Panasonicto launch new 'tough' laptop PCs in February

Japanese electronic products maker Panasonic will launch two ''tough'' high-end laptop personal computers, which it says would survive a 90-cm fall, on 13 February.

According to the company the Toughbook CF-19 uses light-emitting diodes for its backlight to double the display brightness and the Toughbook CF-30 cuts the light reflection rate of its display to less than one-third of a conventional model.

Both PC's have displays that are easily viewable even under direct sunlight, Panasonic said. The laptops can also operate for up to 10 hours without recharging.

The two PCs' are equipped with Intel high-performance central processing units to bring desktop-equivalent performance. The CF-19, which has a built-in 3G wireless.

However, Panasonic is likely to face competition from NEC which  launched in November its new range of ruggedised notebooks the ShieldPRO Rugged Tablet Notebook, FC-Note Series ShieldPRO N22A, and a robust and reliable computer designed to withstand the varied environments of corporate, industrial and military mobile workforces.

The NEC ShieldPRO features a Dual Core CPU, the notebook leads the industry in offering 12 hours of battery life and an impressive LED-backlit 12.1 inch LCD with 750cd/m² resulting in a screen that can be easily read under challenging and varied light conditions.

NEC ShieldPRO is built to survive a drop of 90cm onto a concrete surface and can operate between temperatures of -20 degrees Celsius up to 50 degrees Celsius.
It comes in a range of colours including maroon and navy and three year warranty.

Both Panasonic and NEC laptops are in the tough laptop PCs category and are almost identical. Both have the same processor, RAM and maximum RAM, integrated graphics chipsets, run on Windows XP and both have 80GB hard drives without optical drives and a three-year warranty.

Although they are similar in most ways, NEC has a slight edge over Panasonic in terms of battery life; NEC's notebooks offer 12 hours of battery life compared to 10 hours of Panasonic.

Overall, NEC ShieldPro launched in June 2008 has an edge over Panasonic.

Panasonic last November acquired Sanyo to create Japan's largest electronics company.(See: Panasonic looking to acquire Sanyo to create Japan's largest electronics company)