved to be no speed demon, but a tolerable, faster-than-a-netbook performer for everyday purposes.
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