The perfect prepper computer?

[metatron]

The other day I picked up a couple of Panasonic CF-U1 Toughtbooks, as the company I was doing some data recovery for were getting shot of them. I paid £60 each and they got me thinking that they may be the perfect prepper computer.



Firstly their cheapish £60 to £120 used, but the real thinking was:

Fully rugged, fanless, dust and water resistant (IP65*, MIL-STD 810G*)
Drop resistant.
5.6" LCD with transflective plus sunbright viewable touchscreen.
1.06kg in weight.
GPS.
3G.
Bluetooth.
WiFi.
Barcode scanner.
Camera.
LED light.
Hot swappable batteries.

They run Windows 7 with an Atom Processor (not the fastest but fine) with 2GB of RAM, so far I'm happy with their performance.

From a prepping standpoint I see them being useful for a few things, firstly with the barcode scanner, keeping track of food stocks is much easier and just keeping yourself organised as a whole is a big plus, but secondly, when you pair it up with a handheld transceiver like the Baofeng preppers love, you have digital communications and can send text, maps and other images using freely available software.

You also have internet everywhere with a 3G signal or wifi and the GPS has solid performance for mapping.

[dangerman]

Looks the part, but windows will slow it down significantly so I believe. Anyway of changing over for a puppy linux or something like that? This little thing looks perfect if it will change over. Linux is a much smaller system and still does the same things as Windows, accept viruses and malware is much more uncommon. Even uses the same file formats.

I think I remember discussing this before on here, and I am convinced that a computer will be a very useful gadget in almost any bad situation.

I've got a library of PDFs and ePubs on a micro SD in my wallet, including all my major important information as well as essential books etc - it also has hours and hours of kids tv and some movies.

Pair a good computer up and that is a very useful thing to have.

I currently intent to throw my mac into my bag if ever I need to evacuate in a hurry. But it's fragile, big and quite heavy.

Think I'll stick one of these into my wish-list.

[metatron]

I've not tried Linux on it yet, I did rinse it under the tap and gave it a bit of a scrub with an old tooth brush, so I can confirm its water resistant.

Only issue I see with Linux is fixing the key mapping, it has USB so you can boot Linux of a external drive.

[digi]

when the power goes off where i live, it also takes out the local tv / radio transmitter and mobile mast. The electric boards helicopter has already been out twice in the last few weeks looking for the damaged power lines that constantly knock everything off. This means that in emergency situations, the village is cut off, as even those with satellite tv have no power to see / hear local / regional tv or radio through their TVs.

After being caught by this twice, about 8 years ago i started to get some gear in place, and over the years have upgraded it. I have a CCTV security system UPS that powers my broadband modem, and is able to run some USB chargers as needed. When theres NO power for anyone, im still able to get online for news, stream local radio to smartphone or tablet, or more importantly, update my facebook status (jk lol), and keep them charged. The UPS has kept my modem connected and the wireless running, with everyday normal use, and no power to it, for just under 3 weeks when i tried it out just to see how long itd last, so only being used when really needed, should last much longer. My wifi network is also hidden so when the power does go off, neighbours cant find the only active network

[Deeps]

Thinking slightly longer term, is it chargeable via usb or does it ned mains ? I've got a tablet which I would consider taking if I had to leave (films, books etc) because its able to be powered by solar/power charger/cig lighter but it would leave me without Football manager. My laptop is great but large, thirsty and only rechargeable by mains.

[metatron]

Thinking slightly longer term, is it chargeable via usb or does it ned mains ? I've got a tablet which I would consider taking if I had to leave (films, books etc) because its able to be powered by solar/power charger/cig lighter but it would leave me without Football manager. My laptop is great but large, thirsty and only rechargeable by mains.

You can charge it of 12v, which is what most cheap solar panels and cars output. It will also run for 9 hours of the internal batteries.

[Deeps]

Thinking slightly longer term, is it chargeable via usb or does it ned mains ? I've got a tablet which I would consider taking if I had to leave (films, books etc) because its able to be powered by solar/power charger/cig lighter but it would leave me without Football manager. My laptop is great but large, thirsty and only rechargeable by mains.

You can charge it of 12v, which is what most cheap solar panels and cars output. It will also run for 9 hours of the internal batteries.

Cheers, just curious. As I've said, I would consider my tablet depending on the situation but an 'upgrade' is always appealing.

[sniper 55]

I have my laptop set to dual boot with Ubuntu (linux) it boots up a LOT quicker in linux, theres loads of free programs for linux too.

[metatron]

I have my laptop set to dual boot with Ubuntu (linux) it boots up a LOT quicker in linux, theres loads of free programs for linux too.

Most radio software is written for Windows only and drivers from Panasonic are Windows only. There are companies that ship this with Ubuntu for over 1.5k but from reading a few post from the Arch community, you need to fix a bunch of things, the keyboard layout and battery monitoring being the main two.

Ultimately this is a small extremely rugged Windows tablet with full keyboard and a number of trigger buttons to launch applications and hardware such as the barcode scanner. Linux is great if you have very normal hardware, but don't expect everything to work on anything a little different, unless you are a developer and are willing to write the code to fix things.

Most fully rugged computers are ridiculously over priced used and bulky, this is an exception to that.

[whenfires]

I'm currently working on something similar but using a reconditioned CF19 Toughbook which has an Intel Core i5 processor instead. A bit more expensive but also a bit more capable. I will be posting on the blog and UKP once I get the setup I want. I also need to sort out some solar charging facility just in case.

What must-have applications would people recommend installing on these machines?