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Toughbook is the trademarked brand name owned by Matsushita Electric Industrial and marketed by their international brand name Panasonic. Toughbook refers to its line of semi-rugged and rugged laptop computers. more...

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In 2005, Panasonic added the Toughbook Arbitrator mobile digital camera and mobile digital video recorder (DVR) system to their line. Toughbooks are commonly used by public safety (police), utilities, field service, construction, and military personnel.

Overview

The notebooks are designed to withstand vibrations, drops, spills, extreme temperature, and other rough handling. Notepads made by major manufacturers have a return rate averaging 25%, while the entire Toughbook line averages 3.2%, and Panasonic's most rugged products have an annualized failure of only 1.05% (Toughbook Advantage). This low failure rate is particularly remarkable when one considers the rough environment that most Toughbooks are used in as compared with the relatively docile office environment of most other notebook computers.

Panasonic Computer Solutions Company market the Toughbook product family into North, Central and South American and European markets exclusively through their network of dealers. This philosophy is in keeping with founder Konosuke Matsushita's channel centric distribution model. Panasonic selects dealers to have specialties in vertical business markets such as construction, transportation, utility, insurance, public safety, and field service. These verticals are represented by dealers such as USAT Corp. which are focused on Field Force Automation. Panasonic is also moving to increase market presence with office workers by expanding semi-rugged Toughbook marketing and sales activity into traditional office network providers.

Many law enforcement agencies use fully rugged Toughbooks in their patrol cars to run computer-assisted dispatch software. Utility companies similarly dispatch field workers, print work orders, and conduct inspections and repairs using these devices. They are often connected by WiFi Wireless LAN, embedded (internal) cellular wide area network (WAN), or via satellite to a dispatch center for real time records checks and report taking. Toughbook models 18, 29, and 74 can have CDMA 1X-EVDO, EDGE, or HSPDA country-wide WAN capabilities built into the laptop. GPS is also offered internally in the Toughbook 19 and 30.

Panasonic markets the Toughbook series in several configurations ranging from semi-rugged to fully rugged and laptop or Tablet PC configurations, as well as several specialty designs (see product list and spec sheets below in "Wireless Capable Models"). Some models, such as the lightweight W4, are rebranded versions of thin and light consumer laptops sold in Japan under the Let's Note name. The Toughbook 08 is a 10.4” fully sealed and ruggedized touchscreen designed to connect to another computer or server. These models communicate with a server via WLAN and a secured thin client. Used in campus area environments that require light, durable, touchscreen equipment such as hospitals (no resident data and fluid resistant), restaurants (card swipe option, rugged), and EMS (lightweight, rugged, vehicle area computing). The Toughbook PDRC or Permanent Display Removable Computer is an extraordinarily bright 1250 nit, 12.1” Touchscreen. This unit typically permanently mounts to a vehicle’s dashboard and connects to a removable computer mounted elsewhere in the vehicle.

Read more at Wikipedia.org