Optimize - CF-S10
How to optimize your Panasonic Toughbook CF-S10
You use your Panasonic Toughbook every day so why wouldn’t you want a laptop that’s running at its peak performance? Optimize your laptop by upgrading the RAM / memory and hard drive to maximize your laptop's performance. Let’s take a look at each one.
RAM
One of the most important components you can upgrade on your Panasonic Toughbook is your memory. RAM, also known as Random Access Memory, is where your computer temporarily stores your data so that your processor can quickly and easily retrieve it. It works like this: When you start a program, your processor gives a command to retrieve it from the hard drive. Once retrieved from the hard drive, your system needs a workspace to store that information so that your processor can manipulate and interact with it faster and more easily. That storage component is your RAM.
A commonly asked question is, “Does more RAM make my system run faster?” Technically no, but here’s what it does do: It makes your programs run faster. More RAM allows you to run more programs or larger programs faster because you can now store more programs and information in your RAM. If the total number of programs or data exceeds the amount of RAM capacity in your computer, your system will see a significant loss in performance. When that happens your computer doesn’t just stop running, the processor just goes back to the hard drive to retrieve the data it’s requesting and reading data from a hard drive is a much slower process than reading data from RAM. We’ve all had a computer that “bogs” down, but increasing your RAM will help eliminate that from happening.
Upgrading your computer’s RAM to the maximum possible amount will allow your system to run at its maximum performance. The maximum capacity of RAM / Memory for your Panasonic Toughbook can vary depending on which generation Toughbook you have or are considering buying.
Check here to find out what the maximum amount of RAM / Memory your Toughbook can hold.
There may be upgrade limitations depending on the operating system your computer system has. Most systems today are equipped with 64-bit operating systems that can fully utilize the maximum RAM / Memory your Toughbook has installed, however, if you have a 32-bit operating system or have software that requires a 32-bit operating system, you’ll only be able to utilize approximately 3GB of RAM. If you need to upgrade your system's performance from 32-bit to 64-bit, there are several options available to you. To find out more please contact one of our technical associates for assistance.
HARD DRIVE
Another great option to optimize the performance of your laptop is to upgrade your hard drive to a Solid State Drive. A solid state drive (SSD) is a solid state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies (flash memory) to store data persistently. SSDs have no moving parts and use an SSD controller for reading, writing and transferring data. Most SSDs use NAND flash technology which does not require power in order to retain data similar to USB thumb drives or SD memory cards.
Every Panasonic Toughbook over the last ten years uses the SATA bus interface. SATA drives came onto the scene in the year 2000 and because of their ability to move data faster, they quickly became the hard drive of choice by virtually all manufacturers. Transfer speeds are determined by what generation controller your laptop came with. SATA I has a transfer speed of up to 150MBs per second, SATA II has transfer speeds of up to 300MBs per second, and the latest generation SATA III has transfer speeds of up to 600MBs per second.
So if SSDs and Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) use the same SATA computer bus controllers, how come SSDs are so much faster? The answer is in the read and write speeds. Whereas a typical SATA HDD has read/write speeds of 12MBs per second at the low end and pretty much top out at 120MBs per second max, a typical consumer SSD has read and write speeds of over 500MBs per second, nearly four times faster! And SSD speeds are increasing as technology improves.
The main difference between an HDD and an SSD is the cost of mass storage versus speed. Although the cost of SSDs has fallen over the years, smaller capacity SSDs generally run about twice the cost as an HDD, while on higher capacity drives of say 1, 2 or 4 terabytes the cost can be substantially higher. If you work with large files and super fast performance is not your utmost concern then it would probably benefit you to upgrade to a 1TB or larger HDD. But if you feel the need for speed, upgrading to a super-fast SSD may very well be worth the investment.
Upgrading to an SSD helps to maximize the performance of your Panasonic Toughbook. To learn more about the differences between hard drives, click here, or contact one of our technical associates.
And don’t forget to make your Toughbook mobile friendly with 4G/LTE broadband. Use your Toughbook for what it was made to do! Learn more.
The Panasonic Toughbook CF-S10 is no longer in production and is only available in limited supply as a refurbished product. We recommend the following similar products: