Panasonic have officially announced the Toughbook CF-H1 Medical Tablet PC they demonstrated at the IDF in August. Fully ruggedized to military standard 810F, as well as being IP54 compliant, the CF-H1 has a magnesium alloy chassis and is capable of surviving a 3ft drop as well as rain, dust, spills and vibrations. Underneath lurks a 1.86GHz Intel Atom Z540 processor, 1GB of RAM and an 80GB shock-mounted hard-drive. Primary input is via the 10.4-inch XGA resolution dual-touch LCD.
Full gallery & video demos of the Panasonic Toughbook CF-H1 after the cut
Panasonic’s takeover of Sanyo could be days away from a full announcement, according to the latest rumors from sources close to the deal. While Panasonic would only say that no official statement of the takeover bid had been made, three sources speaking on condition of anonymity have claimed that Panasonic President Fumio Ohtsubo and Sanyo President Seiichiro Sano met last month and agreed, in principle, to the deal.
It seems everyone is getting a little bit greener these days. And that’s a good thing, especially when it comes to electronics, which are known to produce harmful toxins and are made from plastics that don’t biodegrade. But now, Panasonic has come up with a new recycling program to put a stop to the waste.
With the news last week that Toshiba could have a fuel cell powered device on the market by Christmas, today it’s the turn of Panasonic to make some methanol promises. It won’t be a fight for a spot underneath the tree between the two companies, though; Panasonic say they’ll have fuel cells, capable of running a laptop computer for five hour, on the market by 2012.
We’ve talked about Panasonic’s new CableCARD, the tru2way before, however, the devices are going to see the light of day very soon. Specifically, Chicago and Denver will be the cities privileged to get the tru2way-enabled VIERA HDTVs first.
Biggest news this week has been in gaming, with Nintendo announcing the latest iteration of their DS handheld. The DSi introduces new multimedia features – for instance a 3-megapixel camera – and an even thinner body, at the expense of battery life. Don’t get too excited, though; the US won’t see the DSi until “well into” 2009.
In netbooks, ASUS slipped in a few new models at both the low and high-end of the market, with the Eee PC 900HA and 904HA offering bargain 160GB storage while the S101 corners the more-fashionable (and expensive) end. That’s a niche the ASUS N10 already occupies; that netbook ran the review gauntlet this week, proving “technologically clever” but simply too expensive. ASUS – and MSI, whose Wind U90 was panned too – must be looking enviably at Gigabyte’s M912M convertible touchscreen netbook, which was good enough to pull a credit card from the wallet of one reviewer.
Have you ever been lied to and ignored by cable service provider when asked to gather CableCARD installation on your HTDV or Set-Top box? They sure have interesting ways and unheard of excuses to avoid the topic. If you are new to CableCARD and insist of its service, they’ll probably throw you the technicality or excuse of system incompatibility, and then push the company’s HDTV tuner instead. What they hardly explain to customers is the current CableCards’ inabilities only miss the costly and no good subscription of VOD premium movie services. You are more than fine unless you live in a few unfortunate cities that employing SDV on HD channels. All these hassles with CardCARDS will soon to change with tru2Way.
You know when you go to the local electronics store and see the biggest TV they offer and think, “Geez, that’s just too big for my living room.” Well, take that feeling and multiply it by 100 and that’s how you’d feel about the 150-inch plasma screen prototype from Panasonic. In a word, this thing is massive.
We don’t readily feature batteries here on SlashGear, but this is a notable exception. The Panasonic Evolta batteries have been recognized by Guinness World Records for the longest lasting AA alkaline battery cell, and that’s saying something.
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