Jay Willis of Evergreen Aviation wrote:

Our crew chiefs (we're an airline) keep destroying their notebooks and
we need a better solution than a $2k notebook with a portable printer.

They need an inexpensive (or indestructible) machine that meets the
following operation requirements:

1. Portable
2. Run the DOS-based weight and balance program
3. Print the weight and balance
4. Send and receive e-mail

We'd prefer inexpensive to indestructible. An integrated unit that
doesn't require two pieces of hardware would be ideal. If you have an
idea, I'd really appreciate hearing about it.


Jay,

I got just the thing for you.  Panasonic has a whole line of ruggedized
laptops that they call Toughbooks.  Check out their site at:

http://www.smoothroad.com/products/toughbook/

My favorite choice would be the "Toughbook 01" which is  a mil-spec
handheld with a qwerty keyboard, and get this a GPS card as an option. Can
you say emergency backup navigation tool?  Sounds good to me.  Many moons
ago I used to navigate a Marine KC-130 and we didn't have any of that new
fangled stuff.  In fact, I think they were only talking about launching
the first couple of satellites that support GPS at the time.  I did it the
"old fashioned way" using celestial, pressure pattern and Loran C.  Oh
yes, and on rare occasion I would be able to use one of the two inertial
navigation platforms our squadron owned.  Can you say "low man on the
totem pole"?

By the way, I found this information using the coolest new search engine
that's out called Vivisimo.  You can find this at:

www.vivisimo.com and putting the words "ruggedized PC" in the search
argument string.  Do a little more searching and you'll probably find an
equally capable USB / IR interface battery-powered printer to go along
with one of the toughbooks.

Happy Flying,

John Hornberger
Sr. Systems Programmer
SPX Global Information Services

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