A Time for Tough Talk

This article was also contributed by Andy Sim of HWM.

Panasonic's Toughbooks have always been used in niche applications, designed as it is to survive extreme conditions. Over the years, Panasonic has gradually widened its market by targeting it at business users, acquiring a well deserved reputation in the process and now have a, pardon the pun, tough reputation to live up to.

For those not in the know, there are actually two different types of Toughbooks available in the market, full-rugged and semi-rugged (business-rugged). The full-rugged version is built to more stringent and extreme military standards, while the business-rugged versions are the one used for their business models like the Panasonic CF-F8 that we'll be looking at. Both versions also differ in appearance, the full-rugged version is boxy and chunky while the business-rugged versions are thinner and sleeker (which you can obviously see from the pictures).

Fresh from its introduction in Tokyo, Japan, the Panasonic CF-F8 Toughbook is the first of the F series and despite the "8" moniker attached to it, it is a 14.1-inch notebook that weighs in at a very light 1.66kg. No lift needed folks!

The Panasonic Toughbook CF-F8. Monkey proof? Possibly.

Apart from the handle, there's really nothing interesting about the front. Just the power and optical drive switch.

The bulk of the ports are located on the right side, with three USB 2.0 ports, the analog video out and the modem and LAN ports.

The left side plays hosts to the power jack, docking connector, audio jacks, Express card slot and SDHC card reader.