First Spark Kids PC Toshiba Laptop Review

Being a mom who used in work in high-tech, we got our kids started on computers fairly early. My son had his first laptop when he was 2 (okay, it was a clearance item). We quickly learned that kids are just hard on electronic equipment, after he ripped several keys off the keyboard. We stuck with desktops after that.

My son is now 7 and my daughter is 5. A few months ago, my son said that he wanted a laptop as his Christmas present. We tried to explain to him that laptops are very fragile and delicate and oh yes, expensive items, and we weren’t sure that he was ready for a grownup laptop just yet.

And I thought to myself at that time, “They make kid-friendly cameras now. They make kid-friendly everything. Why aren’t there kid-friendly laptops?”

I didn’t mean kid-friendly as in manufactured with bright colors and a bunch of licensed characters, either. I meant kid-friendly as in able to withstand what a kid can put an item through in terms of spills, drops, and the occasional unsupervised science project.

Well, I was offered the opportunity to test drive a new product that aims to meet MY definition of a kid-friendly laptop. The First Spark Kids PC is a Toshiba laptop designed with all of the features a kid’s laptop should have.

We’ve spent the last few days checking out this product. I’d like to tell you a little bit about what my experience has been with the product, and then, more importantly, what my son’s experience has been.

The First Spark kids PC has an Intel Celeron 2GHz processor, 2 GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive. The screen is 13.3″. It is equipped with a webcam, a DVD/CD-RW player and Windows 7 Home Premium (which I have on my personal laptop and I LOVE it).

My first impression when opening the First Spark PC box was “Wow! This is a rugged look for a laptop.” I like it. The design on the outside is gray and bumpy – very textured. There’s not much area for kids to leave greasy fingerprints or slime this thing up.

The green accents are a cool, bright color and overall this laptop gives a very good first impression!

We opened the Toshiba laptop up and got it started. Everything worked great. Windows 7 is really easy to set up and it found our home wireless router right away, so we could quickly get on and practice some web surfing and setting up my son’s Favorites bar.

The screen has a very, very good and clear display. The new Windows 7, which appears to be hand-selected for kids on this particular laptop, renders in beautiful color. I was impressed – I just bought my personal laptop 5 months ago and the display is not this good.

My favorite feature of the First Spark is the wipeable keyboard. This is way cool. There are no holes between the keyboard keys! The entire keyboard is one continuous piece of soft rubber. So guess what? No crumbs, dirt, boogers or other yucky stuff can get stuck under those keys and affect performance. It’s hard to see from the picture, but trust me – it’s brilliant.

The First Spark comes loaded with Kidzui, which is a child-safe browser. I’ve used Kidzui for awhile and my children love it. It screens tons of web content for you and only allows safe material. The interface is fantastic and fun for children.

My son was also delighted to see that two movies – Toy Story 2 and Princess and The Frog – also came pre-loaded in the RoxioNow player. There was a small glitch with initially loading the movies, but there was excellent support information available on Roxio’s website to walk me through the issue.

One other cool game that is included with First Spark is Lego Batman. This may not excite little girls who get this laptop, but my son loved it and will enjoy playing this game on a different platform than Wii.

I should also mention that I’ve found the battery to be really strong so far – lasting well over 3 hours.

The only real hiccup that I’ve encountered thus far with the First Spark has been the pre-loaded Net Nanny software. It is a great idea and I am glad to have it. But it was a bit frustrating for my son to have to wait while I set up an account, put in a passcode and set preferences for Net Nanny when we first opened the box. It took me awhile to go through that process.

Now, for my son’s perspective. Truly, he likes everything about this product.

He loved the look of the First Spark when we took it out of the box. “WOW!,” he cried. “Look at how cool the colors are on this laptop! It doesn’t look ANYTHING like yours, Mom!”

He really liked the bumpy and rugged texture of the laptop as well. I think because kids are so sensorily-aware, they appreciate this sort of extra detail.

My son noticed the Kidzui and Batman icons that are in the Quick Launch bar and was super excited for both, since he’s familiar with them already.

We moved on to playing with the webcam for a bit. Keep in mind that my kid hasn’t seen a webcam before. His desktop is old and doesn’t have any sort of video feature. The webcam pretty much blew his mind. He’s going to have a lot of fun with it.

In fact, he said, “So, I can make my own videos and put them on YouTube?” Not sure we’re ready for that just yet! But the webcam software was very basic and easy for him to use.

When I asked my son what his favorite thing about the First Spark was, he said, “I love everything, but my favorite part is the soft keyboard. My old keyboard was hard, and it hurt my fingers to type. This is squishy, and it feels really nice on my fingers.”

This is the kind of attention to detail – things that we as grownups might overlook, but that have an impact on usability for the child – is what I really appreciate about this laptop.

I am thrilled beyond words that the computer industry is finally responding to the needs of this yet-untapped market. Hopefully, we’ll be using the First Spark kids Toshiba PC for years to come.

You can purchase the First Spark for about $499 exclusively at Best Buy.