Do you wish upon a star on a nightly basis? The Disney Netpal laptop might be what you were waiting for, as long as you're a kid.
Bibbity Bobbity Boo! Asus and Disney have teamed up to create a compact laptop for kids called the Disney Netpal that features an all-Disney interface and two customizable lids. We can envision Tinkerbell swooping down to deliver emails while Mickey and Minnie pop in from the bottom of the 8.9-inch WSVGA LCD to deliver a "System is low on virtual memory" message. The good news is that the Disney Netpal will ship with Windows XP home rather than Vista Home—hallelujah! Parents have the ultimate control with over 40 content regulation options, including web-safe browsing and email correspondence filters. We hope the Disney Netbook's Parental Controls will do the trick because the amount of online sludge out there is definitely not conducive to a Hakuna Matada outlook on life.
The Disney Netbook is targeted at the 6-12 demographic, though age 12 seems a bit old for a laptop with a color scheme called Princess Pink or Magic Blue. Kids can customize their desktops with Disney Classic Characters, Disney Fairies, Disney Princesses and other characters from more recent films like Cars and WALL-E. Tweens can opt for Hannah Montana and JONAS styles and a favorite character icon can be attached to email addresses. The Disney Netpal is also durable with a liquid-proof keyboard and ShockShield data protection guards to retain data in the event of an impact, which will happen often, knowing most kids. A gaggle of widgets also come standard on the Disney Netpal, including a stopwatch, digital memo pad and reminder notes. A 2D "gadget tray" can be accessed to reveal bold visual icons that represent different applications, kind of like the Little Mermaid version of the Windows Start menu.
Right out of the box the Disney Netpal offers a slew of Disney-developed applications including Disney Mix for music and Disney Pix for photo customization and organization. We think the most magical part of the Disney Pix software is its Bobblehead feature, which allows kids to insert images of their faces on top of bodies and create wacky, madcap dance sequences with the option to download them into videos or postcards. There's also a Radio Disney widget that streams real-time music and lets kids submit song requests, in addition to a few games and a photo scrapbook.
The Disney Netbook will be released as two separate models that are basically identical, save one spec. The Disney Netpal MK90 will be sold exclusively in Toys "R" Us and features a 16GB SSD while the Disney Netpal MK90H will ship with a 160GB HDD. Both laptops will come equipped with 1GB of memory, an Intel ATOM N270 processor, built-in Wi-Fi and three USB terminals.
The Disney Netpal is set to ship in late July for $350.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Archive