@Tim_Cailloux

I was an engineer for these when they first came out, and I remember the keyboard design conversations we had about the units. Lots of debate about how to lay out the keyboard, until I asked how you could type a URL or email address, which settled us on the design you see.

The drivers were involved, and reimaging them was always a bit of a process to get them set up for customer demos. 

I forgot about these until I saw your video. Much like the Dataradio modem, this channel serves to be the graveyard of past employers and hardware of my past.

@FoxoBread

That remark about there not being any simple software for inventory management surprised me quite a bit, but also inspired me to look into programming something like that myself.

@kenGPT

Use it as a permanent Meshtastic interface that hangs on the side of a bookshelf or something so you can quickly glance at it for messages and respond.

@ke4nyv

As someone who loves APRS, that's my immediate use for a device like this.  I still run APRS on a Palm Pilot.

@Allan_aka_RocKITEman

I have come to realize this is actually a Cat Channel, and all the technical stuff is just an added bonus...😉

@MarkMcCluney

Glad, and relieved, to hear that other folks love XP as much ss as I do. The strapline for XP ought be 'That time we got it right.' And thanks for informing me of Q4OS! I never heard of it before but I'm certainly going to look into that! Thanks Gabe, very helpful indeed.

@TechGorilla1987

I used to work for a company that did hardware replacements for governmental agencies.  99.9% of these were Panasonic Toughbooks (laptops). They are among some of the most durable pieces of hardware I ever dealt with.  I ended up buying one and it lasted a LONG time in and out of the car.  It routinely hit the deck when I would open my passengers door without paying attention.

@jublywubly

Thanks for making this video. You've made me enthused to finally get around to getting a replacement cmos battery for my old PDA. I bought a mini spot welder, just so I can welt a tiny piece of metal to the battery, to enable me to install it into the PDA. 
I can only guess they designed it that way to force people to send their PDAs back in to HP. They could have just used a clip-style battery holder, but nooo, they had to make things difficult.

@olnium

These would typically be used in a server-client setup where the server (your home PC) does all the heavy lifting and the Toughbook runs a lightweight client. There are open source inventory/asset management apps available that use this model. I'm sure you can find one where the client runs on Tiny Linux or some other lightweight distro.

@charlesurrea1451

You could use it for automobile Diagnostics using OBD2.
It might even work well enough to use this in-flight computer in your vehicle

@unity-gain-play

For your pantry app, you should see if it can check the internet for anything that has a recall notice on it. Was just thinking about writing something like that. Fun stuff as always!

@Wanton110

As someone who likes the idea of the Internet of Things besides the Internet part.. I would mount it to the wall and have it as the central hub for my home automation and security

@gregs8672

Whoa whoa whoa you mean we could be inventorying life like a boss, but you've been holding out on us this whole time, spill the beans brother!

@ChicagoUnderground1you

Dude back in da day!!!!! Great ole 2006. !!!! Fun times! Miss it with all me soul!!❤

@blacksheepdino

Love all this old school tech.  Keep it up!

@Max1548-z6p

I recently got a new toughbook, it was a CF-19, using Lubuntu 18.04, so a little older but bulkier. I use it for coding C++, Python and C# for things like Arduinos and WiFi Modules (similar to the ESP32), and it surprisingly works very well!

@kyoko703

I still have a prototype/engineering unit. I believe it was near production as our rep had told us that what we saw was very close to the final unit. I actually turned mine own a few months ago finding out that only one of the battery is still healthy but yeah it was still working.

@ace_life7079

If i wer to have one one day, I would like to use it to create electronic music! Thank you for sharing with us.Please don't stop creating this content so that we may enjoy it for the rest of our lives ❤

@denispisarev4131

I had CF-19 laptop working as AT&T tech. Mine has a sim slot. At 2007 it was badass.

@fryreartechnology7611

That's a cool little tough book.  I have a 3 laptops and love them.  I work on a lot of older equipment that needs old versions of windows to run.  Allen Bradley plc, omron plc, Parker drives, while new version are made they have a hard time connecting to 1980's, 90's machines and winXP, win7, with one running DOS only for some old German printing presses.