Okay, After using Doug's touchscreen Toughbook CF-29 I think I really want a touchscreen to help me tune faster (good for customers) and get home earlier (good for me and the wife). I REALLY want a big touchscreen, like at least the 15.1 I use now, but that doesn't look possible. As far as I can tell there are currently only 2 touchscreen laptops on the market at 14.1 inches, the Dell XFR and the Toughbook CF-72. The XFR's look like they're all $2700+, no going to happen for me right now, I'd rather have Lasik The CF-72's are a wide range of prices... I know we've got some super-geeks, I mean super-tech-savvy, people on here, and wanted to see what y'all thought. There have been a few CF-72 Mk3's with 1.06 ghz processors that have gone on ebay for under $400 shipped. There is a CF-72 Mk4, with a 1.6 ghz that is $699 or best offer. I'll give a half hour of free tuning to whoever helps me find my next laptop Siegel
Have you considered a tablet PC? I'm pretty sure you can get them much cheaper than touch screens, and the only difference is you use an electronic pen instead of your finger.
At work (USCG helicopter mechanic) we use the Toughbook CF-72 for our helicopters (various avionics applications). It can stand a beating. The swivel screen is great for putting it on the lap while in the cockpit. Spin the screen around and lay it flat, closed with the screen facing up. Great for your shop I would think. I've seen someone not paying attention while getting out of the helo and let it just fall to the ground. That person is no longer allowed to use it, but the laptop was fine. It's got a nice sealed keyboard incase you spill something on it. I've only used it a couple of times so I don't know everything about it. Definitely glad the Coast Guard got them though. We are hard on test equipment.
the toughbooks have been in govt contract for a while and meet milSpec requirements. while i'm partial to dell machines (which xfr also meets milspec), panasonic has been doing this for a while longer as far as i know, so the "field time" is there, and plenty of refurbs are available. i would say go with the toughbook. you're not running really processor intensive stuff so 1.6 should be good (of course Ghz really means nothing, it's more about how the chipset is set up/what type of chip/#cores, ram, cache, are being used) post a full spec list of the machines you're interested in and i'm sure the geeks on the board will be able to comment more on the "guts" also, find a user forum for toughbooks and search for trouble shooting... you'll find any common problems in there, as well as possible mods (like SLC SSD which would speed up the system considerably/add impact resistance and is probably not in older books)
My experience is we use Dell XFRs for our field techs and non of them have come back broken or with issues. Our techs are telecom guys who do wiring and router and network equipment testing, and they use these up a ladder or somewhere normal laptops would break if used and dropped. Thus far the Dell's have been very good. You won't get a deal from Dell unfortunately but we do through our business account rep. We usually get about 20% off website price on these machines. Panasonic is just as good, if not better, because they created this market segment I think. Go with a used XFR maybe on Dell outlet? Give that a shot or Panasonic. Just try to have some warranty for it though. Laptops break when they don't have warranty.
:keke: http://www.theonion.com/content/video/apple_introduces_revolutionary?utm_source=onion_rss_daily sorry..just reminded me of this again.
I'm using a Go Book VR-2 w/ touch sreen for work and it's much nicer than my pervious IBM Rough Book(touch screen). Don't know what to tell you on cost at this point thuo.