ANTenna Blog -- Mobile

Panasonic has updated its Toughbook family of business-rugged notebooks with three new 3G-ready models, one of which the company says is the lightest to be had.

Panasonic's 8 Series Toughbooks -- costing from $2,099 to $2,499 and weighing between 3 pounds and 3.7 pounds -- run on Intel Core 2 Duo chips and come with 1 GB of RAM that's expandable to 4 GB. When the laptops ship in November, they'll also have optional embedded GobiTM 3G technology, which helps enable seamless selection between mobile broadband carriers and simplified international roaming within a single embedded device, ChannelWeb reports.

Model-specific specs include:

• Toughbook F8: Billed by Toshiba as the world’s lightest 3G-ready computer, it's equipped with a 160-GB shock-mounted hard drive, 14.1-inch display, six hours of battery life, and an integrated handle that spoke to the girl inside of me who sometimes makes product selections based purely on color.

• Toughbook W8: This ultraportable comes with a 160-GB shock-mounted hard drive, 12.1-inch display, integrated DVD multidrive, and up to seven hours of battery life.

• Toughbook T8: This tablet PC sports a 120-GB shock-mounted hard drive, 12.1-inch touch screen, stylus, and screen-rotating software, and up to seven hours of battery life.

How rugged it rugged? This trio of Toughbooks -- which, according to eWeek, are geared toward general business use, as well as vertical markets, such as government and health care -- survived 30-inch drops to the base of each unit while operating.

More From bMighty: 8 Ultraportable Laptops For Growing Businesses -- Fully Armored Computing: Panasonic ToughBook W7