Is dropping a Panasonic Toughbook during the middle of a CES press conference embarrassing, or the best product demo ever?

Panasonic's venerable Toughbook line is introducing a 10.1-inch Android tablet. Unlike the sissy tablets everyone else is putting out, the Toughbook will be secure, rugged, durable and, hell, even come with a matte screen.

Panasonic's Toughbooks have always been ultra-rugged warhorses, but at least the competition could titter about how bulky they are. Until the Toughbook S9 struts into the room: every bit as sturdy, with lightest 12.1-inch frame (with optical drive) around.

There was a time when the word "tablet" invoked an entirely different vision, of keyboards and hinges and people working on stuff and, well, not this. The Toughbook C1, Panasonic's 2000s-style 12.1-inch rugged convertible tablet, remembers those days well.

In today's Remainders: Snow! Stay in and watch the video podcast infinite recursion on YouTube or go outside and toss the new Panasonic Toughbook tablet in a snowbank (it can handle it). Crowdsourced snow shoveling in DC and more!

Most of us have no need for Panasonic's Toughbook-30: Its specs are unremarkable and the 13.3-inch laptop weighs over 8 pounds. But then, our mortal laptops could never survive the ridiculous, almost cartoony beating Forbes gave it.

Tomorrow night at 10PM, Food Network kicks off Alton Brown's latest TV show, Feasting on Waves, where the Mensa-smart kitchen geek and his crew hop into two 50-foot catamarans and sail around 15 different Caribbean islands in search of quality cuisine, shooting and editing the hi-def episodes right there on the…

That mystery tablet PC that appeared at the end of Intel's presentation at IDF last night is no Classmate, or super-powered Speak&Spell either: It's a Panasonic Toughbook-alike tablet. More specifically it's a "Mobile Clinical Assistant" device, aimed at doctors and nurses who are under an increasing burden of digital…

Deep in the northwest corner of Kobe, Japan, there's a factory hidden away among green rice paddies, and sleepy farming villages of tiled roofs. If you were to travel here, to Takatsukadai-the middle of nowhere-you'd find Panasonic's Toughbook plant quietly making notebooks with the world's lowest failure rate. Well,…

Panasonic may have "announced" the ToughBook CF-U1 back in March, but it's only now getting around talking speeds, feeds and wallet drain. Even though it uses Intel's "low cost" 1.33GHz Atom Z520 processor, the little ruggedized UMPC will arrive in August (or later, if the rumored Atom delay is true) at a starting…

The Toughbook UMPC spotted around CeBIT has been made official by Panasonic. The ultra mobile sports an Atom CPU and runs Vista on its 5.6-inch LCD screen. It is impact resistant like other Toughbooks, and we hope it's just as spill-proof as their notebooks. One thing we can't wrap our heads around is the number pad.…

Panasonic's newest Toughbook Y7, T7 and W7 are designed to combat the Homer in you: that is, they're for people who work with sensitive data yet are prone to dropping laptops, spilling drinks and generally messing stuff up. Forget accelerometers, the hard drives in this can take a serious hit at 2.5 feet and on 26…

Panasonic's set to release an updated 7-series version of their Toughbook laptops that can drop 76 centimeters, or 2.49 feet, while on and still function correctly. Although 2.5 feet isn't all that tall, it's about the height of the average desk, which means you can safely launch the so far Japan-only Intel Santa…

Panasonic's Toughbook line got a widescreen upgrade this morning. The new semi-rugged CF-52 has a 15.4-inch WUXGA screen along with a shock-mounted hard drive, spill resistant keyboard, and a magnesium alloy shell. The notebook also comes with the option of embedded EV-DO or UMTS/HSDPA (nice way to stay connected if…

The most hardened versions of the Panasonic Toughbooks have been updated with the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors and brighter touchscreens. Since most of these laptops will be used in broad daylight, that extra screen brightness will certainly be welcome.

If last week's ToughBooks were a little too big for your needs, Panasonic today bestowed its ultraportable W5 and T5 ToughBooks with built-in mobile broadband. The cool thing about these notebooks (aside from their slim waist line) is that they're the first rugged laptops compatible with Sprint's EV-DO Rev A network

Just when we thought we had seen them all, Panasonic has given its ToughBook line of laptops mobile broadband capabilities, which means you can use your ToughBook to connect to the interwebs from anywhere. The CF-19 ($4,199) and the CF-30 ($4,699) will both support UMTS/HSDPA networks as well as Sprint and…

In an attempt to prove that laptops make for better weapons than BlackBerrys, Denise Richards went on a laptop-hurling rampage at a casino near Vancouver recently. Richards, who was tired of being harassed by paparazzi, got into a fight with them and ended up chucking their lappies from a hotel balcony. The flying…

Design-wise, Panny's ToughBooks have always been a little rough around the edges. In an attempt to fix that, the new eLite W5 now comes in seven different color tones ranging from Merlot to Blueprint. We think the system is still under powered (it's packing a 1.2GHz Core Solo processor), but for running basic…