Free Republic

A bit of an old story is coming to the surface as Panasonic is waving around pictures of a CF-M34 ToughBook which a soldier in the US 82nd Airborne division took with him into Northern Iraq, only to have some inconsiderate... person... put a bullet into it. The good news? The bullet went through the screen and part of the keyboard, but didn't come out the other end to do any harm to any piece of US military property on the far side. Impressive, no? Well, probably. Pretty much anything dense enough can stop a bullet, if you're lucky...

Weapon: In the Mojave Desert, troops test computers, unmanned drones and other equipment that could transform warfare. FORT IRWIN, Calif. -- It was not long ago that Army Col. Abe Turner would look to a rumpled paper map and a hand-held FM radio to get a fix on an enemy's location. Now he looks to his laptop computer, where the enemy glides across the screen, red icons on a glowing green relief map, updated every few minutes. "The system we have now is so much better at painting a picture of what is out there," said Turner, an assistant operations...

<p>Panasonic's Toughbook has found fans among troops in Iraq. That should boost sales for the whole "ruggedized" laptop segment.</p> <p>Early in the war in Iraq, a firefight broke out in a neighborhood that had supposedly been secured by coalition forces. As bullets whizzed by, a U.S. soldier did what came naturally: He held up his laptop computer, a Toughbook 72 from Panasonic Computer Solutions Co. Unlike most plastic-covered laptops, this "semi-rugged" model has a hard magnesium shell and steel-reinforced innards. The improvised shield did the trick. "There's a bullet lodged in his hard drive," marvels Maria Leadingham, who manages technology for the Civil Affairs Psychological Operations Center at Fort Bragg, N.C.</p>