....okay it's a pretty ancient toy but new to me. After the screen on my omibook500 froze (and I mean FROZE in the non I.T sense) when it got wet in the truck during the winter I was left without a carpc to use.

Hadn't noticed before but ToughBook prices for old low spec models are really cheap. I think a ToughBook is just the ticket for life in harsh careless life the Landrover.

It's a ToughBook CF-27 MKII. PII 300Mhz processor. 256MB RAM and a 100Gb HDD (which I added myself after digging out the 6GB it came with). Unfortunately its not fitted with a touchscreen like some are.

I chemically stripped back the lid to bare magnesium alloy as that's the way I like it. I fitted a low profile thumbnail bluetooth dongle but had cut the rear cover to accommodate it. I will reseal this over with a moulded bump. The BT is for the Holux BT GPS I use. WIFI is via an old PCMCIA card. There is an internal GSM modem but haven't investigate that yet.

I reluctantly set the machine up with Windows XP (a barebones release) so that I could use the HAM radio software I have which are difficult to emulate under Linux on a low spec machine. MemoryMap OS5 is installed along with the entire UK's 50k and 25k maps. The only other stuff I need to store on there is the landrover workshop manuals.

Anyhows... will see how long it lasts.