I’m sure you’ve all had this nightmare: It’s your kid’s first day in Kindergarten, and when you pick her up from school, she’s crying. “What’s the matter, honey?” “Daddy, all the other kids have real laptops, I only have an iPad!” — what do you do?! Toshiba to the rescue. They’ve got a young’un-oriented laptop that will let your kid can run Excel on and that will survive a direct cupcake strike.
The L635 looks to be your basic compact notebook, with a 13.3″ display and a thin, but not too thin, form factor. The kid-friendly design is limited to the keyboard and shell: the keyboard is wipeable and resistant to fluids and crumbs, and the shell is fingerprint-resistant — you know, because kids hate fingerprints. On the inside, it’s got the KidZui for-kidz browser and Net Nanny comes pre-installed, so your kids can learn early how to circumvent censorship software. It’ll also have Lego Batman, because hell yes.
There’s a built-in DVD drive and the usual ports. So I was kind of exaggerating when I said it was for kindergartners. It’s really more for the clumsy teen who has a bad habit of spilling shakes on his electronics. No specs are available, but it’s $500, so I’m guessing it’ll be competitive with the lower-end ultraportables out there. Low-power CPU… 2GB of RAM… onboard graphics or a combo chip, that sort of thing. It’ll be available September 26 at Best Buy.