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The case is advertised as entirely made of a magnesium alloy, and that alloy is some very sturdy stuff. I did not go gently on this machine over the three weeks used for this evaluation, as will be revealed in my tests of the other "Tough" aspects of the T4, but the case received my toughest (pardon the pun) scrutiny. I repeatedly dropped the machine from a height of about 2.5 feet, my guess of the average height the computer would be from the floor when pinched in a person's hand like a paperback novel. Despite being dropped from this height twice each onto a hardwood floor, pile carpet, tile, a concrete sidewalk, rough parking lot asphalt, and once on the nasty industrial carpeting at my law school (the only accidental drop of the bunch), the T4 still works flawlessly and shows no marks. There's a small black dot on the cover that was there when I received the computer, perhaps from a previous user's carelessness with a Sharpie pen, but otherwise the computer could pass for brand new. With all that said about dropping the T4 more often over the course of three weeks than most of us would drop our computers over a lifetime, it goes without saying that stuffing the T4 loose in a bag full of case books and other odds and ends, including the T4's pointy-plugged power brick, had no effect. What would amount to abuse with any consumer notebook doesn't shake the Toughbook at all. The all-alloy claim does give me a slight pause, though. The chassis may be entirely made of magnesium alloy, but there are still some vulnerable places on the closed notebook. The battery is not encased in alloy, but plastic. The covers for the RAM compartment and HD compartment are also plastic. I didn't want to owe somebody a bunch of money, so I didn't test this theory, but I would guess a drop onto a hard corner, such as a desk corner or a rock on the aforementioned sidewalk or parking lot, would do some serious damage to these plastic pieces. It is only "semi-rugged" and not part of the ber-rugged line, so an impact like that seems like an unlikely freak accident. The cost of enshrouding the battery in metal might be too high, but I'd like to see the plastic covers for the RAM and HD compartments replaced with magnesium alloy plates. On a premium-priced notebook, such cost-cutting measures seem incongruous.

 

Many notebook screens bear the marks of their keyboards. The T4 won't have this problem for a couple of reasons. First, there is a protective film on the screen, but not even the film will ever end up touching the keys. Around the edges of the screen, Panasonic has placed nice thick rubber pads to hold the screen off of the rest of the chassis. You're not going to mar the screen on the keyboard by stacking books on top of the T4, either; the case is just too sturdy. "How sturdy?" Panasonic rates the computer up to 100 kg. That's about 220 pounds at sea level, and that's a lot of weight to put on top of your computer. I weigh about 180, and you're not going to catch me standing on my computer very often! I pressed on the back of the screen with all my might and couldn't cause a ripple -- not surprising, given how thick the lid is. There is above-average space between the cover and the screen, so you would have to push that tough magnesium alloy in pretty far to come close to the back of the screen. The hinges are metal and rock-solid. Since it is a Toughbook, I even did a test that shouldn't be done on any powered-on LCD. I grabbed the top corners and pushed them, hard, in opposite directions. Not even this torture caused ripples, but it did cause noticeable distortion while the screen was bent. After I released the corners, though, the screen sprang back into shape and appeared perfectly happy to go about our business. And speaking of the screen...

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Panasonic's Toughbooks have a reputation for notoriously dim screens. I have heard several people say that the dim screen was the deal-breaker for previous models -- the dark, near-useless screen decided them against a Toughbook when all the other features fit their needs to a "T". Personally, I believe that Panasonic made a huge mistake and only hired engineers, product testers, and quality-assurance workers with extremely light sensitive eyes. My television is also a Panasonic, and it barely goes up to "bright enough" for me, where every other HD TV I've seen can be adjusted to a brightness akin to a solar flare.