Optimize - FZ-G1

How to optimize your Panasonic Toughpad FZ-G1

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 on your Panasonic Toughpad 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.

The RAM on a Toughpad is built into the motherboard and there are no additional RAM slots to add more RAM. Only the first generation (mk1) Toughpad FG-Z1 had an option to upgrade but that required a special order to obtain the maximum RAM available. All remaining generations (mk2 - mk5) utilized the maximum RAM capacity of the device.

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 Toughpad 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

The Panasonic Toughpad FZ-G1 already comes equipped with an ultra-fast M.2 Solid State Drive (SSD). Optimize the performance of your laptop by upgrading the capacity of your SSD to 500GB or more. The first three generations (mk1 - mk3) of the Toughpad FZ-G1 come equipped with only a 128GB M.2 SSD. After accounting for the recovery partition and utilities partition you lose about 10% of your storage space, not leaving you a lot to work with. Upgrading your SSD to a large capacity drive will allow you to maximize your storage space.

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.

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.