What would you love in your industrial laptop? Of course, it should be durable, sturdy, compatible with all the different gadgets, even the legacy ones, water resistant and more. In short, you should be able to use it in the most demanding conditions and get moving. We don’t blame you, that is the industrial world.
While the smartphone market, the laptop market and surprisingly even the desktop market is growing, we don’t see many entries in the industrial laptop section. Moreover, these laptops don’t get as much media exposure as their polished and fancy cousins. While we all know of Microsoft Surface, how many have heard about Panasonic Toughbook FZ-G1? Unsurprisingly, not many. Not only you miss word of mouth recommendations from your friends and peers, but you also don’t get to know how these can help you as industrial laptops.
And, if you are not planning to place a large order, the company exec wouldn’t come to give a demonstration at your office either. Fret not mate, we are still here.
The Tough Dog on The Floor
The Panasonic Toughbook FZ-G1 tablet and the Toughbook series of laptops have all the qualities which we mentioned in the first paragraph. This is a Windows tablet, much like Microsoft Surface but it is heavily rugged. When we say heavy, we mean really heavy. This tablet is made to MIL-STD-810G specifications which makes it really strong and provides protection even if you drop the laptop from a height of 4 feet.
Moreover, the bezels are raised at the corner so even if the pad falls face down, the shocks are absorbed by the corners. This also comes with an all weather IP-65 dust and water resistance certificate. In fact, there are strong metal covers for the input ports so dirt and moisture, which are common in the industrial world, don’t affect the tablet. This is protected from, or at least resistant to rain, dust, sand, altitude, freeze/thaw, high-temperature variations, temperature shock, humidity, explosive atmosphere, shock, vibration, etc.
In short, you can carry this laptop to a warzone with you.
One heavily needed, or may be the primary purpose of an industrial laptop, is the need to connect it with machinery. Trust me when I say not every industrial machine comes with a USB or mini-USB ports. There are basically hundreds of different ports, but a few are commonly standardized. And, all of these ports are incorporated in Toughbook. Among the standard features, this tablet has a 24-pin Docking connector, HDMI Type A, Mini-jack Stereo Headphones/speaker, 9-Pin D-Sub and 2 USB 3.0 ports. However, you can add 3 Serial Dongle with D-sub 9 pin, 3 USB 2.0 ports and RJ-45 connectivity with 10/100/1000 Ethernet connectivity. If you want more specialized interfaces and accessories, you can add a smart card reader, magstripe reader, smart card reader with bridge battery, RFID reader, barcode reader, HF or UHF reader at 900MHz of EPC Gen 2.
Too much technical jargon? Basically, you can do whatever you need to do in an industrial environment. It can work as a barcode reader, apart from doing everything which a normal laptop or tablet can do via the common ports like USB 3.0. It can read data from almost every potential data carrier modes of the modern day industrial world including barcodes, magstripes, and smartcard. You can use it to allow access, get products and manufacturing details and more. What else? It can even work as a router.
The last facility an industrial engineer or worker might want would be the smooth operation of the gadget. This laptop can take input from the built-in on-screen QWERTY keypad and of course, you can use your fingers and stylus pens. It supports up to 10-point contacts. But that’s common. What makes it different is how it can take input from gloved fingers or wet fingers, even under rain!
It also has 7 dedicated buttons which can be configured to perform specific tasks. Now, that’s what makes an industrial engineer happy! Touch, type, press with dirty or greasy fingers, or wearing gloves under the rain and still the Panasonic Toughbook FZ-G1 works without any grudge against you!
That’s why it is the most popular industrial tablet right now. It should be, as well. Don’t you think so?