People, don't confuse a field PG with a PG720 or PG740. The field PG is a lot robuster than PG720/740. Furthermore, most laptops are not suited for use in an industrial environment. Especially high frequency signals coming from drives etc. can seriously disturb your common laptop. Both PG720/740 and field PG are totally shielded. The difference, as far as I know, is that the shielding for PG720/740 is an alluminium layer sprayed to the inside of the plastic housing, which is not very robust. I'm told the housing of a field PG is made of metal with a plastic covering.
A few years ago, we had the same discussion about the issue PG or laptop. When you are programming both S5 and S7, then the PG solution is the cheapest. After all, the package comes with the latest versions of STEP5, STEP7 and S7 microwin, build-in interfaces for S5 and S7 and an integrated programmer for S5 and S7 memory modules. Buy a laptop and install all these packaes and options and count your blessings. There are none!
Kind regards,
Jean Pierre Vandecandelaere
BTW Steve, Siemens DOES manufacture PCs. They only use another brand name: Fujitsu Siemens or Siemens Nixdorf (I think the former is the new name).