Panasonic Toughbook mini review

I needed to get portable, and fast. My fave laptop was in dry dock, and the plane left at six. Time to exercise one of the perks of the job, wander over to Charles on Reviews and see if there was a computer on the slush pile I could take for a spin.

There was, a Panasonic CF-W5 that had been reviewed and was waiting for collection. A quick email to Panasonic to get an extension, a frantic hunt for the right power lead, a promise to Chaz that I'd write it up, and it was mine. And it was a Toughbook, one of the few brands that can quicken the pulse of the most careworn hack.

Well, it said it was a Toughbook. Toughbooks are tough. This isn't. It tries hard - it has lots of chrome-plated screws, a ribbed metal wrist-rest area and a metallic carapace on the back of the screen. Otherwise, it's a consumer laptop made of plastic. And it has some distinctly un-macho edges.

Take the built-in optical drive, which is pretty impressive in an ultralite PC. It sits built into the wrist-rest under your right hand, with a flappy cover that pops up when you want to put in a disc. Knock it when it's open, though, and it feels as if it'll come off. I didn't push this, both because it felt so fragile that it would have been like pulling wings off flies, and also because Panasonic had asked me to sign for any damage to the beast during my custodianship. First time in nearly twenty years, that. Mmm. But the fun didn't stop there: despite me being really veddy polite indeed, the drive kept deciding to ignore requests to open. There's a little switch on the front that disables it in one direction - neato, saves power - and opens the flap in the other. Only half the time. The other half, it didn't open. Neither did the eject option in Windows. A tiny hole under the drive engages an emergency eject option if you poke it with a ball-point pen. That worked. Is that what you want? Also, because the drive is so thin and the case around it so flexible, if you lean on the lid with your hand - it being part of the wrist-rest, this isn't unreasonable - there's a horrible grinding sound and everything stutters.

Then there's the keyboard. I've typed on worse, but only in the 80s when nobody quite knew how this whole small computer lark was supposed to work. By now, we know how to do it. Shrink the keys you never press, and leave lots of room for the basics. Not here. The space bar is the size of a chipolata, with more room given over to the Alt, Alt Gr (Alt Gr. Is that some sort of chemical formula?) Fn, Ctrl, right-click menu thing key, backslash/pipe key and all the rest of the weirdos on the bottom line. As a result, I kept hitting one or more of the funny keys when trying to hit space (which, like you, I need to press once every six keypresses on average - unlike Alt Gr, which, like you, I need to press about once a lifetime). That means half-way through some email, I end up in the menus. What happens next depends on what word I thought I was typing, but it's always hilarious.

Now, there's lots to like too. My favourite ultralite notebook, the one that's off the road for a bit while I get a new battery, is a Dell X1. That's survived nearly two years of life with Rupert: better than most girlfriends. It's got a great keyboard, is very light, a decent battery life on the extended pack, and has survived a number of hard knocks. The Panasonic isn't quite as light, but it has better battery life (six hours with a modicum of care) and that built-in optical drive (if you can get it open). It's also got a PC Card slot, which the Dell lacks. Both have two USB sockets, but only the Dell has Firewire. And the Panasonic has the world's prettiest power indicator: flip the switch on the front of the computer, and it lights up a brilliant green the exact shade and brightness of the radioactive bar that Homer drops during the opening credits of the Simpsons.

The specs say the Panasonic is faster. So do the benchmarks. As a non-gamer, I couldn't tell you; I've switched between the Panasonic and the Dell from task to task, often on the same desk at the same time, and neither makes the other look tardy.

I'll miss the battery life. I'll miss the built-in optical drive. I won't miss being worried that I was going to break the darn thing, something you don't expect with a Toughbook. I won't miss sending half-baked emails to important people because my fat thumb hit Alt Gr. It's going back to Panasonic. I'll live.