I don't care if it's underpowered... I bet I could connect to the net underwater with that thing.

Surely the reason the Toughbooks are "underpowered and overweight" is that it's harder to design a fully ruggedised notebook? If you have to add cladding/armour and can't use air vents (dust/water would get in), using a high-powered CPU would be a recipe for disaster, no?

Dude, Panasonic has been doing this for years with their Toughbook line. Cellular High speed access cards have been built into their units for many years now. Obviously they have only become really usable for consumers since the advent of EVDO and EDGE. EVDO-RevA and HSDPA/UMTS will even make them more mainstream and usable for the average road-warrior consumer but the GPRS and CDMA integrated Toughbooks have been around for quite a few years now. That's one reason other than their ruggedness that has made them so popular with the Telecom and Policy community.

I prefer the Itronix GO-book XR-1 which also has built-in WWAN modules that are user replaceable. If you want to change your card on the Toughbook you'll have to send it in to Panny. So, it is not the only one to date with built in WWAN.

This is not the ONLY rugged laptop with built in WWAN. The Intronix GO Book XR-1 has built in WWAN modules that are user replaceable. If you want to change the type of WWAN card in your Toughbook you're going to have to send backto Panny.