There's no SSD or 'Fusion Drive' in this one, which will make it bog down a lot. It's a shame that Apple won't go for a $999 model with a 64GB SSD or something. Should be enough for classrooms and anyone who wants a basic computer.
My bigger complaint is that the RAM is non-upgradable even as BTO. I really couldn't imagine if I had to bring my computer back down to 8GB RAM from 16.
Speaking as someone with a MacBook Air who does software development (compiling large projects like the Zend engine).
But honestly, a system targeting that demographic and use-case (and built minimally to serve them) should be several hundred dollars less.
The small keyboard of the CF-18 is perfect for little hands, the rugged construction means he probably won't break it whatever he tries, and Linux Mint just works, as usual.
He uses it mostly for watching movies, playing educational games (GCompris and such), looking at small things with a USB microscope I got from DealExtreme, taking to Grandma on Skype, and recently, he has started making little Scratch programs. He's really proud to own a real computer.
Preschool children are not the target market of Panasonic Toughbooks, but they actually are a great fit.
1.4ghz seems awfully slow, but... I suspect for a lot of what many people do - email, youtube, Facebook, a bit of iTunes music, this will be more than fine. But maybe not. I'd rather people not have a horribly bad experience on something too underpowered for the software. That said, they pushed out the retina mbp a couple years ago(?) and that experience was not all that great (imo) - laggy window drag, etc.