Disney Launches Laptop for Kids

In this day and age, it isn’t uncommon for children to be more au-fait with technology than their parents; many have grown up in tandem with a mobile phone or portable games console such as a Nintendo DS, so it comes as little surprise that Disney are now looking to piggyback on this youthful exuberance with their own range of ‘Netpal’ laptop computers specifically built and designed for children between the ages of 6 and 12.

The mammoth media and entertainment company will release two different notebooks – the Pink Princess for girls and the Blue Magic for boys – and rather than just slap a Disney logo on the lid of an established laptop already on the market, they are designing the products from scratch in order to truly tailor them for this new target market.

“We think there’s a significant opportunity to grow the market for laptops with kids,” said Disney Vice President of Electronics Chris Heatherly. “They really want a simple but powerful experience. They want to surf the Internet. They want to be able to do simple e-mail. They want to be able to do simple word processing and documents.”

Disney aren’t daft – they’re capitalising on a laptop market that is expected to flourish with researcher IDC forecasting a 300% growth in the children’s computer sector this year, compared to 2008 –  yet they’ll be fully aware of they competition they will face from some established major players such as Dell and Hewlett Packard.

“We’re bringing a lot to the party,” Heatherly said. “We’re bringing great, fun Disney content for kids to play. We’re bringing a lot of security for the parents.”

The Netpal is said to based loosely on the popular Asus Eee PC, which will be music to the ears of those who witnessed Disney’s first sortie into the laptop market in 2004 when their offering came complete with Mickey Mouse-style ears. Its 8.9-inch screen illuminates with Disney’s set of characters, and children can vary between whether they want a Toy Story, Cars, or WALL-E desktop theme amongst many others.

The Disney Netpal MK90 will be retailed exclusively in Toys “R” Us and features a 16GB SSD while the Disney Netpal MK90H will ship with a huge 160GB HDD for all those High School Musical soundtracks. Both laptops will come equipped with 1GB of memory, an Intel ATOM N270 processor, built-in Wi-Fi and three USB terminals.

The Netpal will be unveiled in the US next month at around 350$ (£215).