The New Netbooks in My Family: the continuing saga

Got the Netbooks set up last night.

Out with IE, in with FF3. Gmail accounts set up. iGoogle pages set up. A bunch of top-notch links bookmarked. And the eight-year-old owners of said Netbooks were off to the races.

They sent their first emails ever: "Mom, I love you". Started learning how to use search engines. And then they navigated directly to the Star Wars website.

Can't say I blame 'em. In fact, I must admit that had I been connected to the Internet at eight-years-old, (as if the Internet would have existed), I would have immediately navigated my X-Wing Netbook directly to Star Wars. So, I guess the kids have it in their blood.

I do wish, however, the folks at Lucasfilm Ltd. wouldn't bow as low as to take money for expandable banner ads from the likes of McDonald's. We, as parents born in the '70s, know that Lucas is gonna try to hawk the toys on us; but I've always hated the fast-food tie-in... it seems really 'anti-kid' from a health point-of-view. Though I do seem to recall Star Wars glasses having been available at McDonald's all the way back in the late-'70s... maybe they'll show up on eBay.

Back to the machines: I'm impressed by the quality of streaming video on these things. I've got pre-N wireless running through the house and we were watching stuff on Hulu without a hitch.

The only thing that has been frustrating so far has been figuring out what to limit on Norton 360 to produce a more seamless browser experience -- darned thing kept getting clogged up trying to authenticate every page. I think I've got that fixed.

Next up: setting up second graders with blogs.