Why you'll buy a tablet for your kids

While I *might* buy the book for my own tablet, I'd never buy a tablet for my kid.

I'm probably an exception to the rule in several ways.

One thing is that I adore my kindle. I've had it for 3 years and it's still running strong. I don't feel the need for anything more, don't run apps or music (I don't even own an mp3 player), and don't see myself replacing it any time soon.

Second thing, I bought an iPad. My kids stomped on it while I was in the bathroom 2 weeks later. I hope to get reimbursed by my credit card company, but have to drive 2 hours to an Apple store to have a repair estimate done first. PITA. Obviously my kids aren't responsible enough yet. Also while I had it, I thought it was irritating to work on, and frankly, I'm really glad I had the chance to buy the Air I now have instead.

Lastly, my oldest son (the only possible candidate for a reader) is reading NOW at 5. He could read this book easily. He reads at about a 3rd grade level. No way would I spend $400 on him and trust him with a tablet.

An older kid I can't see being quite as fascinated with this. Just saying that from a parent's perspective. However, I DO think it's something I would buy, IF I had a tablet to read to my kids. Don't think it will drive tablet sales though.

I think it's great, but as something parents will have.

Personally, I REALLY wish there were more e-books for kids. I have about a dozen on my kindle and we read them repeatedly. They're ridiculously handy in doctor's waiting rooms etc.

I like the interactive idea, but I'm a bit sad. I think plain, boring books are just fine. If more parents took time to read with their kids the kids wouldn't care if all the book did was sit there.

But the tech is still snazzy.

I love my tablet, a Motorola Xoom.

Huh? I thought HP just set the new standard at $99, but they may be out of stock by now...

Hmmmm. The issue with things like this is that they look cool, and are a really cool idea, but no one seems to have thought it through very well - you have a great book/game idea for young kids, but in order to use that they have to use quite sophisitacted and expensive technology designed for adults. The two just don't match up in that sense.

It seems like it would be a great thing for a parent to do with their child, but honestly, I'll not be buying my daughter - who's five - a tablet. She'd drop it, or try to play with it when I was out of the room, you know what kids are like.

Even my responsible, older child has been careless with my laptop. No way would I buy a small child such a delicate piece of equipment as a tablet, not even if it gets cheap.

What about the Leap Pad stuff? It's built like tanks. That's the sort of tablet we'd need for the book-eating crowd.

I won't be buying a tablet because we already have iPads. I read on them, and the kids play games. They aren't so much in to reading on them, but it may be that we have a huge bookcase full of kids book and it's easier access. (?)

A Silly Noisy House is still one of the best interactive "ebooks" for kids I've seen.

And Amanda Goodenough's Inigo and My Faithful Camel are close seconds.

Children, in my universe, can't have anything worth more than $100 that can be broken. I barely trust myself with my iPod Touch, much less Jr. Jam Hands and Sally Spills A Lot.

This ****ing thing! It's been all over my feeds the last few weeks - and colleagues sending me links etc. What's annoying is that there's no way we'd be able to afford to make something like this - it would cost high five, possibly six figures, and it sells for, what, £2.99? Not a chance. The way to make something like this is, you do a lot of the work yourself, whether it's the coding or the animation or ideally both.

Torgo said:

This ****ing thing! It's been all over my feeds the last few weeks - and colleagues sending me links etc. What's annoying is that there's no way we'd be able to afford to make something like this - it would cost high five, possibly six figures, and it sells for, what, £2.99? Not a chance. The way to make something like this is, you do a lot of the work yourself, whether it's the coding or the animation or ideally both.

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I'd have to agree...the money put into making it may not come out in the sales. And it's not made on iPad...it was made as an animation then coded into an application. It's hardly new, you can get similar items in kids software for both the mac and pc. They certainly were available ten years ago.

My child does a lot of reading. She's past picture books and has moved into YA where more ebooks are available. So an ereader maybe more practical in the future but not yet.

I have an iPad, a Nook Color, a Sylvania 7" mini-tablet, and an Acer A100 7" tablet. If we'd had the stock I'd have an HP Touch Pad as well, but we sold out of them in 15 minutes as soon as the price was dropped to $149.

The iPad and Acer are the most useful with the Acer being more convenient and the iPad being more useful. Until converted to an Android tablet by rooting it the Nook Color's a dedicated ereader and B&N shows no sign of changing that. The Sylvania is basically a paper Weight with no capacitive touch screen and a poorly-designed screen interface (you can use stylus or nail, but results with my fingernail are often far superior to those achieved with the stylus). It is Android Gingerbread, but the Acer's Android Honeycomb has far superior response on a capacitive touch screen.

However, as an entry-level tablet, the Sylvania's going for $100 or less at such places as Big Lots, CSV Pharmacies, K-Mart, and a few other places (I got mine at Toys'R Us for $199). it does run Android, has an micro-SD port so is expandable (up to 32GB as I recall), and accepts 3rd Party apps so you have access to the Android Market. If you can pick one up for $50-80, it's a much better deal, especially for the kiddies (you should wait and spend your money on an Acer A100, A500, Motorola Xoom, Samsung Tab, an HP Touch Pad if you can find one, an iPad, or any of about a hundred other tablets that are going to be blitzing the market this Christmas season because, quite frankly, you're the parent and you get better toys than the kiddies do).

My niece wants an iPad 2. Not quite in my gift-price range, but she's adorable, so I might spring for a low-end iPod Touch 5 for her for Christmas. I hear the education apps on the App Store are really remarkable. Sure, similar stuff is available on computers, but there really is just something about being able to touch and manipulate everything with your fingers.

I have an iPad (first gen) and my husband has a Nook (wifi, b&w). We both love our individual devices and wouldn't swap them. If I had kids, though, I'd probably stick with Nook or Kindle until they were old enough to care for something more complex.

kuwisdelu said:

My niece wants an iPad 2. Not quite in my gift-price range, but she's adorable, so I might spring for a low-end iPod Touch 5 for her for Christmas. I hear the education apps on the App Store are really remarkable. Sure, similar stuff is available on computers, but there really is just something about being able to touch and manipulate everything with your fingers.

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The potential for interactive kid's books based on HTML 5 is huge.

Even the potential for kids books for the 7 to 10 years of age reader that are books with illustrations and hypertext and minimal multimedia hasn't even been touched.

Medievalist said:

Even the potential for kids books for the 7 to 10 years of age reader that are books with illustrations and hypertext and minimal multimedia hasn't even been touched.

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The Nintendo DS is already selling at least one ebook bundle. I'm not familiar with it personally, but they definitely should start releasing cheap interactive books if they already aren't.

Gale Haut said:

The Nintendo DS is already selling at least one ebook bundle. I'm not familiar with it personally, but they definitely should start releasing cheap interactive books if they already aren't.

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While I'm a fan of Nintendo, they really do have a challenge ahead of them in staying relevant. While their decisions with the Wii were rather questionable from a hardcore gamer's viewpoint, they have made a lot of sense with how much of the casual market they have been able to capture. However, their decisions begin to make a lot less sense with how common smartphones are becoming and how common non-Nintendo hardware is becoming for mobile gaming. Neither the 3DS nor the Xperia Play, etc., have proved terribly successful against their more generic iOS, Android, or WP7 competitors. Where Nintendo has seemingly abandoned the hardcore market to MS and Sony, they are increasingly surrendering their softcore market to Apple. They may face the same hardware+software to software-only transition soon that Sega experienced. I think they're actually in a pretty good position to weather this kind of transition, their current leaders seem to be fighting this with all their might, even if it may be the best course of action.

It's those huge titles like Mario and Zelda that are keeping them going.

Though, to be honest, I think the 3DS has been less than successful because of Nintendo's inability to market just how cool the little screens are. I've wrestled with the idea of buying one just to play OoT on it.

I personally dunno how much more appealing Apple stuff is for kids though. Is Angry Birds really that big of a deal?

I have a bad confession to make:

My wife got an IPad a while back. And a co-worker did, too. The co-worker uses it for industrial purposes, involving doing a warehouse inventory of thousands of boxed geological samples, by using the camera to photo the box labels, so she can sit at the computer and enter them easily into the system's database.

It's damn tempting. Does Santa have e-mail?

I now feel soiled.

caw

Gale Haut said:

It's those huge titles like Mario and Zelda that are keeping them going.

Though, to be honest, I think the 3DS has been less than successful because of Nintendo's inability to market just how cool the little screens are. I've wrestled with the idea of buying one just to play OoT on it.

I personally dunno how much more appealing Apple stuff is for kids though. Is Angry Birds really that big of a deal?

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I don't know, but there are a lot of bigger titles from EA, Gameloft, Unreal, id, etc., from Need for Speed to N.O.V.A. 2 to Infinity Blade, Rage, Deadspace, etc.

While Ocarina of Time is a damn good game, it's not a good sign when your premier mobile game platform's biggest title is a game that came out more than a decade ago, and your most hardcore fans have probably purchased it three or four times already between the N64, Gamecube, and the Wii. Seriously.

Mario and Zelda are great titles. Really, they are. But they don't have anything new and exclusive to the 3DS. And by the time they do, I don't believe they'll be able to catch up. Not when you already have indie devs making things like Aralon and big devs like Square Enix making things like Chaos Rings.

I love Zelda. I bought a Wii just to play Twilight Princess. But these days? I'm not going to buy a 3DS just to play OOT when I have games like N.O.V.A. and Deadspace on my iPod.

blacbird said:

I have a bad confession to make:

My wife got an IPad a while back. And a co-worker did, too. The co-worker uses it for industrial purposes, involving doing a warehouse inventory of thousands of boxed geological samples, by using the camera to photo the box labels, so she can sit at the computer and enter them easily into the system's database.

It's damn tempting. Does Santa have e-mail?

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I've been using my iPad to take notes with a capacitive stylus, and I've been using Papers to sync it with my Mac version of Papers, so I always have my personal database of research and journal articles just a tap away. I'm ecstatic to get rid of the endless, easy-to-lose dead tree copies.

amyashley said:

WI bought an iPad. My kids stomped on it while I was in the bathroom 2 weeks later. I hope to get reimbursed by my credit card company, but have to drive 2 hours to an Apple store to have a repair estimate done first. PITA. Obviously my kids aren't responsible enough yet.

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Someone, somewhere, out there in the world of electronics, is reading this and dreaming up a design for a ruggedized tablet.

Oh wait, they already do. This is probably not what you are looking for, and they are not cheap. A kid-proof tablet is an idea whose time has come, however.