

Ask HN: Tablet for kids How cheap and how should it be done? - ThomPete

Having seen my 7 month old son being seriously attracted to my iPad, I am beginning to believe there is quite some opportunity in creating a tablet for kids 2 years maybe 1 year and up.<p>I have done some preliminary research on pricing but it's all very vague as I am not a hardware expert.<p>How cheap could it get done and what would you like to see in such a tablet?
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JarekS
I've seen my daughter playing with iPhone and had the same idea... Here are my
thoughts on the subject:

\- should be cheap but if you have kids you know that people can spend a lot
of money on toys.

\- Should look "tough to break" - must be pretty robust when kid drops it
shouldn't break easily.

\- Should have text 2 speech built in for all the navigation

\- initial set of apps must bring educational value (ABCs, initial math, games
that you must count to win etc.).

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ThomPete
Text to speech seems like a brilliant suggestion. Perhaps even speech 2 text.
It could even be used to teach kids to speak faster since it could react when
they started speaking their first words. Love it!

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donohoe
Text to Speech would be awesome but I would put it down as a 'nice to have'.

Also, please bear in mind that there has been no substantive research to say
that any of those education toys actually educate. In fact, it could be argued
that they inhibit or at best just occupy time.

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ThomPete
You are quite right that there is no substantive research.

However there are people like Seymour Papert who seem to have done some good
work in the field. I can recommend his book Mindstorms.

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davidw
There are Java enabled phones that are pretty cheap and reasonably robust.
Ideally someone would take one of those and fish out all the actual telephony
stuff (no accidental 911 calls or calls to random people). I think you could
do it for 50 euros _if_ they were mass produced...

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ThomPete
But Wouldn't you think the display would need to be bigger?

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pmccool
Definitely, especially if going touchscreen(which is the way to go - imagine
how often a stylus would go missing). The resolution needn't be massive, so I
would hope this wouldn't be costly.

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davidw
Depending on the child and age, you could get away with buttons just fine,
rather than a touch screen. My daughter started wanting to play with phones at
about 1. She just liked to push the buttons and probably wouldn't have cared
much about a touch screen, but did drop the phone we gave her a lot.

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pmccool
The ability to print, e.g. drawings. Nothing too elaborate, screendumps would
be fine.

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david927
Check out the Notion Ink Adam (<http://www.notionink.in/adamtechspecs.php>).
It's supposed to come in at between $300 and $400.

[Edited]

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ThomPete
300 seems rather high for kids toy. I am thinking it probably would have to
break the sub $100 barrier.

But then again everything have to start somewhere.

Any reason you went with the 1024*600 px format?

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david927
My daughter has a Winnie-The-Pooh laptop which is tough plastic, has a dozen
games and cost, I think, $60.

If you want a large (e.g. 10 inch) touch-screen general purpose device, it's
going to break $200 in costs. Even basic components would be really tough to
get much cheaper.

