Panasonic Unveils Let’s Note SV7: 12.1-Inch, Quad-Core CPU, TB3, ODD, 21 Hrs, 2.4 Lbs

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• PeachNCream - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link

  "User preferences are different in Japan, which is why Panasonic still offers 12”-class laptops with optical drives, thick replaceable batteries and plenty of connectors."
  
  I have to agree with the Japanese market on laptop preferences. I'd be okay with a roughly 12 inch screen laptop that has better cooling and an easily replaced battery that was a 1 to 1.5 inches thick in order to handle those additional capabilities. Some might balk at the price, but that's fairly reasonable for the Japanese economy with its relatively high cost of living.

• PixyMisa - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link

  Chunky lil' nugget.
  
  Looks like designers from 2002 got their hands on components from 2018. Not bad, but certainly different.

• IGTrading - Wednesday, February 14, 2018 - link

  I love these!
  
  These are very reliable & truly productive tools.
  
  I'm not a wimp :) so I can carry 1 Kilo of extreme high-quality/productivity/performance laptop.
  
  The ODD is sooooo useful for quick reliable backups when information is sensitive and you don't want to keep it online or on the laptop (that can be hacked and info gets accessed before you realize) and you don't want to keep all in one place like a portable HDD which is easily stolen, copied, broken.
  
  Often the "thin" laptop and the external ODD are heavier than this integrated solution so why not the f*ck integrate them ?!
  
  Also the ODD can be made swap-able with an extra battery or a HDD/SSD bay.
  
  It makes no sense to not integrate ODDs in laptops unless you're shooting for extreme lightness and thinness, but unfortunately now MOST laptops come without, while the price is higher despite lesser hardware.
  
  Also I really appreciate the ruggedness and I would have thought this would become mainstream after 2015, but apparently laptops are less and less reliable now :(
  
  Anyway , I love these. Laptops are tools . not fashion statements and making them fashionable should not affect our productivity and the reliability of the product.
  
  impressive job Panasonic!

• Cihan Kaygusuz - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link

  A throwback laptop from 90's. What a joke!

• shabby - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link

  The 90's called, they want their laptops back... its the first thing that popped into my head.

• Lord of the Bored - Thursday, February 15, 2018 - link

  They can have their laptop when they pry it from my cold, dead hands!
  ...
  No, actually, they can have it now. Passive-matrix 800x600 displays are poop.

• chrnochime - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link

  What would we do without your priceless comment /s

• colinstu - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link

  Has anyone ever figured out the reasoning behind a circular touchpad? Is the screen circular? No? Please, a rectangular touchpad please, thank you.

• bji - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link

  Well originally, and I don't know if this is still true, they had a "feature" where you can run your finger around the touchpad in a circular motion to scroll up or down. Kind of like "infinite scrolling" if you want it because you can just keep swirling around.
  
  To be honest it wasn't all that useful in my opinion, and not really any significant improvement over just sliding your finger up or down on a rectangular trackpad and then lifting and repositioning it to continue the scroll if you want to.
  
  I owned a couple of the "Let's Note" series in the mid to late 2000's. Specifically the T2 (for my wife) and Y2 (for me). The Y2 was awesome in its time - 3.3 lbs weight, 14.1 inch display, magnesium case, very sturdy for something so light. My wife liked hers so much that to this day, 14 years later, she *still* refuses to use anything other than a Let's Note, which means that she's still using chunky mid 2000's designs with somewhat updated components like this new SV7.
  
  Believe it or not, the most significant feature for her is the plastic strap that they put on the bottom that allows you to hold it with one and and use it with the other. No other laptop has that feature (I think the newest Let's Note don't even have it), and for some reason it's just something she has to have.
  
  I agree though, Panasonic designs are at least 10 years out of date at this point. And they are so incredibly overpriced for the components that you get. The glory days of my Y2 are long gone by this point.
  
  BTW my Y2 lasted me 7 years, until I got a first gen retina mac book pro in 2012 which I still use (so that's almost 6 years on that one). My laptop prior to the Y2 also went 7 years. The mac has actually been the worst of them all in terms of how it's aged, it's developed numerous dead pixels (even after a replacement screen that fixed the original ghosting/persistence problem) which never happened on any of the other ones, a screw fell out of the bottom and was lost, and the fan is starting to sometimes make grinding noise. But, I think it will last another year to get me to my 7 year laptop lifespan and then I think I'll just get another mac (because every other aspect of it has been awesome to be honest), assuming they still sell the non-touch-bar ones, I will not buy that touch bar garbage.

• bji - Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - link

  Oh I forgot to mention, the Y2 was fanless. Huge selling point for me, who has dealt with broken and aged fans in my laptops far too often.
  
  I was able to put a very early generation PATA SSD in my Y2 eventually, that kept me happy for another year or two. It was an Mtron Mobi 3000 32 GB SSD if anyone can remember that far back. That was the early days of SSDs, when they were fringe products that just barely revealed how much better solid state was than spinning platters, but were still far superior to HDDs, although nowhere near as exceptional as SSDs have become over the years.