Locals in central Australia are friendly, and generally more comfortable around wildlife compared to city folk.
The Panasonic CF-52 and CF-W7 are not new laptops, but rather updates to Panasonic's previous offerings. ZDNet.com.au's sister site CNET.com found the previous incarnation of the CF-52 to be a solid offering.
The updated CF-52 includes a faster processor, improved wireless capability, a larger hard drive, and Windows Vista Business. The CF-W7 seems to include some small internal upgrades, but remains largely the same as its predecessor.
This image, along with the previous wildlife image, were taken using Panasonic's new CF-U1 ToughBook, which takes photos at a 640x480 resolution. See the next image for more details.
(Credit: ZDNet.com.au)
The A$3,600 price tag is explained as justified by being rugged. Of course the One Laptop Per Child project's laptop is the comparison that needs to be made. The OLPC is selling (very large quantity orders only) for US$200, and it is able to take water and dust over its screen and keyboard etc.. and uses a SSD in place of HDD. The only real holes for dust or moisture on the OLPC are the USB ports on the side. Of course the OLPC does not have up-market specs, but rather just sufficient grunt to do all needed apps under Ubuntu. But if you are a utility's staff doing remote meter reading, remote job logging etc, either laptop could do those jobs!