Panasonic Shows Off New BizPad Windows Tablet [Panasonic's BizPad Is Geared Toward Business Users, Offers Variety Of Protections And Oddly Low Power]

Posted on TFTS by Steve Anderson on Monday, 28. February 2011 under: Computers & Computing, PCs, Notebooks, Netbooks & Tablets

We hear a lot about the various tablets being put into the market on any given day, but one class of tablet we don’t hear much about is the Windows tablet. Well, the crew out at Panasonic are looking to give us a little extra reason to remember this subclass even exists thanks to the BizPad, which went on sale just today in Japan.

The BizPad, geared not at all surprisingly toward business users, is clearly meant to go with you into the field, as it’s packing protection against (physical) shock, as well as dust and some waterproofing. There were some nice videos out at Panasonic’s site that showed this sucker take a surprisingly aggressive meter drop as well as handily surviving the equivalent of driving rain (This is waterproofing, not immersion resistance, so don’t get any ideas about going underwater with the BizPad if you want it to survive, but don’t worry about having it out in a thunderstorm.), so it’s a fairly robust piece of hardware.

Perhaps the lone downside here is the spec list, which would have been almost as robust had it emerged for sale in, say, 2001. The BizPad is packing a 6.5 inch touch screen with downright disappointing 640×480 resolution and an LED backlight. It runs Windows Embedded CE 6.0 on a Freescale i.MX27L 400MHz processor, packs 256MB RAM, wi-fi and Bluetooth connectivity, an SDHC card slot, USB 2.0 port, an optional 3G module, an onboard two megapixel camera with flashlight, and an eight hour battery life.

It’s clearly no one’s idea of a muscle machine, but for simple things like handling, say, Microsoft Word or email, it should do the job fairly well. And considering it will survive any of a number of road hazards, it could be a pretty fair answer to a lot of business travelers’ uses. It’s got an “open pricing model” over in Japan, so if you want to get one of these tough little packages, put in a call to your importer of choice.

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