Spill, drop safe laptop for kids launches

Any parent of an primary school-age child can tell you that they don’t take care of expensive devices well. In fact, judging by the way my kids treat their toys; the more expensive they are, the more likely they are to meet a horrible end.

The idea of a notebook computer specifically designed for kids isn’t new -- the One Laptop Per Child initiative originally hoped to offer notebooks for kids in around the world at $100 per machine. That price tag proved impossible to meet though, and the machines typically cost about twice the $100 price tag.

A new computer has launched that is designed specifically for kids called the PeeWee Pivot Tablet Laptop. The machine reminds me a lot of an Intel Classmate, but this time it's not targeted solely at the developing world, but also at parents who want to give their kids access to educational computing without worrying too much about the durability of the computer.

The PeeWee has a pivoting screen that can fold back allowing the machine to be used as a tablet computer.



_{Above: Kid-size PeeWee in tablet mode}

Inside the small chassis lies the gear we are used to seeing inside a netbook, including an Intel Atom N270 processor, Intel 945GSE chipset, and an ASUS Rampage II Gene X58 micro ATX mainboard. Memory for the machine is 1GB and storage is to a 60GB HDD. Wi-Fi is integrated along with an Ethernet port for wired connections.

The machine runs Windows XP Home and sports Disney themes out of the box for kids to enjoy. With kids tending to be rough on computers and gadgets the PeeWee is built to be rugged with a spill resistant keyboard that can survive up to 35ml of liquid spills (not a huge amount considering a small drinking glass is 200ml)  and the machine is drop resistant to 50cm. The screen is 8.9-inches with a resolution of 1024 x 600 and is touch sensitive. The little machine even includes a 1.3-megapixel webcam, which rotates 180 degrees.

Rounding out the feature set of the little netbook for kids is a software suite tailored for kids in specific age groups that includes games and other software. The downside to the little machine is that it is expensive at $US599.99 ($AU818) and there are no announced plans yet to sell it in Australia, so you'd be looking at direct-importing it if you wanted it, which can complicate warranty issues down the track.

However, the concept is undeniably good, and while we'd like to see better durability than what's been included with this first attempt, the emergence of a category of full-function kid-friendly PCs in general is very a positive step.