Meet A Toughbook Guy with Out-Of-This-World Cosmic Powers

Is it coincidence or fate? NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has found ten new planets capable of sustaining life in another galaxy a week after our team had an online chat with an amateur astronomer. Coincidence is possible. It could be chance or maybe our marketing team has done a better job than we thought was likely. We are 98.9% convinced that our new astronomer friend Vincent is native to this earth. Vince described living on a beach. He deals with lots of sand, water, the nighttime sky, his telescope and a Panasonic CF-30 with a faulty screen. Vince did not buy his Toughbook from bobjohnson.com. If he had, it would not have a faulty screen. It would also have been covered by our enhanced warranty in case something were to go wrong. But we digress…

Back to NASA, the possibility of alien life, astronomy and rugged laptops. We met Vince at the end of May. He popped on to our online chat looking for a screen for his CF-30 Toughbook and a little tech advice. That happens occasionally. People have Toughbook questions. We try to answer questions. If we can’t answer questions on the chat line, we do what we can to provide resources. (We always learn from these chats too. We learn about how refurbished Toughbooks are used. Some days sitting at a desk, typing on a keyboard requires a little vicarious living. For example, yesterday we learned a lot about Port Louis, Mauritius. We had a request to ship a CF-31. We felt uneducated about this city, so we fixed that problem. We now know that there is a lovely African waterfront city established as a Harbor in the 1600’s by the French. We also know that we can ship to Port Louis.) Vince is an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer. He spends his nights looking up at the universe, taking photos from his deck on the beach. His hobby is not a cheap pursuit. Nor can Vince travel lightly. He uses telescopes, tripods, binoculars, cameras, and laptops! According to Vince, he has gone through many laptops pursuing his hobby. The laptops Vince has used haven’t done well. Combined with surf, sand and salt, they die. It’s hard to keep the beach out of, or off a laptop when you’re constantly looking up! It’s also hard to juggle all the stuff he needs without dropping something. Vince’s solution has been Panasonic Toughbooks. He can drop a Toughbook in the sand and the sand brushes off. He can leave a fully rugged laptop out on the beach while “salt water mist blows on it all night” and, he says, “I just wipe it down and it’s ready to go the next night.” 

Bob’s been at the refurbished Toughbook business for over 20 years. We’ve done a lot of thinking about our customers and their reasons for buying from us. We know Toughbooks are used for camping, marine charting, storm chasing and other outdoor activities. Astronomy hadn’t hit our radar yet. We are glad it has. You could say that it’s opened up a whole new universe of possibilities for bobjohson.com. We like learning how everyone uses these tools. As our chat customers do, we’ll keep asking questions. We’ll close with another of Vince’s observations “I have a couple of Toughbooks, I love them….keep looking up, you never know what you might see.” Is he trying to tell us something?

(photo credit: Vince)