Hardcore Power
Written: Sep 19 '99
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: VERY durable
Cons: a bit pricey
|
|
|
| ljrunner's Full Review: Panasonic Toughbook 71 (CF-71KYCKCAM98) PC Noteboo... |
I work for the United States Army in an Infantry Battalion who can be VERY hard on their equipment at times. Enter Panasonic Toughbook. . .
The toughbook is unique in the fact that it is made to take abuse. The keyboard and screen are dust and moisture resistant and the hard drive is encased in a shock resistant lining. They have been dropped from 4 feet and still performed flawlessly, run over with a HMMWV (Humvee) in its closed state and continued ticking without a hiccup.
All of the latest laptop advances are available in the toughbook configurations, but you will pay a bit more for them. The system we purchased had a 366MHz PII processor, 96 MB SDRAM, 48X CD-ROM, 4.3 Gig HD, 120MEG Superdisk/3.5" floppy, a built in 56k modem, sound card, 4 MB video, a 14.1" screen (Active matrix), LiON battery, and came with your choice of NT or Windows98.
Panasonic does not bog you down with unnecessary software (BIG plus in my book) and their sales staff was very helpful and informative. Their 3 year warranty is extra, but adds unprecedented protection. Full 3-year parts and labor with a hot-swap feature where Panasonic will send you the replacement for your broken piece through the mail, and you swap it out and send the broken piece back to them. If it is fixable, they will fix it and re-swap with you; if it is not fixable they will let you keep the piece they sent. If the piece is not swappable (broken screen) they will send a tech out with the right piece and replace it on site.
The only bad thing that I have seen so far is the fact that you can get a cheaper machine with the same specs. The issue is durability. If you do a lot of field work (insurance agent, realty, MILITARY, construction. . .) this is the way to go hands down.
On a scale of one to 10. . . A strong overall 9
Price 7
Performance 9
Features 8.5
Warranty 9.5
Sales Staff 9
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
ljrunner
|
|
Location: Kentucky
Reviews written: 95
Trusted by: 143 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.