Let's Note: Panasonic's Japanese Business Laptops!

You might be familiar with Panasonic's Toughbook like of rugged notebook PCs. But in its home country of Japan, the company offers many more models -- so let's check out a smaller, decade-old one from the Let's Note series.

Sources:
"Why WiMax," Computerworld, February 14, 2005.
"Broadband On The Go," Popular Mechanics, December 2004.

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[iamdarkyoshi]

When I worked at a PC repair shop, we had a tourist come by and she had a modern let's note. It had a small but 1920x1200 screen so it was super crisp and clear, and sported an NVME SSD. It was incredibly light, it almost felt like a toy but it didn't feel cheap either. It was an absolute delight for everyone at the shop to work on.

[antifocus]

Panasonic laptops are quite visible on Japanese TV even till this day (shows, news programs, etc), the iconic trackpad is hard to miss.

[robsquared]

It's strange how the stars aligned and LTT did the same brand of computer within a few weeks of this.

[sbrazenor]

That under the palm rest DVD drive was definitely something you don't see very often. It was a good space saver. I still use optical media, but I know most people don't, so I like features like that.

[NickLetsom]

I don't think these trackpads supported two finger scrolling, but it's because their scroll method is to run your finger around the circumference of the trackpad. But like you mentioned, there might be a driver limitation too

[ldisc]

When I was in Japan last (2016) I was astonished to see most folks using Macs. In offices it was a different story, mostly Fujitsus with a dash of Dells. Fax machines were everywhere, every home I visited had a fax machine. Even my grandparents had one. Mostly Panasonics.

[SteveHuffer]

Two finger scrolling is usually achieved by running a finger round the circumference of the trackpad.

[motomike]

I think Japanese like to use fax for written communication because kanji is easier to handwrite than type. When I was at Berklee in the '90s a lot of Asian students would have fax machines because it was cheaper to send a fax than make a voice call to Asia. Email was becoming a thing but they still preferred to handwrite notes rather than type them.

[spookypineapple]

I was an Emergency Department scribe in 2013ish and all of us used these laptops to write our notes. They were durable as hell, super light, and served their intended purpose perfectly well

[thebasketballhistorian]

As for the optical drive, physical media is still popular in Japan even today.

CD music album stores are everywhere, and I even saw some DVD rental shops. Japan was one of the last developed countries to widely adopt streaming music.

[Ping_freud]

The DVD tray is 90% of the value here, it’s the party piece

[vwestlife]

I have a (U.S. market) Panasonic ToughBook laptop with the same round touchpad.

[dereketnyre]

WiMAX is still used to provide rural internet. My parents in Illinois have it and works well enough. They have a pizza box shaped antenna on the outside of their house that is pointed to an antenna mounted on a grain silo a few miles away.

[pabblo]

Actually, Panasonic laptops did spread outside of Japan. Panasonic also made the Toughbook series of laptops, which you'll find commonly in American police departments.

[monmortnoir]

My daily driver PC laptop is a Japanese CF-SX2 I bought a few years ago, only one generation newer than that CF-S10. After an SSD and RAM upgrade upon arrival, it still runs as good as it looks - beautifully. The light ruggedization of the Let's Note line helps a treat too!

[CasiopeaFunk]

Man that laptop looks awesome. I bet with a light Linux distro and some hardware upgrades like storage and ram It could definitely be used as a daily driver. One of my favorites so far!

[keithvertrees]

I love how they integrated the optical drive. Really creative. Shame about everything else.

[Nuklen]

6:04 the HDD having a production date of 2014 makes it seem pretty clear that it's not original to the machine also :P

[musicislife]

Here you can find many like this, one thing you forgot to mention, this laptop it has an special Sd driver that is possible to tranfer music to SD cards in copyright protected mode we used to listening in SD Music Players that was released in earlier 2000's !

[XitingShi]

The iconic laptop for Japanese salaryman, one of my senpai in my first job always carring one with a portable A4-size printer.