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.

The New Netbooks in My Family

A reader asks what kind of Netbooks I bought. Well, here's the product description from the website of the place we bought 'em (two books ran me $500):

Asus - Eee PC Netbook with Intel® Celeron® Processor - White
Intel® Celeron® processor features a 400MHz frontside bus, 512KB L2 cache and 900MHz processor speed.
1GB DDR2 SoDIMM memory for multitasking power, expandable to 2GB.
Note: Optical drive not included; optional external DVD-ROM drive with USB 2.0 interface available (not included).
8.9" WSVGA display with 1024 x 600 resolution.
16GB solid state hard drive.
Shock-resistant design for improved data safety.
Intel® GMA 900 graphics.
Built-in 1.3MP webcam.
Built-in media reader supports Secure Digital, Secure Digital High Capacity and MultiMediaCard formats for fast and easy digital photo transfer.
3 high-speed USB 2.0 ports.
Built-in high-speed wireless LAN (802.11b/g); 10/100 Mbps Ethernet LAN with RJ-45 connector.
Weighs only 2.2 lbs. and measures just 0.8" thin.
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition.
Software package included with Microsoft Works and Windows Live.

We picked out the most economical model. I figure, there's no reason to expect that any schools would purchase anything more than the base model, so we might as well see what these stripped-down little puppies can do.

Surprised that it did come with a webcam; hopefully Skype video will work on it. Optical drive needs to be plugged in externally, but I had one sitting around, so that's not an issue. Of course, between Hulu and iTunes, I am thinking that we'll be seeing less and less reliance on cds and dvds anyway as we roll on down the digital highway. The only things I really cared about were the processing speed and the amount of expandable RAM; both seem adequate for Web 2.0 apps. I probably won't be installing the MS software; instead, we'll just use Google Apps. I've heard terrible things about Windows Live anyway.

Netbooks and 2nd Graders

Just bought two Netbooks today for a grand total of $500.

Will get 'em online over the weekend and will report back. They'll be used by my twin sons who are both 2nd graders at a public elementary school.

I plan to keep track of all of the issues they encounter using the Netbooks and Web 2.0 both at home and (hopefully) at school as 21st century eight-year-olds.

Netbooks

Weblogg-ed is thinking about Clive Thompson's smart take on what we use personal computers for:

Estimates are that netbooks will hold 12 percent of the world’s entire laptop market next year, which is amazing when you think that the Eee PC is less than two years old. And their adoption says a lot about how we think about our computers these days.