Panasonic Tough book CF-18
 

I have an option to pick up this laptop for a great deal $400. Its a referbed unit but looks new.

Specs are
900Mhz cpu
1.2G Memory
40G HD


My questions is this...

Will it run ubuntu OK. Is the 900Mhz CPU going to hurt me.
Right now I am running an IBM R51 with 1.5G Memory and a 1.2G CPU

I want to run vbox and a xp image on that.

This is a 10" touch display.
Are the drivers available for it?

http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp...=Toughbook-M31

I like the idea of it being a tough book and the fact that it can get bounced around etc.
10" display.. small but if the touch screen stuff works then might be cool to have.

Any and all comments appreciated.

In my opinion, it's not a great deal. Unless you've got a real need for a touch-screen and a ruggedized laptop, it's pointless.

Right now, you can go out to Newegg.com, get a brand new Acer aspire, 15" screen, 2GB of RAM, and 2GHz CPU's, with DVD burner, WiFi, etc., for $399. If you're going to run vbox with XP on it, that's going to be agonizing on a 900MHz....XP by ITSELF is slow enough. :)

I've had Vaios for years. They've been bounced around a good bit, on planes, etc., and haven't had problems. Unless you're REALLY going to be assaulting your box in very harsh environments, you're paying for something you'll never need. Laptops, as a rule, are built to handle a decent bit of jostling.

I had a feeling the 900 was gonna kill me. I want Linux with XP in a virtual system. May be Ill pass.

well my brother got one and he loaded xp on it. Seems to run OK he said. Not sure about Linux still.

Hopefully someone else will post up too.

It will run Ubuntu OK. But a virtual machine with XP? Definitely not.

The reason is the host is going to be bottlenecked by the CPU *AND* the RAM.

The guest Windows system will be severely limited with anything less than 80 GB. Windows won't be happy with just 20 or 30. It's also going to want at least 1 GB of RAM.

To be able to do this easily, you will have to:

Use Arch Linux or something more minimal so you can give sufficient RAM to XP. Arch Linux uses very little RAM, so this would help here.

Use the JFS file system with the deadline I/O scheduler and the noatime and nodiratime options appended, as this will use much less CPU and keep things speedy. Arch linux can do this.

Use a minimal Desktop Environment and Window Manager.

Give Windows most of your Hard Drive. 37 GB's might work allright.

Give Windows 1 GB of RAM in the VM.

Ensure Windows gets the guest additions, else deal with very poor conditions.

Run the VM at a much more lower resolution that the host.

Unfortunately, I don't think thats a "good deal." But if the touch screen and ruggedness are big features for you, and you are good enough with Linux to be able to set up an Arch box, I would say it's possible.

Like the guy said up there, you could get a much nbetter PC at the same price and run the VM flawlessly, without any real optimizing. You could only run the VM on that toughbook with serious optimizations on both the host and the guest.

thanx for the info. I had that feeling and have decided to pass on it.