Panasonic Introduces Toughbook H1 Tablet [Rugged Tablet Features 10-inch screen, Atom processor, Windows 7]

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Some are dubbing 2010 as the “Year of the Tablet” and now those who work in places where they need a rugged gadget can get in on the excitement. Panasonic’s Toughbook line is traditionally notebook computers, but now they’ve decided to get into the tablet game by introducing a new tablet, dubbed the H1 Field.

The Toughbook H1 is your basic circa-2001 Windows-style tablet, which is a full desktop OS running on a touchscreen. It’ll be running Windows 7 (you can downgrade to Windows XP, speaking of 2001), and it will have an Intel Atom Z540 inside clocked at 1.86GHz. It will have 2GB of RAM and a nice 64GB SSD drive inside.

The touchscreen comes in at 10.4-inches and will be “sunlight-viewable” and will be covered with anti-glare and anti-reflective treatments. The H1 Field will use two batteries, each which a 6 hour battery life. The beauty of the two batteries is that you can hot-swap a dead-one out and keep the tablet running. For connectivity, it’ll have WiFi and Bluetooth support, as well as a EVDO modem.

On the outside, it’s pretty tough. It meets US Military standard MIL-STD-810G which means it withstand a six-foot drop (will your iPad survive a six-foot drop? Probably not). It’s got an IP65-certified sealed all-weather design and is encased in polycarbonate. Add-on features include a GPS receiver, a barcode reader, a 2-megapixel camera, an RFID tag reader, a fingerprint scanner (for security purposes) and support for SmartCard security USB keys.

I love these ruggedized gadgets even though I have no use for them. If you’re unlike me and desire one of these rough tablets, Panasonic will be shipping them in March 2010 and they’ll cost $3,379. Like most rugged gadgets, they carry a bit of premium. I imagine the manufacturers don’t move a large volume of them versus a regular gadget.