As part of my overall prepping, I have been debating keeping a prepped and ready tablet or laptop for use in any number of situations, mainly bug-in but possibly for bug-out as well. My checklist of ideal specifications was:
- Portable
- Rugged
- Usable (i.e. a level of power and performance is required)
- Chargable from solar if required
- Windows or Linux (Not android, chromeOS or other)
- Redundancy (Replaceable components, with spares on-hand)
- Free software
- On-line and off-line facilities (don’t assume it will only be used when the power/internet is gone)
The Hardware
I have some experience of Panasonic Toughbooks as we use them where I work and the CF-19 fits the bill very well and has the added benefit of being able to convert into a touch-screen Windows tablet. I picked up a MKII Refurbished model for £325 which was spec’d as follows:
Based on Intel® Centrino® Duo Mobile Technology
- Operating System: Genuine Windows® 7 Professional
- Vibration and shock resistant (MIL-STD 810F)
- Water and dust resistant (IP54, MIL-STD 810F)
- Lightweight at just 2.25kg
- High-brightness 10.4˝ LCD with Digitiser Screen
- Firewire (IEEE1394a), USB 2.0 and serial port
- Bluetooth® and WLAN integrated
DURABILITY FEATURES
- Designed using MIL-STD-810F test procedures
- Full magnesium alloy case
- Moisture- and dust-resistant LCD, keyboard and touchpad
- Sealed port and connector covers
- Shock-mounted removable HDD in stainless steel case
- Rugged hinge
- Vibration and drop-shock resistant
CPU
- Intel ® Core 2 ™ Duo Processor U2400
- – 2MB L2 cache
- – Processor speed 1.06GHz
- – 533MHz FSB
STORAGE & MEMORY • 4GB SDRAM (DDR2),
- 500GB HDD
DISPLAY
- Tablet PC version: 10.4″ 1024 x 768 (XGA) transmissive, 550 Nit daylight-readable TFT Active Matrix Color LCD with Digitizer
- External video support up to 1280 x 1024 at 16 million colors (24 bit color depth)
- Intel ® 945GM graphic controller DVMT up to 128MB
- Low Reflection Screen Coating
AUDIO
- SigmaTel ™ STAC9751 AC-97 v2.2 Compliant Audio Codec
- Integrated speaker
- Convenient keyboard volume and mute controls
EXPANSION SLOTS
- PC Card Type II x 1
- Secure Digital (SD) Card
- Express Card/54 x 1
KEYBOARD & INPUT
- 82-key with dedicated Windows ® key
- Pressure sensitive touchpad with vertical scrolling support
- Active Digitizer LCD
INTERFACE
- External Video D-sub 15
- Headphones/Speaker Mini-jack Stereo
- Microphone/Line In Mini-jack
- Port Replicator Dedicated 100 pin
- Serial Port D-sub 9
It’s a portable, rugged, windows-based choice with interchangeable drives and batteries so ticks all the boxes as far as my requirements.
As far as spares and hardware add-ons, I wanted to make it as flexible and usable as possible and make sure I could keep it running for as long as possible with swappable parts before it ever broke down with something unrepairable so I added these to my kit:
- Spare PSU
- 2 x Spare batteries
- Notebook wireless mouse
- External USB-powered multi-CD/DVD
- USB hub, bus powered
- Spare HDD, cloned
I may swap the HDDs for SSDs at some point if I think there is enough gain to justify the cost.
The Software
As part of my ideal specifications I didn’t want to assume that the machine would only get used in a full-on SHTF situation where there was no power and no internet so I have tried to come up with a suite of applications that let me open and edit files, watch a DVD or media file or listen to music. As well as those, I added some utilities to search for files, scan networks, connect to servers and so on. Anything I could need for bugging in or, if I could justify carrying the weight, bugging-out. The suite I have installed at the moment is made up of:
- Firefox
- – Adblock Plus
- – FireFTP
- – Video DownloadHelper
- Adobe Acrobat
- Adobe Flash
- Adobe Shockwave
- Visual C++ Distribution Files
- Libre Office
- DVD player software (WinX DVD Player)
- 7Zip
- Veracrypt (Truecrypt originally but vulnerabilities were found in the legacy code recently)
- Evernote
- Google Earth
- Putty
- Advanced IP Scanner
- GIMP
- Keepass 2 (Password Manager)
- Dropbox
- CD Burner XP
- FileSeek
- FastImageResizer
- Dexpot (Virtual Desktops)
- VLC Media Player
- uTorrent
- Notepad++
- Primo PDF (PDF Printer Driver)
- Kindle Reader for Windows (Added 05/11/2015)
I am open to any suggestions for additions or replacements for these programs. I haven’t created the cloned spare hard drive until I am settled on the software installation. Has anyone got a use for this machine I haven’t accounted for?
I already have three cloned external USB hard drives full of my movies, TV shows and music. I am also building a library of survival and other manuals to add to these drives. My motto here is redundancy, redundancy, redundancy!
My long term plan is to get the whole thing set up and then seal it in a Faraday box along with a decent solar charger and other electronics.
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February 15, 2017 at 6:18 pm
Out of curiosity Could I ask why you were against having an android device etc?
February 15, 2017 at 8:26 pm
There was nothing particularly against any other device to be honest. The Panasonic had the advantage of being already rugged, tried and tested. It also has swappable batteries and storage can be replaced or upgraded. Of course the downside is size and weight compared to a more portable android or i-os device. Are you thinking of speccing up an android device for the same purpose?
February 15, 2017 at 8:38 pm
I was considering prepping a downsized version , I have an old landrover android rugged phone with expandable memory . Thought it would be good for pdf survival guides and notepad/memo and similar useful apps aswell as downloadable local maps and photographs of landmarks for reference points etc. Easily chargeable using solar powered devices etc.
February 15, 2017 at 8:59 pm
That certainly sounds do-able. Just googled Landrover phones and they look pretty rugged. If it’s an A8 or A9 it looks like it will support USB OTG (On-The-Go) which means you should be able to plug USB flash drives or hard drives to increase/swap storage over.
February 15, 2017 at 9:34 pm
It is the a9 I believe,I had it for a short while as a spare when my Samsung decided to jump out of my pocket and commit suicide😉.
I think it could work well being a phone and needed less power to run and therefore less power to try and find to keep it going. Thanks for the replies . I have joined the UK preppers forum too I see you have just replied to my newbie post😊
February 16, 2017 at 8:34 am
You’ve probably already been looking for apps for it but I’ve found these useful to keep on my Samsung:
UK Preppers is a great resource and much more down to earth than the US sites.
March 7, 2017 at 7:31 pm
Find and download pdf’s of manuals for whatever vehicles you may be planning to use – I got all the LR Workshop books for my 30yr old Range Rover Classic in a zip file. Likewise repair/maintenance manuals for any other devices you intend to use.
A secure browser like Epic wouldnt hurt either.
March 7, 2018 at 3:43 pm
Having a robust computer is always going to be a bonus, and this looks like a great option.
For myself though, the device is only part of the solution. I’d recommend taking a look at a portable USB Linux installation. This is basically your entire OS and applications on a bootable USB stick. You can do this with some versions of Windows but it’s more tricky and Windows has much higher system requirements than most Linux distros.
The benefits of a portable USB version are that you can us it on pretty much any available hardware and easily make multiple copies.
March 7, 2018 at 4:11 pm
It’s a good point. I’ve used a number of linux distros over the years and hadn’t really thought about putting together a portable version for use on this and any other device I might get my hands on, although it might raise some issues with device support depending on how much hardware functionality is included in the linux build. I’ll have a play with some and see how I get on.
March 7, 2018 at 4:33 pm
Most Linux distributions have really good device support these days. A portable installation of most distros will offer support for most ‘standard’ machines out of the box. There’s a good overview of some small, lightweight portable distros at https://mashtips.com/best-portable-linux-distro/
March 8, 2018 at 9:02 am
Thanks for the link. I’ll do some research and see what I come up with.