Environmental monitoring devices and software are common elements used by biologists, ecologists, foresters, and the like. Try asking a professor at your local university. I have seen a few items like you're describing in Forestry Suppliers catalog or Ben Meadows catalog. I imagine checking for environmental education materials might turn up some cheaper answers, as well. Good luck.

Sounds like a lot of laptop for the money. Max it out in ram for graphic processing and burning. Bit big and heavy for frequently caring around though. Nothing burns fast on a laptop. Intergrated Graphics cards arent the fastest thing in the world. Nothing wrong with AMD processors, as long as its a mobile processor it wont cook your lap.

It is interesting Pooh. Based on your post I downloaded and ran the program. At the moment this is still a BETA program, in other words it is being tested by those of us who elect to use it. Once all the kinks are worked out the final product will be available no doubt. On my computer it searched all 3 hard drive partitions and found 10 insecure programs and 4 end of life. However those tagged as end of life will not be removed, these are old programs I use and will continue to take the small risk they might pose. The live link to the right of each entry takes you to the needed update site for that particular program. It is one more program running in the background. Time wil tell if it stays on my computer but it is an interesting program

With all the after Thanksgiving sales going on in the states (if that's where you are)I would check your local fliers for better deals. Keep the specs for that one and see if you can find another (Toshiba, HP, Acer) with same or better specs for less money