I'm thinking outloud here but also telling a bit of a tale.
I could have taken a $1000 odd and bought a new laptop and really hoped I'd get on well with it, or else psyched myself into liking it by virtue of cognitive dissonance. Instead, I decided to buy used and not spend too much. So I bought a CF-51. It's has a 15" display. This is really bugging me. Among other things, it has worked the zipper loose on my backpack and leaped out of the bag while I was cruising down the canal on my bicycle. It survived minus a chunk missing. It probably wouldn't survive again hitting the same corner. This is a semi-rugged Toughbook. I ordered the other machine I was eying, a CF-T2. Compared to the R1 it's meant to replace, it's only slightly larger, its touchpad works (the button on the R1 is on the motherboard and it's worn out), and, critically, it takes twice as much RAM. I tried and failed to get ACPI to work. This is a dark art. There are no BIOS updates published by Panasonic for it and which exactly revision of the machine, BIOS, and Linux all interact here. I demand suspend of some sort. So I've been shopping again. I bought a T4, which is newer and takes even more RAM and most critically has a better armoured LCD. I cracked the screen on the R1 twice, though both under extreme circumstances (eg, getting run down by a Buick). But I'm also looking at the 73 which is a pound lighter than the 8 pound 51, has half the battery life, and has a 13" rather than 15" screen. It's better armoured than the T4 but has worse battery life at 3 hours and still weighs 7 pounds vs the 3 pound of the T series.
This must be awfully boring to read (seriously, why is anyone here?) but I'm obsessed with this.
I want light (my laptop goes lots of places), small enough screen to use on long Greyhound trips, good battery, durable (I wear laptops out but they also suffer harsh backpack conditions, and yes, the R1 was in a laptop case when it got smashed), suspend in Linux...
There's already a CF-27 fully rugged machine. So if I order that 73, I'll have a model from almost every line of Toughbook that Panasonic makes, excepting only the swivel screen version of the fully rugged machines and the hand-held industrial computers. I think I probably should write some comparative reviews...
-scott
I for one would be interested in detailed reports of whith toughbooks are most linux friendly.
