The NEW Panasonic Toughbook U1 We wouldn’t want to
put words in your mouth, but being able to run
Windows® XP or Vista® while still maintaining its
convenient lightweight design is something other
handhelds can’t begin to imagine. Couple that
with its seemingly endless integrated options
like GPS, 3G mobile broadband, a 2MP camera
and fingerprint and barcode scanners, and you
might forget you’re not carrying a laptop. We
won’t say we’ve reinvented the handheld.
We’d rather wait and hear you say it.
Panasonic is developing an Ultra-Mobile PC in its ToughBook line based on Intel's new Atom platform. The handheld will be designed for outdoor travelers and others who need an extremely shock- and weather-resistant device, but who need something smaller than today's ToughBook portables.
With a 5.6-inch touchscreen, the system will weigh less than 2.2 pounds even with the added protection, the company says. Besides the touch input, the handheld will also have a full QWERTY keyboard and shortcut buttons along the sides for launching favorite programs or scrolling through menus.
This ToughBook will run on Windows Vista and should have both a very long battery life as well as hot-swappable battery packs that extend the system's useful runtime by hours.
There are obvious benefits to using the Atom chip in a small UMPC. Applications should operate more efficiently, use less power, and will connect to the networks at sweet speeds, actually making the device a useful option to carry on the road. If that doesn't work, its toughness might handle the endless throw-downs you’ll put it through.
According to Kyp Walls, director of development at Panasonic , the U1 is "more rugged than the Toughbook 19 and goes beyond the Mil-Spec tests". The MIL-STD-810F spec is a military standard used to certify products by subjecting them to a series of temperature, vibration, moisture, and drop tests—to name a few.
The U1 is rated for a 4-foot drop rather than the 3-foot one specified under the military specification, and because of the resilience of the built-in SSD drive, the extreme temperature range widens as well. The U1 will ship with either a 16 Gbyte or 32-GB SSD drive only, so there isn't an option for a spinning hard drive. As with all the other UMPCs flooding the market, the U1 doesn't exceed the 3-pound range. It comes with a built-in QWERTY keyboard, which is better for thumb-typing.
Other familiar Toughbook features include options for a barcode scanner, fingerprint reader, and a 2-megapixel webcam.
Support for twin batteries is arguably the most unique feature of the Toughbook U1. It has two battery bays that will hold a pair of 2-cell batteries. Panasonic is claiming 3-4 hours for each battery, on a single charge, so a user can achieve a total of 6-9 hours of battery life. These batteries are hot-swappable, so the beauty about this concept is that you can buy additional batteries and swap them in without ever having to plug in the AC adapter.
Achieving awesome battery life isn't entirely a byproduct of multiple batteries; you need an energy-saving platform as well. The U1 runs on a 1.33-GHz Intel Atom processor, arguably the most power-efficient core to date. The downside is that it's underpowered compared with other UMPCs in the market. A maximum of 1GB of memory doesn't help its performance plight either.
