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2.0 stars
"Advertised with Magnesium Case, My Ohm Meter Disagrees"
Pros: Light weight; functional; drop, spill, and squash protected
Cons: Battery life not as advertised, case not magnesium, build quality poor, display resolution impractical: all unacceptable at this price point
Summary: Unlike the first person to write a User Opinion about the CF-W7, I actually bought and own one.
When I ordered the unit in early March 2008, Panasonic and its partner retailers advertised the CF-W7 has a "Full Magnesium Alloy Case". This is not even close to the truth, as far as I can tell without a complete dis-assembly. My Ohm meter indicates the outer case material is not conductive (cheap plastic). I suspect the previous model, the CF-W5, had a magnesium case, but that feature was dropped from the faster CF-W7; increasing its profit margin. I LOVED the appearance of the CF-W5 (as seen on the Web), and that contributed greatly the decision to replace my broken 2001 Sony PCG-SR33 (which I recently stepped on) with a Panasonic. I should have sought good quality (not soft focus) pictures of the W7 before purchase.
Furthermore, the build quality is rather poor for a 1024x768 resolution, 1 GHz, $2000+ machine. The plastic bezel around the screen pops when handled, as if it doesn't fit properly or isn't glued completely. Also, the structural support under the keyboard has a plasticity give that is unexpected and undesirable. Overall the unit appears "cheap" and "ugly", which may not be acceptable for a $2000+ machine.
One benefit of the cheap plastic case is the drop and spill protection. I imagine the compliant case material absorbs shock pretty well, as seen on the CNET video. And durability, in addition to sexiness, was a key selling point.
The adequate hard drive, USB, gigabit Ethernet, modem, etc. ports are welcome; making the W7 a functional computer for the average business user. Unlike the maddening Lenovo T61 that my company provided me, the W7's function key is located to the right of the control key.
Battery life is advertised as 7 hours, but out-of-the-box I've never gotten more than 4 hours while just surfing the web with the display brightness turned down, bluetooth off and disabled, DVD off and disabled, wireless enabled. The previous model, the CF-W5, advertised an having an 8 hour battery life; however, that unit only had a single core processor at 1.2 GHz. Perhaps that machine was more efficient, or perhaps Panasonic just poorly estimates how much use occurs over 7 hours? I think the computer could remain powered on for 7 hours if every "accessory" (screen, hard drive, wireless, DVD) was off.
As my previous laptop (the squashed Sony PCG-SR33) had an 800x600 resolution screen; so I thought the Panasonic's 1024x768 pixel screen would be adequate. It isn't, not with the crowded, some would say inefficient, use of screen area common on most web pages and Microsoft Office 2007. Office is now particularly horrid with its propensity to jumble up the screen with an incredible array of annoyingly useless icons. While CNET's web pages are well arranged, many sites would benefit from a 1280x800 screen (or larger). One nice feature of the W7's screen is that my old eyes can distinguish the characters - thanks to the low resolution. Your mileage may vary though.
I loved my slow, 6.5 year old, Sony SR33. It initially cost $1000 in September 2001, looked great, was well constructed, and felt substantial without being unnecessary heavy. The engineers at Sony really put effort into that machine. Conversely, Panasonic appears to have taken, what appeared to have been a nice design as expressed through the CF-W5, and cheapened it to produce the W7.
Given what I know now about the W7, I would probably buy a Dell M1330l or something else instead.
If the W7 was $1400, I would recommend it. But at its current price, I can't see the value in it.
Overall CNET's review was spot-on, if not critical enough.
