Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?
If you've got young kids at home like I do, you know the answer to that question is the one and only SpongeBob SquarePants. I'm betting you can probably sing the rest of the theme song as well. Why am I talking about this? Because we're partnering with Nickelodeon, Whyville.net, Walmart and others to introduce a netbook for kids.
It's or first product that focused on kids. Since it's a netbook that weighs less than three pounds, it's easy for kids to bring it from room to room or in the car during a road trip. From a spec standpoint, the Nickelodeon edition is based on our popular Inspiron Mini 10v. Kids (or their parents) will be able to choose from three different Design Studio designs: SpongeBob, iCarly or Green Slime (pictured below—click image to see a larger version).
Customers told us that providing a safe computing experience is the most important thing. To address those needs, these netbooks will ship with 15-month subscription to McAfee's Family Security. It provides parents with a set of tools to make setting up parental controls easy. It also makes it easy for parents to evolve the level of control over time. See Tracy Mooney's list of top 5 features for more information. Parents also told us that educational content was important. That's where Nickelodeon and Whyville come in. Kids are one click away from games and educational stuff sponsored by reputable organizations like NASA, Scholastic Publishing and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
What about fun? We worked with Stardock Systems Inc. to create a personalized kid-themed interface that includes Nickelodeon wallpaper and icons, a custom skin for Windows Media Player and a Start Menu that oozes slime. My son Louis definitely approved, and it passed the Mia test as well. The interface also provides easy access to dynamically-updated content into dedicated Dell landing zones on the desktop. Each Dell Mini Nickelodeon Edition comes with a "Just for You" widget that lets kids easily choose which new game and TV content that want to see from Nick.com.
Update: I should have mentioned that we had lots of ideas from the IdeaStorm community like Children's PC from jotje, Make Dell Mini kid-friendly by lrod9999 and Kid's Notebook by IdeaStorm user Jason McGuire to name a few. We've uploaded some pictures of the Nickelodeon Edition on the Dell Flickr account and more pictures from our Holidays in August event where we unveiled this new netbook.
The Mini Nickelodeon Edition will be available to customers in the United States beginning in October. That's also when customers can buy it at Walmart stores and on Walmart.com. We'll have pricing and more details on Direct2Dell when the Dell Inspiron Mini Nickelodeon Edition is available online.