Panasonic looks for fed bounce

Panasonic, in addition to introducing the Toughbook 72, demonstrated the

recently released Toughbook 48, a semi-rugged system tailored to government

customers.

The Toughbook 48 features an easily removable battery, a shock-mounted

hard drive, two Universal Serial Bus ports and a new 256M RAM chip that

allows expanded memory up to 384M. A magnesium alloy lid encases the display.

"The Toughbook 48 was built with direct input from Panasonic's federal

customers," said Jan O'Hara, national federal sales manager for Panasonic.

The ease with which users can re———move the battery and hard drive makes

it "an indispensable tool for the soldier in both the office and on deployment,"

she said.

With the wide range of options available, Panasonic representatives

said the Toughbook 48 could be configured to cost from about $1,500 to almost

$3,000. The processor is available in 600 MHz and 700 MHz versions, and

the hard drives range from 10G to 20G.

The Toughbook 48 is available on a host of federal contract vehicles,

including the Army's indefinite-

delivery, indefinite-quantity Portable-3 program, the General Services

Administration schedule, the Air Force Standard System Group's Information

Technology Tools blanket purchase agreement, the Navy's Fleet Industrial

Supply Center and the Navy's Tactical Advanced Computer program.