Panasonic Toughbooks are so tough they can smoke

Panasonic's the latest company to fall foul of dodgy batteries, finding that the rechargeables shipped with its CF-S10 laptop "may overheat, cause smoke, or may ignite" causing "a risk of a fire or a burn hazard to consumers" and the computer. The CF-VZSU61U rechargeable battery pack is the culprit and appears to have come to …

[NotBob]

Ah. I abused a toughbook once. Didn't matter what happened, it kept going. Slow as molasses in winter, but virtually unbreakable.

Apparently also good fire starters, but mine never got quite that hot.

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

Just re-label them as camping and barbecue equipment, done.

(There still must be a handheld WinCE toughthingy around here somewhere. Used it to collect GPS data for an open-map project. You could have driven tent pegs in the ground with that thing.)

[100113.1537]

Made in 2011 - and still going!

It sort of says a lot that it has taken until now to identify a potential problem and have to issue a recall for batteries made 4-5 years ago! Most notebooks (and their batteries) would have given up long before now. My sister-in-law is still using her CF9 (model before this, bought in Jan 2011). You can't deny that they are tough!

[EPurpl3]

Re: Made in 2011 - and still going!

My Acer died after 10 years

[GrumpyKiwi]

I once worked for a place that used Toughbooks. One of the sales spods decided to move himself up in the queue for a newer model and "accidentally" drove over his. It got a hairline crack in the chassis, but otherwise carried on working just fine for the 2 years he still had to keep it.

[AJ MacLeod]

A few years back I was asked to configure something on a 17" MBP which was a bit bashed (though working perfectly)... on enquiring what had happened to it the owner confessed to having driven over it.

I am not an Apple fan but have to admit I was impressed at how little it had suffered... I would still rather a Toughbook if faced with an attacker though!

[Montreal Sean]

Tough laptops

I was given one for work back in 1999, a 100mhz Pentium I believe.

It had a bolt-on handle. The laptop was heavy, black, a bit slow, but I was told it would stop small calibre bullets...

Thankfully I never had to put that claim to the test.