This WEIRD Japanese Laptop LOOKS 20 Years Old… - Panasonic SF-SV2
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- Опубліковано 9 чер 2024
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Are you a sucker for good laptop IO? Do you need every single port? Well turns out there's still devices out there with things like optical drives, full sized SD card readers, and VGA, while also having modern comforts like Thunderbolt 4. But...they're only available in Japan. Why does this market still exist in one place while being completely forgotten everywhere else?
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CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
1:40 Let's Note!
2:08 What is this thing?
3:04 Back in my day...
3:38 Our trackpads were circular
4:50 Japan: Florida of the East
6:42 Mourning our loss
7:43 What it lacks
8:40 Conclusion - Наука та технологія
The VGA port makes sense since it is unbelievable how many organizations use projectors with no concept of HDMI whatsoever.
it's because it's much cheaper to equip 100s of classes with long vga cables. Long hdmi cables tend to get really expensive for some reason.
and why do they care about upgrading when you're paying your kidney anyway
The only feature that really surprised me was optical drive. That takes up a lot of space in a laptop for a feature you don't see used that much anymore.
Last time I bought a laptop with one of those was in 2010.
Also a lot of those old vga projectors are way easier to service than new ones. And they keep to repair them
@@nousername191 *looks at his old DVD collection and whimpers* Thankfully i still got a PS4 :P
@@ridakesserwan8712 i think because vga is analog and basically can be made from scrap wire.
Loved this computer. The motto of this computer's design is literally "if it worked for 20 years it works"
yeah, I wish companies to keep making these 50 years later so we can say "this is how we used to get work done in our time boys"
Agree
my dell precisin dosent have one and its a workstation@@GetOffMyPhoneGoogle
Looking at you Apple 👀 where is my 3.5mm
Reliable, this laptop has futuristic design rather than those greenwasher companies making.
much more eco-friendly than what is sold on the big market now. lol
I comment as a Japanese person
This computer is mainly used for sales when going to customer sites instead of the office.
Its armor, which looks old, is made of aluminum and is made very rigid, making it very difficult to break if dropped.
This is why users who use this machine outside rather than in the office prefer to use it.
In addition, some older hotels in Japan (few of which exist these days) do not have Wi-Fi, but instead have wired LAN in each room.
(In some cases, wired LAN is more stable than Wi-Fi, so it is preferable.)
Also, to some extent, companies in Japan contract and use computers on a lease basis instead of purchasing them. Therefore, it is very convenient to be able to replace the battery yourself.
This old-looking computer is actually a supercomputer that is quite specialized for business for Japan.
honestly that early 2000s design is oddly beautiful, i wish more computers kept that old style instead of the bland minimalism we see today
Nahh, you not japanese
Only amaerican call alumunium aluminum
@@Maung14 Bro, the spelling doesn't change that way. At most it is one extra i. AlumInum vs AlumInIum.
@@Maung14 Wrong, Japanese people spell it the American way, just like everything else spelling wise
@@Maung14it can be both, because we cut it off to アルミ ↬ alumi.
I am a former Panasonic employee. The model of the laptop has not changed much from the past. Panasonic's laptops are very powerful, because the laptops are used in CNC machines where conditions are very oily and wet. Miraculously, the laptop still runs normally even though the laptop machine is full of oil and collent.Even though it's not a though book series. I've never seen a laptop with such power in any brand. 😁
Panasonic is one of my favorite companies. Pretty much everything they make is a stellar product.
No,I'm a former Schindler employee.
Japanese quality is different bro .
@@pikachuchujelly7628 My VHS video recorders are Panasonic. Unfortunately later models changed from the reliable die cast metal drives to flimsy sheetmetal trash like all other brands, those fall apart when winding tape a few times per day and crinkle tape when the chassis warps by e.g. resting the case on uneven surfaces or worn cassette has too much tension.
That port to blow out the heatsink dust is the most genius thing I've ever seen and I am now angry that it wasn't considered a standard QoL thing on all laptops for decades.
I've seen this on a Fujitsu and NEC laptops from Japan. It's infuriating that none of the western models have this.
They could put a tube chamber for as soc to blow out heat & dust.
It's really important
Have you seen the new graphene fan blower via some graphene threads vibrating in a chamber?
You're supposed to buy a new unit. The Japanese still have the old German respect for quality.
Reaching that fan chute in my IBM Thinkpad X61t is a nightmare. After dismantling the whole thing, I have cut off the metal tabs to make the cover easier to remove.
As a helpdesk guy, I've actually had to help out a few Japanese students who had this kind of laptop. It's always interesting whenever one pops up.
Thank u Japan 4 no chicket
It should be mentioned that Let's Note is designed with durability in mind. Indeed, it resists 100kgf. Would you know the importance of this specific value in Japan? It is, the maximum force measured on the Tokyu Denentoshi Line, known as one of the busiest rail lines in Japan.
Japanese 90s aesthetic > current days minimalist trends.
By far not boomer
So much of the modern stuff sucks.
"New bad old good"
Nah
This is so useful as an on the go maintenance machine. And the port to clean the exhaust is genius. That's usually ultra tedious to dismantle a machine just to remove a layer of felt that has formed.
Indeed! More manufacturers outside Japan oughtta learn from them.
@@LloydDunamis never happening.
They would prefer to add RGB in the battery before adding a useful feature.
@@elecman748 One can dream.
I mean, for one, Framework's now around and being successful in that jumpstart to push these unthinkables.
I work at a Japanese company and our bosses all had these, and the first time I saw it, I seriously thought it was just some old laptop they stubbornly refuse to replace...
...until I saw them charging with USB-C cables to some Anker power brick and running windows 11 more responsibly than my own current-gen laptop.
And when we were briefly assigned in Japan, pretty much everyone had these in the office. Something we never got to see before going there since our company would supply Dell laptops for those working elsewhere outside Japan
Those technology is prepared for many legacy format that are still commonly used in Japan. It adds so many weight but it helps them to avoid the hassle of bringing so many extra adapters.
The keyboard does make a lot of sense because it is made for Japanese people. Typewriting in Japanese can't be done like western style typing. They do not type whole words like we do. They have to use semi automatic completion where they type some kana and select the word or sentence that they want to be written. The keyboard is made for this. Also those notebooks are everywhere in Japan. Japan is known for keeping things that do work and they don't like to make big changes on such things. So that thing does look old but is exactly what they want and need. It is not only about the old democraphic of Japan. Don't change what does work.
Why Linus needs it, his Asian wife ?
You should ask framework to allow a circular trackpad like that as a modular upgrade
That would cost a lot of space, and destroy the structual integrity of the chassis
@@spiderpig1736 Or maybe a second hotswappable battery so you swap it out mid use without powering down.
Why would you ever want a smaller trackpad?
i guess video editors could be very interested in this.
@@spiderpig1736 Oh this so much. I lament the lack of supply of batteries for my P50s so much, or I'd have a second battery on me at all times
I lived in Japan for over 15 years from the early 2000s and this series was everywhere. It was also always pretty expensive. I don't think keeping the design and some of the features the same is due just to the aging society, though. It's kind of how things happen in Japan. Once there is something that works, then it's used forever and its hard to change. The government is still using floppy drives and it's not because they are scared to use USB drives or newer storage media. It's just because they've done it that way since they can remember, and it works, so they keep doing it, regardless of newer and more efficient options.
Aren’t capacities super small? Can’t imagine that being a realistic choice for many
Sounds like a healthy attitude to me tbh
You disagreed about it being because of age... but then literally gave a perfect example of why it's about age. If what worked for that generation is why they kept it, then as that generation aged then the product has to fit that generation aka it's about age.
@@mito-pb8qgNot really. In japan, once something became some sort of tradition in any kind of organization, it would almost a taboo to change it, no matter how inefficient it is
@@FriedHam In fairness it worked for Nintendo, but it also held them back in the eyes of game developers. No wonder why practically all of the best-selling games on Nintendo platforms are first-party mascot franchises.
This pc is sold in most universities in Japan. It seems like university co-op ties up with panasonic. Sometimes university's equipments only have old type of socket, or digital documents in the library are only available in CD or DVD, so it may help students to do their work in school.
It's actually bulky, but only Panasonic decided to trade off thickness for lightness. There's no other laptops around 1kg have plenty IO and long life batteries. Both are essential for business in Japan.
It's also for crushing resistance. Much of the bulk is empty space but it adds necessary compliance to prevent display and the entire laptop from getting nicked in the corners or bent in half.
That scrolling thing actually seems really really useful as scrolling is one of the most annoying things on a trackpad. Especially if you are trying to select text at the same time.
You can left click in a text where you want the selection to start then scroll as much as you want. Then press and hold shift and click where you want the selection to end.
Surely there is a program or so to add "circle to scroll" into any laptop.
Don't need a round TouchPad to do that.
Reminds me of how scrolling can work on Samsung smartwatches, easily one of my most favorite features of their watches. like my watch 5 pro, just run my finger around the edge of the watch face and scroll through whatever it is I'm doing and still see the stuff on the screen at the same time
Circular scrolling has been an option in Linux for something like 15 years, but it's been hidden away a long time. Just like edge scrolling is starting to be. Turns out when everybody just copies Apple, new customers to the market don't know there's an alternative to two finger scrolling.
I'm confidant that most scrolling is done with a mouse.
Let's note was always the premier domestic laptop for businessmen in Japan because of all the different ports it had and it's lightweight design. It was ungodly expensive, but made sense for business use. It also helped that other domestic competitors like NEC and Toshiba really dropped the ball in the 2000s, and it's only real competitor going into the 2010s were Thinkpads, and later, the X1 series. I used to work part-time at a Japanese company as a tech support, we did have a bunch of Let's Notes, but we eventually shifted to X1 Carbons as we no longer really needed the extra drives like the optical drives, and was much more cost effective. The current models still are great, but not many people can justify its price, even for business use. Their sister series, the Toughbooks, are still a great choice for extreme environments.
The western people need to stop on the "thin" craze and learn from them on the port availability. Dongles are dumb, admit it. Forget a ethernet dongle and you're screwed. I do wish we can choose the kind of ports on the device, that's the best. Might not need a VGA port, or do, or need a USB C port and so on. The DVD drive... Might be useful? But isn't Blu-ray catching up?
Toughbooks are awesome. I was a platoon leader as a conscript and my computer (the NCO in charge of calculating mortar trajectories and stuff) was always treating our Toughbook like shit and it never died on us in the field. Those things are built better than tanks.
Battery life was occasionally an issue, since it needs to be on all the time. The last reserve exercise I was on, our generator died and even with all the battery redundancy it caused so much extra work.
@@bluecherrysakura I agree idk where this thin obsession came from, like sure it's nice to have a light laptop but to make it so thin that it harms the actual functionality of the fucking device, such as losing ports, worse cooling (or none at all!), being easier to break, and being unable to repair it yourself, is stupid
@@bluecherrysakura physical media are disappearing from the life of an average user. Although I personally agree that overreliance on dongles is dumb, it seems like most people who buy laptops are alright with it.
@@proCaylak Lack of long lasting physical media is a crime against the human right of culture preservation. We need recordright, not copyright.
This kind of laptop is being used by one of the Japanese professors in our lab. I was stunned when I first saw it. Thank you for making this video!
I liked laptops better when they actually had ports and you didn't have to manage so many dongles. Good on this model keeping up the practical design.
well, there are some still being made. I recently bought myself a GPD Win Max 2, and it's packed with ports despite being very small.
I love it when they release modern stuff which looks like old hardware, extremely cool!
I recently bought an older Dell Precision M6700, and holy HELL, it's a nice laptop. You can even swap out the GPU in it. Yes, the GPU. The only problem with it is that it's heavy as shit. Full metal chassis with an incredibly beefy cooling solution along within it. It's a very big boi. But considering its incredible repairability, reliability, color-accurate screen, massive breadth of features, insanely good hardware and software backwards compatibility, and its (relatively) blistering performance considering its age... Worth it.
It saves me from having to gut relics and shove new tech in them
Just like 15yr old phones and pdas?
casio watches got you.
@@arnox4554 > The only problem with it is that it's heavy as shit.
3,74kg, or 8lbs 4oz - that's a proper mid 2010s 17" chonker.
A most iconic example of “don’t let innovation get in the way of productivity”. Newer features don’t always translate to better productivity, compatibility, or even usability when there are other “legacy” systems to interface with.
if innovation gets in the way of productivity, that's not innovation, that's marketing.
Totally agree. It is tested and proven reliability of a feature almost always preferred over any new, flashy feature in workplaces. Life the RJ45. Of course Wifi is great, but it is definitely slower and less stable than a connected LAN. If someone ever gets angry because of a small lag in your game over wifi, imagine how irate that same person would be with an unstable wifi when he is required to work online with a squeezing deadline.
Reminds me of the User Experience Course.
Making overpriced unserviceable trash is the opposite of innovation.
In light of recent events:
Don't let innovation get in the way of SAFETY.
Just started watching and I have one of these labeled as a tough book. Slightly diff model and old but I love it as an emulation station and writing tool. Always wanted to try and run it over with a car to see how tough it was. Had it for like 10 years or so.
I kinda like this laptop. It used to be normal but now it's cool today to have many reliable ports and user-end replaceable battery. I want the US keyboard version, though (Thanks to this video, I learned they also sell the replaceable keyboard and it's fairly easy to replace)
I had a Dell years ago where you could just remove the optical drive and put either a floppy drive, another hard drive, or another battery in that slot. That was amazing.
Still have a Latitude E6420 that does that. Better built than any modern laptop I've seen.
I've got a Lenovo where you can remove the optical drive and put in a GPU! Coolest thing ever. IdeaPad Y510p.
Dell C510/C610 had that -- one of the most serviceable laptops I ever worked on. Panel for RAM, panel for HDD, battery bay and battery/accessory bay, which had a CD, DVD, floppy option... I miss those days when you had so many options. I hope Framework comes out with things along that line
I member. Some Dell Lattitude, some with Pentium 2's and one of mine had a Pentium 3 800Mhz with a 1024x768 14"WXGA screen
Dell Latitude D610. I had the spare battery in mine, made it last through an entire school day and the bus ride home. I recently tried to order a hard drive caddy for an experiment, but they accidentally sent another dvd drive lol.
Absolutely thrilled that you took a look at this laptop because I’m not exaggerating when I say that you see them everywhere in Japan. Office workers, students, teachers, these are usually the people using them and it took me a little while to figure out that they make modern versions of them instead of people clinging onto antiquated tech for some reason lol
Well, you might consider a 4 core 11th gen CPU to be antiquated...
... but that's largely because it was antiquated the day it was released.
@@danieloberhofer9035 it's fine for what i would do with this sort of laptop.
@@danieloberhofer9035the 11657 is a great tigerlake cpu and is still viable for thin and lights laptops. My work laptop has that chip and it's pretty snappy.
@@danieloberhofer9035 Current models right now are 13th gen, Linus just got the old one.
@@danieloberhofer9035 eh it's probably better than the i3-4130 I'm using in my desktop PC right now
This reminds me of the first laptop I ever had, I love it! I miss having ports, I miss the DVD drive and I miss having physical buttons on the trackpad.
The design in most of the Panasonic ToughBooks haven't really changed. I like these because of there durability and also they tend to have very good battery life over regular laptops. The only downside is the weight carrying a ToughBook around all day isn't very practical like the CF-19 & CF-31 I've been opting to get something like a Panasonic CF-C1 or C2 as they look much lighter which offer good durability.
Japan still has some of the coolest gadgets. I remember a laptop that had a glass touchpad and it had a screen under it that had an interactive cat follow your finger around. This was in 2011 iirc
Asus also has laptops with screens as trackpad.
@@malo6748 Yeah, but way after 2011. Just shows the interesting dynamic of how Japanese companies are innovative, yet still release new things that have “died” elsewhere
@@thisistimmywasn't there like a 4k CRT monitor in Japan a decade ago or so??
I remember this from the time I was using my old Viewsonic G220F.
this is one of japan's best strengths. they have been pivotal in terms of industrial and technological innovation, pioneering so many things we now all take for granted. though they also have their own unique culture around how they use consumer electronics that is special to them and that's cool. like there's a lot of things that get everyday use there we would think is strange over here, particularly with handheld devices
@@CodexSan iirc that was the Sony GDM-FW900, and it's available worldwide. It was released around 2002, not 2012
This made me instantly want a retro, silver laptop like this... There's a certain charm to them
Yea their design is reminiscent of the old Japanese drifting cars haha I love it
I like the design of early-late 2000s laptops way more than practically anything else on the market today. Each one had cool unique designs, and now pretty much all laptops are boring slabs with a logo on them, the only exception being some gaming laptops
Reminds me a bit of my Fujitsu LifeBook T4215. Sadly the keyboard is yellowed and the battery is so dead that the laptop freezes if the battery is in, and the wacom digitizer doesn't work anymore (probably a broken cable or loose connection)
I still like these rugged looking laptops though I prefer them black. So basically Thinkpads.
I hate this shift to thinner and lighter... give me THICC and 7 month battery life
I love it!! I miss DVD so much. I miss 2000s-early 2010s Laptops. Vaio was my fav, had a pink and a blue one!
Im a sucker for PORTS and DRIVES and a nice thick laptop so i would love a USA version of this laptop! and as i dabble in vintage tech, the DVD drive and VGA port could be of significant use to me!
I already know this is gonna be interesting after seeing some of the janky setups from Japan
Yup
I agree
By janky you mean amazing. China and Japan are not the same country.
@@EnlightenedSavageit's janky not junky
@@EnlightenedSavageJanky ≠ junky. Junky is trash. Janky is, in this context, "looks kinda hacked together, but it works so cool I guess."
I work for a Japanese company and I've seen these with some of the staff that have come from overseas. The previous models had a small door that opened for CD/DVD's and you slid the disc down under the keyboard rather than a tray coming out for them. At any rate, always found these interesting.
Very popular design and I thought it was neat as well
Yup, just pull the slider and the right side of palmrest pops open revealing the optical drive beneath, had a CF-SX3 with such feature, and that was a freaking thin and light 12" laptop.
I've also taken it apart for some maintenance (repaste the CPU and access the second memory slot, since only one slot is accessible through the memory cover) and they really had some clever ways to cram lots of components and features (particularly the optical drive and the door opening mechanism) in very little space.
01:49 1998 Japanese businessmen using dialup connection over cellular network on laptop! No wi-fi back then!
Can confirm, Let's Note keyboard is on mushy side. I've heard it's a design choice to minimize typing noise for press conferences and important meetings. At least they don't do 4GB onboard RAM anymore to prioritize battery(power draw of DDR RAM is proportionate to capacity rather than module count)
One thing you didn't point out is DVD renting in Japan is still a big thing and very cheap, that's why they include DVD drives.
true, one of the most unbelievable fact there
It feels like Japan is still living the 2000s and I don't mean that as a bad thing
It's kinda ridiculous how it's getting less popular in the west... given a choice between DVD rental and something worthless like Netflix... the choice is clear... DVDs are the way to go.
@@mallmann72 2000 tech thing is the most amazing thing, while today tech is improving but its limit what user does, I like my bulkies ThinkPad more than my x1 carbon
I don't know why non-Japanese people talk about Japan as if they know what they're talking about, but as a Japanese person I can tell you that DVD rental has already been unpopular in Japan for several years and is far from being a "big thing". It's just that in Japan, compared to the West, there's still a certain demand for physical CDs and DVDs that needs to be met.
I always noticed that a lot of electronics from Japan seem almost... shifted in time in terms of aesthetic. I never knew it was due to age demographic thing though. I thought it was more of a "fads move in cycles" kind of thing.
Japan is generally speaking far behind with technology. In most places you cannot pay with contactless payment, even with a credit card not to mention NFC.
Japanese are traditionalists and that also applies to technology. I think big part of population still uses hinged phones
@@olotocolothe contactless payment is not entirely true. Japan has been pushing their IC transport cards heavily as a payment method, both in transit and regular payment. Most convenient stores and restaurants can use IC cards to pay, not to mention the numerous QR based payments options available.
@@bryan.w.t Seems kinda ridiculous. Why not just use credit cards that work everywhere?
@@NavinF credit cards have never worked everywhere in Japan - so this filled a vacuum. Japan has been a cash society for ever - even though ATM's stop working on Sunday nights. But contactless payment is amazing - you can use your watch/phone to get on a train, or buy a drink from the vending machine, or buy something at the conbini. Much more convenient than credit card.
@@zoeherriot I *am* talking about contactless payments lol. In the US everyone adds their credit cards to their phone/watch and taps the terminal with the device. Also don't you still need credit cards for online purchases?
very practical design, I'd love to have one.
We need more laptops like this. As far as the ports are concerned.
Who you call we ? Asians ?
The Let's Note was sold as a TOUGH laptop. Panasonic once advertised it that it was able to withstand 100kg of pressure in a super crowded Japanese rush hour metro while most other computers couldn't withstand 50kg of pressure. The Let's Note also has a sister brand called "TOUGHBOOK" which is basically Let's Notes buffed up to MIL-STD (U.S. Military standards) and they are used by the US Army, Japanese Army and so on... They are also known to be installed in US police cars too.
It's just nice to have older IO with better specs. very nice
I extremely love classic design electronics products and automobiles
Laptops like that with the same specs and DVD drives are still sold on amazon but not necessarily with swappable batteries.
Best example of "if its not broken, don't fix it" and "don't mess with the winning formula"
I know, violating that principle is what ruins so many good products. Point in case Microsoft Windows
@@davetech1269 Windows has never been good.
It's had good features, that sometimes Microsoft steals from us ('never combine' windows 11 springs to mind), but you can't go and tell me you think windows 1.0 is better than 10 or 11, that's just plain old smoothbrain talk.
I went to a trade convention in Japan and saw SO MANY OF THESE!! I was so confused like why does everyone have these old laptops? It's good to know they aren't actually old!
If it's not broken, don't fix it, upgrade it instead.
@verifeli those are brand new laptops. If you mean to upgrade the inner components, but keep the chassis the same, you are right. Otherwise you are wrong.
Whats with matte screen? I love it, it reduces so many light glares. Especially in well lit environment. I hope many manufacturers do it.
this is a proper laptop no giving up type a for type c and keeping everything needed
These laptops are not only used by IT companies but virtually every mid to large sized company with mobile service. They have options to add 4G modems for connectivity anywhere. What Linus didn't mention was that when these companies upgrade the laptops, they sell them in bulk to second hand electronics shops here in Japan or auction websites. You can pick one up for relatively cheap, and they are everywhere. I'm currently using an Ivy bridge model with extra long life battery and 8GB of upgradeable RAM (I guess they took that away in the new ones)
Lol they are definitely all over every secondhand shop, I just mentioned this in another comment. It is honestly crazy how many of them are floating around out there!
The heatsink cleaning access port is legit. So many of my friend's laptops that i've "fixed" were just clogged with dust, hair, lint, etc. Also the optical drive hit me in the feels recently too. I made a new pc case, and when I was transferring over components I realized I had a drdr drive in my old case. I just couldn't throw it out. I put it in the new case because I MAY need it in the future, ignoring the fact that I havent needed it for the last decade...
My friend had a laptop that he said kept “shutting off” every 10 minutes. So I opened it up and damn near pulled a sock worth of lint out of the fan. I told him to stop setting it on his bed or floor, or at least set it on something solid and flat like a book if he wanted to set it on his bed.
I could definitely see myself buying these for fields techs working on older equipment. As for what happened to laptops with replacement components, they were killed by tech reviewers whining about the bezels and thickness, putting pressure on manufacturers to capitulate.
I am working on this laptop and I love it !!! Light and sturdy tbh, rigid and tough build, I drop it multiple time without being worried about it
Laptops like this are actually everywhere in Japan. I just assumed people were still using like 10 year old laptops. I had no idea they were brand new
also factor of japan is they live in smaller buildings mostly hence why laptop is more liked then say custom bigger pc with big tower etc as to save space they have.
japanese live in a bubble of their own
@@ravenspurplebeats5412 Even when it comes to gaming, there is a very strong preference of consoles and especially handhelds, over PCs. Size definitely plays a part.
I had the older generation of this when I was a field engineer for Panasonic. I always loved it. The previous generation had an integrated handle that made it incredibly convenient.
Recently picked up a laptop off the sid eof the road. It was perfect despite not having a harddrive installed. Got tiny 11 on it and it runs very good for being 12 years old.
I love the scrolling feature on the touchpad, I hate doing it the normal way without a mouse
The Let's Note series was specifically designed for businessmen to use while traveling, particularly on the train. I still see guys on the Yamanote Line in Tokyo using these. They're extremely light and have insane battery life, although they do charge very slowly. My daily work PC is a older Let's Note CF-SZ6 that I bought for $200. I installed Arch Linux and i3wm and it runs like a dream. I still use it for presentations, documents, Zoom meetings, and so on.
Hello fellow laptop connoisseur! CF-RZ4 here, I love that little thing with Arch/Gnome
I’m happy to know Arch runs well because I intend to install it on one of these.
We always think of Japan as being high tech but they also have a tendency to follow established processes without deviating, to a fault sometimes. Japanese businesses and especially the government have historically had an obsession with hard copy files and physical media like floppy and optical disks. I can’t imagine having to do IT there but laptops like these would probably help a lot in bridging the gap.
They still love their flip phones.
Those obsessions are there for good reason
@@BrettHoTeplol not any more. Even old people have switched to smartphones.
Honestly? Owning local backups is a good idea. You shouldn't put your trust in third parties and many failure points when you can just not. That said, stuff like sticking hard to Internet Explorer and ActiveX until forced to switch is simply dumb.
I think the government is finally softening on floppy disks (subbed to too many Japan based channels to remember which one said it), but fax still seems to be in it for the long haul😅. I guess this stuff won't change unless they crack the demographic collapse through babies or more open borders, both things they struggle heavily with 🤷🏾♂️
Having lived and worked in Japan, a significant portion of this country is still stuck in the 90's. It's only been a recent phenomenon where establishments accept credit cards and digital forms of payments. I'm not surprised one bit.
Sounds great. The 2020s suck.
Japan is an aging society, so it's not surprising that these notebooks are probably designed for the elderly.
Optical drives are one of those things I never have when I need it or always have when I don't.
To this day every PC I build must have an optical drive, and therefore every case I get must have the ability to install one. To me it’s a staple of the PC. My current build I finally got a BluRay drive and then realized just how much DRM bullshittery has gone into making it not worth it at all. At least I can rip the discs.
@@TH3C001Even with DRM I've "owned" movies that aren't on Amazon anymore and it has happened with steam games too.
If I want a movie bad enough to pay for it but not bad enough to risk getting a low quality version I'll buy the blu ray.
Not to mention I still live somewhere the internet goes out.
Their 750g CF-RZ series is also very popular in Japan. Mostly used in academic and large companies.
Makes sense why large companies would want a laptop with all the old features, as for most companies their hardware is not very modern.
The swappable battery feature is really useful!
LOVE THE DESIGN!
Half my life is in Japan, and I carried a Let's Note for about a decade. It was a delight in every way. Super solid and reliable. Only wish the line evolved. Japan has always offered a greater variety of notebook form factors than are available to us in the West. It's not so much about focusing on an older population, Japanese business is simply more consumer focused in general.
evolving means destroying reliability. If a design works dont effing fix it.
If they evolved to modern times theyd probably just remove a bunch of ports and build the whole thing out of glass
@@snintendog By evolving I mean things like sacrificing a wee bit of portability for a better/larger display, keyboard, that sort of thing. This could have happened without affecting reliability.
@@snintendogit's not even fixing thimgs..
It's changing a design for advertising etc...
It doesn't help the consumers at all..
One of the biggest complaints I get now is people demanding for me to change their apps back to what they bought/used for years..
To many companies fully change the gui of apps today just becsue while ignoring the customers..
@@zakofrx Fortunately that has stagnated a bit, at least on android. Now microsoft just really need to get their act together, and stop fuzzing about, and employ a bunch of people to bring back a modern version of File - Edit - View again. Vertical menues and nonsense just doesnt make sense. Just look at the mess with settings in windows and ... menu in Edge. Its completely useless
I would unironically love to bring back aesthetics from that era for tech in general just with modern tech inside. An early 2000's inspired smartphone design, these kinds of laptops, a smart TV, VR headset, headphones, gaming peripherals, everything
Early 2000s smartphone w a 3 inch screen sound terrible lmao
@@shyguy4617 Large screen, old style. Sorted.
@@shyguy4617 Its not. These new glass slabs are awful. They take up way too much space, they're hard to type on, and they're easy to break. If I wanted a big screen I'd get a tablet. The BlackBerry was the perfect smartphone. Great software suite, trackball and keyboard so you didn't have to bother with touch controls, no ads, a screen big enough for productivity, but small enough to be easily pocketable.
I am using refurbished Fujitsu from Japan, that still have a lot of old features too such VGA, DVD, 4 USB ports, Ethernet Port.. Only the processor is i5 4th gen.
Even without the optical drive, I'd still love to get my hands on one of these used as work laptop.
Circular scrolling is supported in most trackpad hardware, I believe. It's usually called "Circular scrolling" or "Chiral Scrolling". There are tons of instructions on the Internet about how to enable it.
Interesting.. I've used a Di Novo edge for quite awhile so I've been used to circular scrolling but I didn't know about using it on other trackpads. Will have to look into this!
Totally right! I had an old Toshiba Satellite with a Synaptics touchpad and I could use chiral scroll activating it from the driver's settings
Those with Linux may try it right now: "synclient CircularScrolling=1"
Yaaay for Panasonic! They built the 'ToughBooks' for LEA for years, and it's good to see they retained the things that people actually use on a regular basis. I could care less if it actually weighs 4 or 5 lbs. Functionality is king!😍👍
Had a ToughBook back in the day and damn that thing was built like a tank. Not even 4 years of high school and 1st 2 years of college could break it. I miss it big time
I use toughbooks on a daily basis. They're big and bulky but I've never had one stop working. They just work. You're not gaming on them and the programs we run are generally very low resource, but these things get the absolute crap beat out of them, especially the ones on the ambulances. Oh and they're absolutely horrible to type on. Don't plan on writing any essays. But the ones we use the keyboard is usually the rubber "water resistant" version , so I can't really criticize. You can always use your own BT one and the docks in the station/offices have much better keyboards for writing reports. We mostly have CF-19's and CF-31's, with a few CF-53's and G2's here and there. We have 3 CF-40s for the deputies and chief. I personally use a CF-53 for my side job and used a CF-19 before that, which continues to work despite a giant gash in the metalized screen housing. I threw a true SSD in the 19 and 53 over the ruggedized HDD and maxed out RAM and they're pretty much as fast as the more recent offerings. You can pick up a 19 or 53 for $200 to $500 on ebay. The sites offering "refurbished" ones are a complete rip off, stay away. I got my 53 for around $300 since it had no OS installed. My 19 was about $250.
*Couldn't care less
I almost bought one of these before I started my PhD here in Japan... went for an XPS 15 instead. But the fact that they make these completely in Osaka was a huge draw. Nice to see things that aren't outsourced.
Matt screens are great. They're even making a comeback. My Zephyrus M16 has one, and it looks fantastic.
I have been using this model when I was in Japan. And it's the most practical laptop and travel-friendly I've ever used because of its weight. As an office worker in marketing and sales, you have to go to multiple places everyday. It's easy to store inside even normal work (woman's!) tote bag and you can type in if you need to response to email inside train stations or any nearest spots. I have moved on from this laptop because my country doesn't have this kind of laptop anymore, but I would have bought buy this again plainly because of its weight and compact design.
I guess its a japanese thinkpad lol.
Thinkpads are a goated laptop. I love them to an insane degree.
@@honkhonk8009 Sadly they deteriorated in quality and reliability. Newer thinkpads are so fragile it hurts.
Also the VGA port and DVD drive is for sure for officework and presentations, the latter in case some old archive data in your office is stored in DVDs, and the former in the case where your office doesn't offer HDMI cables for the projector.
@@honkhonk8009 Original Thinkpads were designed in Japan you know
They really outcompeted ThinkPad, I think. Panasonic AC is 100% compatible with old IBM, it's the same 16V round barrel. If you knew old T and X Series ThinkPads it's really Chevy Volt vs Toyota Prius kinds of differences.
I can pick up the actual 2002 models at the pawn shops here in Taipei. Love the circular trackpad.
The circular trackpad makes so much sense, at least to me. My trackpad's wear over the few years of use has a near-perfect circular pattern to it.
Why am I having such a hard dejavu
Who would want something from 2002?
@@Ikxiwhy
@@52_Ronin why?
This is what the Framework should have been.
agreed
No point of bringing back the right to repair of old if it's just another hideous "modern" design macbook copy
@@btw4447 after reading your comment I finally realized the reason why Framework doesn't appeal to me despite it's huge marketing push for "right to repair" when it just turns into a modular macbook
My first laptop was a Latitude E6440 and I loved it: good cooling, many IOs, you could replace the SSD without disassembling it, battery and the keyboard were removable... I was so sad when it broke and they replaced it with another model.
I love older laptops designs
You like it slow !
I miss Panasonic electronics here in the states. They pulled out of a lot of markets here, like TV's. So hard to find their stuff and my family has been really brand loyal to them for years. My family still has a Panasonic Microwave and have used them for a VERY long time, and the last a very long time too. I miss seeing their name everywhere.
They sell their batteries at Dollar Tree, but beyond that I don't see them anymore
I've got a Panasonic shaver and bicycle, I agree they make great products.
@LordVarkson I got a Panasonic turntable/tape deck combo with speakers at a yard sale for $5 and it works great
Panasonic makes some of the best OLED TVs. They are still sold here in Europe but they are quite expensive
they make EV batteries
Framework uses matte screen as default on their news PCs. I concider that a big plus. Not everyone like glossy screens. I would even love if all smartphones came with a matte screen as an option.
I used to stick matte film on my smartphone 😂 sadly it doesn't give the same clarity as having an actual matte finish screen.
I hate glossy screens. Except my phone and tv, all other screens are matte. My two laptops and my two displays connected to my desktop are matte.
Don't know who likes glossy screens, maybe some people are just too attached to the reflection of their face?
@@az8560 glossy screens let colors shine more, hence why most modern TVs and all Smartphones use them.
But for Laptops I agree that glossy screens are absolutely stupid since you pretty much always look on the screen from above and have it at an upwards angle that's perfect to reflect the lights from the ceiling into your face.
The only advantage I see in glossy screens is how they seem to help colours pop more. Otherwise out in the real world matte is where it's at.
I would love to have such laptop! I can open my old files via SD card reader, CD ROM and I don’t need to use a converter for VGA port to HDMI. Such an ease!
omg. all my japanese customers were using this pc when i met them last month! I was so puzzled by this design. thanks for the video!
I've been using a Panasonic Let's Note SZ for the past couple of years since importing it from Japan, and I can confidently say its one of the best laptops I have ever used. The circular trackpad and build quality are excellent. I'm actually quite tempted to go through the trouble of importing one of the new models. So happy you got a chance to look at one of these!
As someone who works in Japan I can say the optical drive makes a lot of sense. There are a few facilities I have been in that prohibit data to go in/out unless it's on optical media. I once I had to go to the convenience store and buy a DVD so I could get the data from a DUT in a test facility.
Used this bad boy in my college and it got the jobs done really well. I like how robust and light weight it is.
That initial sponsor segway was very clean, glad to see a return to form for the final one lol
The swapability really is a treasure these days, I remember some of the relatively recent Thinkpad P-series models having a covered compartment in the bottom panel that allows you to replace RAM sticks without unscrewing the whole bottom, pretty cool. Easily replaceable keyboards and screen panels as well.
I remember a website that sold products directly from Akihabara that had laptops that looked exactly like this and, sure enough, this was back in 2004. At the time I thought they were neat looking, at least. That said while we think of Japan when it comes to leading technology they also hang onto stuff the longest due to an older population refusing to move forward. Faxes are still incredibly popular for use in invoicing business to business over email, for example.
It isn't "moving forward"
A LOT of so called "upgrades" aren't upgrades at all and if anything are steps back in the wrong direction. We peaked hardware wise back in 2005 and the assertion that it isn't the case shows how much you've willingly given up and even worse FORGOTTEN about the old world
@@victorkreig6089We didn't peak in 2005, what the hell are you talking about. By that definition, Germany peaked in technology because they still stick to literal mail services for a lot of things according to you, yeah it works but is it a superior technology?
@@victorkreig6089 that's so incredibly wrong.
USB-C, good displays (that can be viewed from more than one angle and also when the sun is shining), widespread use of SSDs, just overall responsiveness and speed of machines. Should I go on?
god the faxes. I had to update our bank routing info with a Japanese customer this year (2023). They demanded I fax the info to them, even though I've only ever communicated with the same person in Japan for 10 years via e-mail. Anyways after lots of screwing around, we still have a fax machine too, I just said screw it. I threw in a signed copy of the updated info into their next shipment box and mailed it to them.
@@Jehty_ please do I want to see how far you can push your head up your own backside before you run out of redundant things to say.
The fact you're even attempting to refute what I said shows you don't understand my point at all
I have a lot of CDs and do a lot music transferring and stuff. Having a laptop that can read discs, rip them and put everything on an SD card is pretty awesome.
I’ve seen these at work when folks show up to do presentations, I assumed it was ancient. Thanks for this one.
This looks like a network technician's dream, having a lot of ports they can use for their work, and be able to used in a cramped space, standing next to the network rack, occasionally holding the laptop on one hand and typing and using the interface with the other hand and not having to deal with all those dongles.
I work for a Japanese company and use one of these bad boys every day! It was feeling ridiculous to use due to the design at first, but it actually works great with incredible battery life and way less bugs and crashes than the desktop PC I use at the same company. It can also handle a fair bit of tossing around
Reminds me of my Sager laptops of the late 90s early 00s with all I/O connectors available at this time plus muitiple hot swappable bays: cd-rom, floppy, hard-disk, ls-120, zip drive, cards and battery...
FTR, there's not much need for a swappable battery anymore with USB Power Delivery that can supply 65W and above. The only thing that may trouble you is the fact that a locked in internal battery can go flat.
But with PD, you buy one of those power banks that can supply 65W and above and you get additional hours without needing to change your battery. It does take up your Type C port, but most of the power banks I have come across are less cumbersome than the EeePC's battery, which is already the smallest laptop battery I'm aware of.
I was worried people would say "Japan is outdated" again, but I'm glad to share the pleasure of having so many IOs and not needing to carry around adapters.
To be fair though, Japan IS outdated. Hell, even their population is outdated XD.
Yes IO is great, but frankly who the hell still needs an optical disc drive. usb sticks are smaller and have much more capacity.. or better yet, if we're talking business environments, why isn't all your stuff on the network?! There's no valid reason to require optical discs in a business environment unless your business has shit IT infrastructure.
Also, I can't take a country seriously that believes Faxing stuff is still an acceptable thing to do.
They still use floopy disk and FAX machine, so yeah Japan IS outdated.
Does Japan still use floppies and FAX?
@@oys9420 FAX? i think they do, they aren't that bad anyway. (this is probably because we still use effton of analog papers to do... things which i think it could be just pdf and stuff, so fax kinda makes sense for our culture)
floppies? most pc won't read it in first place. if there's still places that uses it, they are probably running windows 98 as well... and last "old" pc i saw was a windows xp machine only connected to local network in clinic.
@@justinlzy floppy ?? No.
The access hatch to blow out the dust in the heat sync makes so much sense, why isn't it so much more common.
Might need to find one of these considering the VGA port. Trying to get 240p out of a modern GPU is hell.
Replaceable batteries, optical drive, connectivity, good aspect ration on the screen. I already like it 😁
Aaaaaaaand, it's discontinued in it's home market. It's like capitalism was organized around the enshittification of products and services that find an audience.
@@wyw876 Eh, you still get everything except the optical drive (which to be fair, actually takes up quite a lot of space) on the SR series, which is the de facto successor of this model.
Apple solders battery in? It's a feature!
It's crazy how fast your production is getting better!
I never thought it would be possible to fall in love with a computer...
I'm surprised it doesn't have a floppy disk slot. I do miss that swappable external battery though. Why did they do away with that? It's such a useful feature.
This is the same idea behind the Lenovo Thinkpads. The basic design did not change until very recently. Everything just works. Parts last a long time and if you need to upgrade, the design makes all parts easily accessible compared to those thin laptops where everything is soldered to the board.
They still make the T14/T15 aimed at government buyers. It's hard to find it even on their government/education site, but it still soldiers on largely unchanged.
They sell an enormous number as well every year, so used models are quite inexpensive.
And pretty much everyone agrees that the Lenovo "innovations" are almost all for the worse. My x240 is still up and running in highly modified form as a Hackintosh, but the idiotic decisions Lenovo made (whitelists, can't swap certain components without throwing the machine into an unfixable TPM locked state, etc.) make it much less useful and repair-hostile.
@@MistahMatzah That is true. We had no end of issues with their touchscreen models, their Yogas and Carbons and so on. The older ones were the exception, though. A little fiddling, but easy to bulk image and swap SSDs and memory around. It really is the T14/T15 that is the archaic holdout. Though, IMO, just get a used 580/590 as those were even simpler and built like a brick. You can get used ones for next to nothing as well.
I do not mind my Lenovo t580 looks like the old versions. But why are teething issues not fixed? The outside of the screen is still a weird plastic which is uncleanable. My moist fingers make the sides really dirty. Also the hinges are not tight enough. So my screen regularly falls to a side.
@@josephoberlanderthe t14/15 isn't really comparable to the T420, T440, or even the T480