~Toughbooktalk~

I'm looking for info on what Panasonic's "Federal Only" designator actually means.

1. No wireless LAN/Bluetooth?
Is this the only distinction of federal-only Toughbooks? Do they still come with the internal antennas (and leads) for you to attach your own wireless card? Also, what's the point of this? And why wouldn't you just call it "No-WiFi" or something like that?

2. Only sold to federal customers?
When I hear "only", I think of exclusivity - as in, these models will *not* be sold to *anyone* besides the federal government. What sort of features are added to federal-only Toughbooks that would make Panasonic want to prevent them from going to non-federal customers? Or am I mis-interpreting?

I think there goal is to sell these particular units to federal only people... to not have the "insecure WIFI" and bluetooth and when the CF-31 comes out, webcam as well.

Yup yup yup

Is it only the federal government that's concerned about this? Do state/county/local governments have this same fear of "airborne disease spread through Wi-Fi"?

Do the federal customers still use Ethernet and cellular WWAN?

I know that the all the police departments & fire departments around here use the normal WIFI enabled ones. They also have the emissive backlit keyboard and the ATT broadband cards in every one of them as well.

Andy,
The Federal government may only want the computers used in "Their Internal" networks.

I have a MK3 "Fed" that had all and was wired for wlan (WIFI). All I had to do was install the card. My MK3 came with a working, functional toughscreen. It is not wired for wireless internet, I have a USB card for that already anyways. My Mk3 is still a "TOUGHBOOK" , that was under "strict" control of the government. My Toughbook was real clean when I got it though.

Everyone that buys one, "FED", just has to go a step further to MODify their unit for certain upgrades. You have to make sure You get the complete sled and hardware for (ex.) a wireless internet setup. Components, wiring, antennas, etc, You have to get the complete mod.

There have been some on E-bay that have not been "FED". You see them with the wwan antenna on the screens left corner, but may not have contained the sled or the sled was there and they didn't know it, or it was there and was removed leaving the rest of the components in place. Some E-bay resellers are just that, resellers.

FYI, just a quick insight on the lack of Wi-Fi in some government computers (as liammw652 alluded to). Because government computers are often used on secure networks, to include classified networks, wireless capability is often not installed or is disabled. For example, in the military we frequently use Toughbooks on a number of tactical networks. I've often had to go through and pull out Wi-Fi cards from Dell laptops, etc. which didn't need to be in there.

Nothing like seeing your supposedly secure government computer broadcasting a public signal that you notice from your personal computer.

turtlexiv, Welcome to the forum and thanks for the info. I picked up a CF-51 "federal only" a while ago and was lucky that all I had to do was add the wifi card and was up and surfing

Thanks for the welcome. I've lurked and occasionally posted over at the NBR forums and recently found this one.

I just got a Federal Only CF-29FTTGXKM. Lower half only. Bought it for parts but it was nice so I added a upper half. No self control.
Concerning the Wifi:
The cables were in place but disconnected and nicely wrapped with Kapton tape.
No Wifi card.
Hooked it all up, both white wires to keyboard pcb, blacks to passthrough pcb(terminology)??. Added a card, thermal pads and it's working fine.
What's a smart card reader good for? The cable would integrate with a GPS nicely.

Happy Holidays.

Jeff

got a cf29-FTTGZKM and put a wifi in it as well, touchscreen works well and was in pretty good shape, bought it as a parts unit, but was in such good shape spruced it up as is. smart card, you probably know just a security thing I believe would only allow user to log in and use computer. what good is it? shame we can't figure some way to use it for something "modern" maybe like a credit card reader or something else that can be plugged in with a carrier card and a chip. or another way to "jack" into it with some sort of accessory, thinking out loud, Merry Christmas Jeff, hope you're holding out well off the grid. sure would like to check out some of your adaptations as I feel we may all be headed there soon enuff.............Driller