How Customer Input Drove Improvements of the Acclaimed Toughbook 54

How Customer Input Drove Improvements of the Acclaimed Toughbook 54

Brian Rowley

Since its initial release in 2015, the Panasonic Toughbook® 54 has quickly become one of our most popular rugged mobility products. Relied on by first responders, utility professionals, members of the military and more, this semi-rugged notebook turned heads with its thin profile, light weight and impressive mobile computing performance.   In fact, the Toughbook 54 was just named “the very best rugged laptop” by TechRadar Pro.

We know that our customers need to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to technology, and we’re committed to ensuring that our devices reflect the latest in features, specifications and more. With that in mind, we are proud to unveil the 2017 Toughbook 54 with 7th Gen Intel processors – the newest release of this proven device – bringing the increased power, functionality and work productivity that have become synonymous with the Panasonic Toughbook brand. We sat down with Panasonic Senior Product Manager Anthony Mungiello for a look at what’s new on the Toughbook 54.

What kind of performance increases should customers expect from the 2017 Toughbook 54?

Our product updates are driven by the needs of our customers to stay ahead of the curve and future-proof their technology decisions and optimize their return on investment. As part of that commitment to serve customer evolving needs, we make sure to do regular updates that keep our products fresh, and part of that means keeping up with the latest processors from Intel. With the Mark 3, we’re offering the advanced Intel® Core™ i5 and i7 processors, which for our end users means a 20 percent increase in processing capacity and a 27 percent increase in graphics processing. That means that the world’s lightest and thinnest 14” semi-rugged laptop is more powerful than ever before.

Users will also enjoy the benefits of increased RAM – with even the Lite model sporting a powerful 8 GBs, expandable up to 32 GBs – as well as a new LTE-Advanced chipset that allows for carrier aggregation to improve LTE performance by up to 50 percent.

We know that some of our power users have intensive processing needs – and so we’ve traditionally offered the Toughbook 54 in a “Performance model” – has this configuration seen additional updates?

Most definitely. As our customers’ application requirements evolve, it’s important that we provide them with the power needed to run the latest applications in the field and keep pace with the way they want to work. In addition to a new, faster CPU, the performance model sports an AMD Radeon Pro WX 4150 GPU. That means powerful, dedicated processing power for the most graphically demanding applications – a feature that, for example, our military customers have relied on as they use these devices for intensive mapping programs in the field. These are the kind of improvements that our customers have come to appreciate and being able to deliver this kind of performance in the lightest, slimmest semi-rugged notebook on the market is why they continue to turn to Panasonic and our customer-centric approach.

Additionally, the Performance model comes standard with 16GB of memory now and can be outfitted with dual SSD drives that support RAID-1 mirroring, so the device can be used as a reliable in-field server for our customers who need that functionality.

What other hardware improvements have been made to the new Toughbook 54 as a result of customer feedback?

Beyond the additional performance upgrade, this hardware refresh gave us the opportunity to make some other changes to the Toughbook 54 that reflect customer feedback. For instance, we’ve switched the keyboard backlight color from white to red, something we introduced earlier this year on the Toughbook 33 that was a change requested by our many first responders who noted that it improved night vision  when enroute to an accident or event at night. We’ve also changed the position of the insertable SmartCard CAC reader, once again based on customer input, making it more accessible.

We also made some additions that increase the value that our customers get from these devices: for example, all models except the Lite version now come standard with solid-state drives and 1080p HD webcams.

This is absolutely the best semi-rugged notebook we’ve ever produced, and we’re excited for our customers to get their hands on it. The Toughbook 54 really has become one of the gems of the Toughbook line, and these newest revisions will ensure it stays ahead of the game and delivers the performance, reliability and ruggedness that our customers have come to expect from Panasonic.

For more information on the new Toughbook 54, please visit here or read the official press release.

 

 

The Internet of Vehicles

the-internet-of-vehicles

The Internet of Vehicles

3 minutes

As innovation accelerates, it isn’t hard to imagine a world where cars drive themselves, or even fly. But cars that talk and think? You might be shaking your head, but that’s exactly where mobility is headed.

At ITS World Congress that starts in mid-September in Copenhagen, Panasonic’s Jarrett Wendt will offer ideas on the connected vehicle ecosystem enabling cars to communicate with each other and the road around them. If your travels don’t include Denmark in September, here are a few highlights.

The world is changing at hyper speed

As anyone in the tech world understands, disruption is the new normal. Constant innovation is now the price of entry, and the rate of change is increasing exponentially. Adoption rates have also accelerated dramatically. As inventor and futurist and Ray Kurzweil noted, we won’t experience 100 years of progress in this century – at today’s accelerated pace, it will be more like 20,000 years worth.

In our recent “Moving Forward,” research series, Panasonic Corp. of North America assesses how senior technology decision makers in industries including automotive view the technologies they see driving us forward, and the impact of these technologies on future plans. By 2025, 10 disruptive technologies are expected to generate trillions of dollars of economic impact. Our new research reveals that tech decision makers in automotive, avionics industries and related government agencies say their companies have already adopted five of these technologies on average. And four have risen to the top of their innovation agendas – energy storage, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence and sustainable energy. Panasonic is deeply engaged in all of them.

The future of transportation is integrated

There has been a great deal of prototyping and testing of Intelligent Transportation Systems, but working with the Colorado Dept. of Transportation, Panasonic has developed a phased approach that will allow DOTs to effectively deploy these technologies at scale. Not just a system for main highways and thoroughfares, but for all roadways and arteries throughout an entire state or region.

Our role? A technology-agnostic strategic consultant, general contractor and solution integrator.

We’re one year into our real-world deployment along a particularly challenging 90 mile stretch of I-70 in Colorado, connecting Denver to Vail, where Coloradans face steep grades, severe curves, often-extreme weather, visibility and congestion difficulties. This is a 5-year, $72 million V2X program featuring a road-operator managed data platform deployed on active, open roadways.

Data has the power to drive safety

With our Intelligent Transportation solution, we’re talking about empowering DOTs with the ability to analyze everything from speed and heading, to windshield wiper and traction control status – providing valuable context on road conditions.

Suddenly, a roadway operator can receive this data and make up-to-the-minute decisions about deploying snowplows during winter storms – or optimize how traffic flows through the city in real time.

This technology can also communicate instantly about emergency braking and crashes, and enables customized alerts to be sent to cars in specific locations instantaneously.

Imagine driving along the highway in the mountains and a crash occurs 1,000 feet down the road and around a blind turn. V2X will enable our vehicles to warn us or even react on our behalf – to prevent us from becoming a part of the incident even before the compromised vehicle is visible. And emergency services can be deployed more expeditiously, and more cost-effectively, than ever before.

Talking cars can reduce traffic

Connected vehicle technology will save lives through a significant reduction in the number of non-impaired crashes – estimates are as high as 80%. CDOT estimates as much as a 400% increase in roadway efficiency with wide scale deployment of connected vehicle technology – without the expense of widening roadways and adding lanes. The system is also expected to reduce the amount of time people spend in traffic and lessen the environmental impact of idling cars by mitigating congestion.

Read more about how disruptive technology is impacting transportation in The Year of the Smart Highway.

Authors
Tom Gebhardt - Chairman and CEO, Panasonic Corporation of North America

Building a wireless future that is far-reaching and accessible

Future of Bluetooth Mesh Networks

Building a wireless future that is far-reaching and accessible

4 minutes

The most inspiring example of the power of mesh networks, a distributed communication system, where each device acts as a node that can relay data to the others, lies in the island of Puerto Rico. That’s where a couple of volunteers with antennas, wireless mesh devices and solar panels helped to restore communications for relief effort coordinators in Barranquitas, a city battered by Hurricane Maria. “Within three days, volunteers were using both technologies to more effectively coordinate the delivery of food and medicine,” according to an article in Quartz.

Disaster management and public safety is one reason for the strong growth forecast for the global wireless mesh network market, but not the only one, according to a new report by Zion Market Research. Its study finds that the global wireless mesh network market was valued at $3.84 billion in 2017 and is expected to reach around $9.08 billion by 2024. The oil & gas Industry, video streaming and surveillance, smart mobility and smart city applications are among the biggest drivers of growth of mesh networking thanks to its promise of low-cost access to broadband services.

Bluetooth 5.0 was officially deployed in 2016 with a focus on enhancing the range, speed and data capacity for the connections. It also had another promising role: IoT connectivity. Where Bluetooth had previously been thought of as a 1-to-1 connection between devices, this concentration on IoT tech allows for the connection of multiple devices and, ultimately, the cloud.

Recent research on disruptive technology by Panasonic shows that many companies have adopted mobile devices, apps and commerce and the cloud, and three in five have adopted the Internet of Things (IoT). Senior tech decision makers believe these technologies are critical to their future success, according to our research. Clearly developments, such as mesh networking, that yield fruitful deployments of disruptive technology are important to these decision makers.

Wide-ranging applications

Bluetooth mesh network represents a major step towards a more accessible and wide-ranging wireless future. It allows for multiple devices to connect to the same network and all communicate seamlessly and in real time. A standard Bluetooth network is similar to a speaker presenting to an audience. The speaker may address the entire audience or individual members and audience members may address a question to the speaker, but audience members don’t communicate among themselves. In a Bluetooth mesh network audience members may address one another. This topology has two advantages. First, since a single message may travel along many routes to its destination, this dramatically increases the probability that the message arrives. The second advantage is the increased distance a message may travel – like one audience member speaking to another.

While standard Bluetooth recently upgraded its range in the Bluetooth 5.0 update, mesh networking hypothetically allows for infinite range if the proper chain links are in place.

Mesh networks in healthcare

There are pioneering Bluetooth mesh network examples in healthcare. Hospitals are using Bluetooth beacons to monitor and track equipment. But helping nurses locate equipment is just the surface of Bluetooth’s capabilities in the health system. Using this tech, doctors and nurses could monitor patients from anywhere, significantly reducing the need for hospital visits. These visits are both costly and potentially dangerous due to the risk of things like contagious diseases and infection. Not only would a doctor or nurse be able to monitor patients wirelessly, but a patient’s devices at home could do things like monitor temperature through biometric sensors and automatically notify the drug store to deliver medicine if the patient got a fever.

Benefits to manufacturing

There are also clear benefits from the Bluetooth mesh network in the manufacturing sector, especially where multiple machines operate simultaneously on the plant floor. Previously, if two devices situated beyond the range of a Bluetooth device needed to communicate, it would require either a wired connection or gateway that could connect to the cloud. This cloud connection requires Wi-Fi, which uses significantly more energy. Now with the mesh network, every single device in the entire factory can connect to each other via Bluetooth, and even the ones farthest away can communicate if necessary by bouncing the signal through other devices on the way.

Bluetooth mesh networking is just one piece of the wireless future that is to come. Read more in our Future of Wireless Everything series. 

Authors
Jeff Howell - President of Panasonic Industrial Devices Sales Company of America