Panasonic Toughbook CF-52 Announced

Panasonic Computer Solutions today announced 15.4-inch semi-rugged Panasonic Toughbook CF-52 desktop replacement laptop, built on the new “Santa Rosa” platform from Intel.

Panasonic Toughbook CF-52 has a magnesium alloy chassis and a shock-mounted screen. It is tested to withstand drops of up to 2.5 feet on all six sides, while its hard drive is tested to withstand a drop of 3 feet. The Toughbook CF-52 also includes a spill-resistant keyboard.

For an estimated street price of $1,649, the standard CF-52 configuration offers Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 processor at 1.8GHz, the GM956 chipset with integrated X3100 graphics, 1366 x 768 widescreen resolution, a 1GB of DDR2 system memory (max. 2GB+2GB), and an 80GB SATA hard drive. The “optimized configuration” priced at $2,499 includes Core 2 Duo T7300 at 2GHz, PM965 chipset, the dedicated AMD ATI X2300 graphics empowering 1920×1200 widescreen display, also a 1GB RAM, and an 120GB SATA HDD.

Both Panasonic Thoughbook CF-52 configurations include DVD burner, wireless LAN 802.11abg, Gigabit Ethernet, a 56k modem, and Bluetooth, and have an optional EV-DO or HSDPA broadband connectivity. There are PC Card, ExpressCard, and Secure Digital card slots, as well as four USB ports, and Serial, Firewire, and VGA ports.

Regarding security, the new Panasonic’s semi-rugged Toughbook is equipped with the Trusted Platform Module (TPM v1.2) chip, the Computrace software agent in BIOS and an optional fingerprint scanner and SmartCard reader.

The standard configuration provides battery life of approximately 7.5 hours, while in optimized configuration it is around 4.5 hours.

There is no information on operating system preloaded on these laptops.

The Toughbook CF-52 will be available in the United States in July.

Press Release