Panasonic Toughbook CF-19

It’s slowly become clear that my penchant for Chromebooks (cheap and simple to manage) will not get me far in amateur radio. After asking the internet for recommendations and getting a lot great advice, I picked up a Panasonic Toughbook CF-19 MK5. It’s 8 year old hardware at this point, but:

  • it sounds like most ham applications don’t require much in the way of CPU or memory,
  • the IP65 water resistance and general indestructibility is a big plus, and
  • they’re a bargain at ~$300.

Compare that to a brand new “spill-resistant” Lenovo X1 Carbon at $1,500!

I’ve installed Xubuntu 19.10 on it, and the experience was pretty seamless. A couple of notes:

  • The touchscreen works, although I can’t figure out how to calibrate it yet. As usual, I’m asking the internet.
  • The speaker didn’t work directly after install, but after playing around in alsamixer and raising all of the channel levels, I was able to get it working.
  • The front buttons don’t work out of the box, but apparently there’s a driver running around called panasonic-hbtn.zip. I’ll have to track that down.
  • Mine didn’t come with a GPS module, but eBay has second-hand parts going for $35, so that’ll be a nice addition.