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« Cool Stuff / Toughpad FZ-M1BackgroundThe background to this little project is that, after Windows Mobile went unsupported, I went back briefly to Android, which I found to be not a very enjoyable experience. After that, I dabbled with Sailfish OS, running on an Xperia 10 III, but it there were too many issues and too few answers. So, I went back to Windows Mobile on my Lumia 950, and it is a great escapism phone. It's a great phone. The mail client still works fine and the camera is really excellent. That being said, for long trips, it's nice to have a full Windows machine with a proper web browser. I used to have a Lenovo Flex 10, which was a tiny 10" laptop, which was great for DOS games but it was very slow: even after I replaced the hard disk with an SSD, mainly thanks to the Celeron CPU. Device OverviewThe Toughpad FZ-M1 from Panasonic is (or was) a rugged Windows tablet with a 7" display that was meant for field use in industry. It was made between 2014 and about 2020. Panasonic made a x86 Windows device: small and tough enough that that could go practically anywhere, until it presumably decided that such a market would just have to put up with android. It has an interesting range of optional modules, including barcode scanners for warehouse use, 3D and infrared cameras for surveys, or an RJ45 port for diagnostics. The expansion modules also contained a bridge battery to allow you to hot-swap the main battery without even shutting down Windows. These modules stand out about half-an-inch or so from the back of the toughpad, so for consumer use, it's good to find one without one of these installed. They can be removed but you would need the screw-on cover for the bay that houses the m2 drive and the expansion module connector that sits underneath where the module is mounted. The battery is user-replaceable, via a release catch on the back. It has a slot for a micro-SD card slot and a slot for a nano-SIM. Both of these are hidden behind a water-resistant cover that can only be opened when the battery to be removed. The memory is 4GB on most models. The memory seems to be soldered to the tiny mainboard and can't be expanded. On the other hand, the storage device is a standard m2 drive which can be accessed by taking out the 4 screws on the top panel. Panasonic released 3 generations of the M1: each with a value model (Celeron/Atom) and a standard model (i5/m5), apart for the last generation, which seemed to only have the i5.
I found an new-old-stock Mk.1 FZ-M1 for a very low price. It has a faster CPU, a better display than the old Flex 10 and it's a lot smaller and lighter. You can actually get it in the back pocket of your jeans. I rate them about equal in terms of ruggedness, because the Flex 10 had a very solid design. Setting UpThis unit was completely unused and had apparently sat in a company's stock room for 10 years. Sure enough, the unit arrived packaged with all its accessories, like a handstrap and stylus. Many refurb units don't come with a charger for example, whereas this one was complete. One unhelpful thing was that, even though the unit was mint, the company selling it wiped the SSD completely and didn't re-image it. So, I had to make a Windows 10 install USB and then pay some money for an OEM Windows 10 license. In the BIOS boot settings, you have to set the USB mode to "compatible" to actually get the USB stick detected when the toughpad boots. Graphics LagI ran into performance problems with the toughpad right away after Windows finished installing ... The device would frequently become unresponsive with Client Server Runtime Process and Desktop Windows Manager rinsing the 3D compute resources on the graphics chip. To try and resolve that, I installed a whole series of drivers from the Panasonic support site, which is a complete mess, as regards Toughbook/Toughpad products. I installed the below drivers that are intended to be installed on a clean Windows 10 deployment: FZ-M1C (mk1) Series Windows 10 Upgrade Support Download Modules (Clean Install) - TOUGHBOOK Support - Panasonic Before having done that, I put on the latest BIOS and chipset firmware I could find on the site. I wasn't able to find an ISO image to allow you to return the device to its original Windows 8 baseline complete with the recommended drivers and applications. All the tools that claimed to create a recovery partition on the device and restore it to factory condition wouldn't work when I tried to install them on Windows 10. In any case, Windows 8 was good for its time but Windows 10 has more to recommend it. Among the above driver assortment is a "generic" graphics driver that refuses to install on the FZ-M1C as there is 'no hardware that it supports'. I had already installed the below graphics driver: Intel Video Driver Update Program (20.19.15.4835) CF-53[2/3/4/7], CF-AX3E, CF-C2C, CF-LX3[E/J], FZ-G1F, FZ-M1C, FZ-Q1C series - Windows 10 only - - TOUGHBOOK Support - Panasonic ... but it looks as though it needed installing twice, since putting that on again, after the other drivers fixed the problem. Sleep / HibernateThe other thing I notice is that performance issues crop up if the device comes out of anything other than a clean boot. If the device has slept or hibernated, you're best off doing a restart to set it away again. I see that someone managed to get around issues on the bigger FZ-G1 relating to the graphics driver and sleep by rolling back the graphics driver to an earlier version: Panasonic Toughpad FZ-G1 – Not Waking From Sleep | Dennis' IT Hijinx ... but ultimately, I'm happy to have it working predictably. Battery LifeThe unit can take two batteries - a 'slim' one that's flush with the back of the unit or an extended battery that sticks out by about half-an-inch from the back of the machine. It's like an Ericsson phone that way. It's very refreshing. The slim battery is rated for about 8hrs and the thick one about 18hrs. After this device has sat around for 10 years doing nothing, I was expecting the battery to be a bit diminished and it maybe is a bit. You get about 6 hours of operation out of it from a full charge. You can get new batteries for the device for about $100 but I don't Video and Audio 7Images
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