The Heart of Borneo is a sustainably managed and extremely biodiverse rainforest found in Borneo, the world’s third largest island, located in Southeast Asia. This area is shared between Indonesia in the south and Malaysia and Brunei in the North. With roughly 140,000 miles of rainforest, this area of Borneo’s interior is almost completely unknown to science with over 50 new species discovered in the area over just the past five years.

To learn more about the island, a team of European and Indonesian explorers, scientists and filmmakers established the Heart of Borneo Charity to explore the unknown species and indigenous people in the region. The team’s research would in turn be used to inform the media, empower local people and provide teachers with an educational resource, which can potentially help conserve one of the most biodiverse and threatened areas of the rainforest.

To assist in exploration, the team received donated laptops. However, with torrential downpours, 100% humidity and other challenges – from river crossings to mud pits – the expedition team quickly realized that ordinary laptops would not suffice. In fact, one of the team’s laptops failed after only 48 hours at camp.

After hearing about the exploration team’s situation, Panasonic Computer Products Europe, which markets the Toughbook brand in the EU, loaned the charity Toughbook 30 mobile computers. The team now had reliable and fully-rugged devices built to withstand the extreme operating conditions and which would enable the scientists to remain in contact with the outside world.

“The Toughbook PCs have been solid and dependable. Not even a hiccup. Knowing we can rely on them to work has helped us sleep much better at night,” said Martin Holland, Founder and Executive Director of The Heart of Borneo Charity. “Being able to use them on location whatever the weather, out on boats or 5km into the rainforest from our camp has been incredibly helpful. The Toughbook units have been invaluable in saving the rainforest.”

Additionally, with the Toughbook computers’ exceptional battery life, the team was able to travel longer distances from the camp and conserve generator energy for extended periods of time. During the expedition, the team used the laptops to record results from “video trap” cameras looking to spot rare and new species.

The Toughbook computers enable the team to check the day’s footage on the spot instead of waiting until arriving back to camp. They also used the devices to share their daily findings and communicate via satellite with museums, schools and the media, including the Natural History Museum and the Guardian newspaper website.

“The water resistance and all around toughness and resilience against knocks and bumps have given us the confidence to speed up our research by taking them into the field,” said Martin. “The touchscreens make them very practical in the field and the antiglare screen makes working even in the direct sunlight of the tropics a breeze – something that amazes me every time.”

As the expedition began in November 2010, the group recently returned to the UK and is beginning to analyze and formulate the data captured with the Toughbook 30 computers. They have already started planning for another trip in September 2011.

To learn more about the Toughbook 31, the successor of the Toughbook 30, click here. Pictures provided are credited to Martin Holland, Founder and Executive Director of the Heart of Borneo Project.

Mark Gumbert, founder and president of Copperhead Environmental Consulting, and his team spend about three weeks every spring researching and tracking bat migrations for both independent and government-commissioned research and need computers that can withstand the terrain, weather and team members’ abuse in critical situations. “We’re pretty brutal on equipment,” Gumbert said.

Gumbert has been tracking bat migrations since 2009, but has been tracking foraging bats since 1993 when calculations were done with a paper map and pencil. “By the time you were done calculating a bat’s location, 10 minutes had passed, and the bat had already moved,” he said. “Now, with computers, the data is almost instant.”

When Gumbert and his team began using laptops they would follow the bats in their vehicles and airplane and track them with GPS software. “The Dell computers we initially used got really hot sitting on our laps and caused static interference with our receiver, which covered up the signal from the bat’s transmitter,” Gumbert said. The devices often fell out of the vehicles resulting in cracked screens and requiring many to be replaced.

Given the reliability issues, Mark and his team were afraid to take these laptops into the field, especially when it was humid outside. The fragility of the devices negated the value of having a mobile solution.  After experiencing numerous failures, they decided to look for laptops that could operate in extreme weather and handle the occasional drop.

The company started looking into Toughbook PCs. The team was looking for something that was rugged yet portable and had electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), which would prevent interference from the avionics and other electronic equipment in the vicinity.

They decided to go with three Panasonic Toughbook 19s. The team liked the 19’s durability and its ability to function in extreme weather. Since the team faced electronic interference issues in the past, the Toughbook 19’s MIL-STD461F certification ensured the Toughbook mobile computers would be electromagnetically compatible with other nearby electronics. They also really liked the backlit keyboards, since much of the team’s work takes place at night.

Piper Roby, biologist and project manager at Copperhead Environment Consulting, works on the ground crew and uses the Toughbook 19 with mapping software to track the bats. “I really like the touch screen in tablet function,” Roby said. “Our team is really rough on equipment and the Toughbook 19s allow us to do our jobs more easily. It makes being in the field a lot more enjoyable since we no longer have to worry about something going wrong with equipment.”

“If a Toughbook device can withstand our brutal team, it can withstand anything,” Gumbert said.

The Galapagos Sea Lion Project is searching for answers to these questions in the unique and remote world of the Galapagos Islands. And the ruggedized convertible Toughbook 19 is involved in the research.

A team from Bielefeld University (Germany) travelled half way around the world to the Galapagos Islands – one of the last remaining substantially unspoiled biotopes in existence – in order to carry out their field research. The focus of their work is the Galapagos sea lion.

Postgraduate student Jana Jeglinski is a member of the team and is responsible for examining the animals’ diving behavior. In an environment that combines both water and blazing sunshine, the obvious choice when it came to hardware was the convertible Toughbook 19. The device is resistant to the dust found in the dry conditions of the camp and to the wet conditions found on the coastline and at sea. Additionally, the display is easy to read, even in bright sunlight.

Data about the sea lions diving habits is collected by small recording devices that are carefully attached to the sea lions’ backs – a proven method which is harmless for the animals. Two weeks later, the animals are caught and the data is downloaded to the Toughbook 19, where it is stored safely even if the hardware is knocked or accidentally dropped during the choppy boat trips to and from shore. A particularly practical feature of the CF-19 is the pivotal touchscreen, which makes it possible to easily turn the device into a tablet PC for simplified data input.

Jana Jeglinski really appreciates the assistance of the robust Toughbook 19, with its battery life of up to nine hours: “It’s incredibly resilient, and is also very compact and light, so it’s a joy to work with. The CF-19 has been covered in sea spray, baked by the equatorial sun and used in an environment in which the air is full of brine. I’ve even once used it to fend off a territorial male sea lion.”

This story was originally written and published in 2009 by Panasonic Computer Products Europe