ASUS teams with Disney to launch "fun" netbook for kids

Stan Beer
Thursday, 18 June 2009 03:35

Your IT - Home IT

They might have called it the Disney Funbook, but Disney Netpal is the name of a collaborative netbook product from Asus and Disney that may be the first truly serious attempt to provide a commercial grade computer product for children. The new netbook melds the creative design capabilities of Disney with the innovative Eee PC package.

Over the past three years, there have been a number of attempts to capture the child computing market, loosely defined as the 6-12 year olds. The OLPC organisation tried it with a netbook born out of the labs of MIT, purportedly designed for kids in underprivileged regions. Its nemesis Intel tried it with a competing product called the Classmate.

Neither computing product has been successful in gaining the sort of widespread appeal among the kids demographic that Nintendo and Apple have achieved with handheld entertainment devices, such as Gameboy, Nintendo DS and of course the iPod.

In what may prove to be a game changing marketing move, Asus has enlisted the help of Disney to develop the sort of computer product that may finally get kids' attention.

The Disney Netpal, a Windows XP Home based machine, is described by its makers as a netbook computer for children that’s fun, web-safe and easy to use.

The interface has been designed by Disney, a company which specialises in making things visually appealing for children, in stark contrast to scientists in computer labs at universities and in large technology corporations.

According to Asus and Disney, the Netpal is developed with parents and kids in mind, being durable, with a reinforced mechanical design, and offering "a truly magical and engaging computing experience with a unique Disney user interface".

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