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GETAC has launched a different fully rugged notebook, the B300, that has been calculated to be completely customizable, with an widespread list of security, power and connectivity options.

The B300 features an ultra-bright 13.3 inch sunlight decipherable display making it an ideal choice for sunshine presentation. Its peripheral is made from magnesium alloy, and is equipped with shock mounted hard disk drive, vibration and shock conflict body, and sealed I/O caps and doors to prevent damage from solid particles and dryness.

It is also heavily armed for privacy and data security via its fingerprint scanner, TPM V1.2, optional smart card reader and includes all-inclusive connectivity options including Bluetooth, Wireless LAN, GPS and 3G.

The computing specs include Intel® Core™2 Duo Merom L7500 1.6GHz processor, 512MB DDR2 expandable to 4GB, SATA 80GB expandable to 250GB, DVD Super Multi Drive, and more. It currently retails starting at an unsupervised price of approx. $3200.

NIUE (AFP) — The tiny South Pacific nation of Niue Thursday became the first nation in the world to issue laptop computers to all its children, officials said.

Every primary and secondary school student was this week given a rugged “relatively waterproof and breakproof” little green laptop, which has wireless connection to the Internet as part of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative.

The computers have been specially designed by OLPC, a US-based charity, to help children’s learning and to be cheap as well as difficult to break or damage.

The OLPC programme stems from research and development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston in the US and has been supported by businesses including News Corporation’s Rupert Murdoch and Google Corp.

The donation of 500 computers to Niue — which has a total population of less than 1,500 — is part of an initiative to distribute 5,000 laptops in the Pacific region, OLPC said in a statement.

Barry Vercoe of OLPC Boston said the initiative was to “create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children”.

The laptops are designed for primary school children aged six to 12 but have also been given to high school students in Niue, where the inhabitants have free Internet access.

If schools install servers, pupils can access school study information and chat to each other in a radius of a kilometre (half a mile), without having to connect to the Internet.

Jimmie Rodgers, the director general of regional development agency, the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, said the laptops “have the potential to revolutionise education in ways that are difficult to imagine”.

A radical new laptop design hides a second screen under the keyboard. The KEYBOARD SPLITS IN HALF to give you access to the other screen. While split, the keyboard still functions. It’s called the “Ergonomic Dual Screen Split Keyboard Notebook Portable Personal Computer Executive,” and it goes on sale this year to OEMs, according to the Ergonomic Keyboards web site.

A laptop that will ship this year, according to the maker, features a keyboard that parts like the Red Sea to reveal a second screen. While split, the keyboard still functions. Is the world ready for this laptop design?

It’s called the Ergonomic Dual Screen Split Keyboard Notebook Portable Personal Computer Executive and, according to the Ergonomic Keyboards site, it goes on sale this year to OEMs. The patents are for sale, too.

No, these aren’t going to take over the market. But I’ve reported before on the coming age of dual-screen laptops, where the keyboard of a clamshell laptop will be replaced by another touch-screen. The problem with this vision is that people may hesitate to give up their physical keyboards.

Will the industry start experimenting with “missing link” or “transitional” laptop form factors where the systems have both two screens and a physical keyboard? If so, this idea is interesting.