Panasonic Toughbook W2 Review 307
Anonymous Howard writes "For those of you who haven't heard about Panasonic's Toughbook W2, this hard to find laptop not only looks awesome but packs a serious punch for its size. Weighing in at 2.8 pounds with a 12.1" screen, this P4-M 900 Centrino based laptop is impressive. The drawback is its max memory support is only 512MB. However I think the laptop is absolutely gorgeous. Does anyone have any experience with one of these? Designtechnica gave it a 7 in their review. I tend to believe that 512MB of ram is a pretty limiting factor however."
Re:Memory Limit? (Score:3, Interesting)
It really depends on what you use your notebook for. Yes, if you just check your email and run office apps, 512MB is probably more than enough.
As a counterexample, I work with military simulation software, and right now I'm spending about half my time on the road supporting various exercises. And, of course, software development doesn't stop just because you're temporarily living in a dinky hotel room in East Bumfuck, VA.
The software I work on is...well...not exactly petite. The main application takes over an hour to compile on a high-end x86 machine, and once it hits the link stage it'll start swapping on anything less than a 1.5 GB machine. Drop the memory to 512MB, and each relink is going to take a good 10-15 minutes. (Think about that in terms of debugging an application -- a 15 minute link-time means you only get to try out a max of 4 code mods an hour.)
Things can get even more memory-hungry during a debugging session, since I'll be running several apps that would normally each get their own decently-spec'ed desktop, except I'm firing them all up on a single laptop, 'cuz that's all I've got to work with. For me, there's basically no such thing as "too much memory" -- the better the laptop's specs, the easier it is for me to work while I'm on the road.
Going to the extreme, one poor schmuck in the group got stuck with an "ancient" laptop with 128MB of memory. He can't link or run anything when he's on the road -- just types up code for a week or two at a time, compiles it every now and then to catch simple syntax errors, and has to wait until he eventually gets back to his office to try and build/test anything.
Sure, I wouldn't say that I'm a typical laptop user, but there are a few of us suckers schlepping around the country who need a well-equipped development/test platform that can still fit under under the seat on one of those wonderful turpo-prop puddle-jumper planes.
Having a laptop that might still work after being run over by a car, knocked off a table, or inundated by an errant cup of coffee would be even nicer! :-)