The Walt Disney Co. has added a personal computer and flat screen monitor to its lineup of consumer electronics products. It even comes with a mouse.
The computer, which also comes with games, a digital pen and a drive that plays both CDs and DVDs, joins a television, DVD player, clock radio, cordless phone and other products the company has introduced over the past two years.
The computer will retail for $599 with the monitor sold separately for $299.
The "Disney Dream Desk PC" was unveiled Thursday in New York.
The computer was designed by frog design and will be made by Germany's Medion AG, a large private label maker of personal computers.
The Windows PC comes with ContentProtect, an e-mail and Internet filtering system. It also comes with proprietary programs that allows users to combine their own video clips with Disney characters and sound effects and create drawings using a built-in digital pen.
Disney announced it will also be introducing a digital camera and camcorder later this year.
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Disney Adds Personal Computer to Lineup
Thu Aug 5, 1:17 PM ET
LOS ANGELES -
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Cuteness has long been a staple of the Disney marketing machine, and the company's new computer for children fits comfortably within that tradition. The Disney Dream Desk PC is a mouse-shaped model aimed at the 5-to-12 set.
Like other Disney products styled by Frog, the design firm behind the original Macintosh SE, the model sports rounded edges, big buttons and soothing colors.
The semicircles atop the blue-and-yellow monitor are instantly recognizable as the ears familiar to children everywhere. (Cleverly, they also function as stereo speakers.) Beneath is a standard Windows XP computer equipped with a Celeron D 2.66-gigahertz processor, a 40-gigabyte hard drive and 256 megabytes of RAM.
Disney said the $599 Dream Desk PC would be available through the Disney catalog and at www.disney.com beginning Aug. 12 and at CompUSA stores in mid-September. It comes bundled with ContentWatch's Internet filtering tools and multimedia children's software called Disney Flix, Pix and Mix.
In addition to the new blue-and-yellow PC, Disney is releasing other Dream Desk products in similar colors: a digital camera ($79), a video game controller ($19), a printer ($70) and a digital video camera ($99) shaped like the number nine.
There may not be anything technologically new about any of the gadgets, but it's easy to imagine them inspiring toy lust.
Andrew Zipern
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It's pretty hot news! There's another news thread about it...but with the angle that Iger is up for takingover from Eisner! (So it's another aspect and take on it all.)
Also, check out the latest poll on the subject! As cool as the computer looks, I have to say the last question of the poll sums up how I feel on it all.
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I really don't like the huge expansion of Disney products across the country. In years past, it was harder to find Disney merchandise than it is now and it seems to be more common then something special. Most of the time, I would only see Disney merchandise in Disney stores and I kind of liked it that way. Maybe it's just me, but I'd like to see less Disney merchandise out there to keep Disney shirts, towels, etc. from feeling like something you can pickup anywhere like a Hershey bar.
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Walt Disney World Expedition: EVEREST (Early 2006) Disneyland Finding Nemo Subs (2008) Mark VII Monorails (2007)
I really don't like the huge expansion of Disney products across the country. In years past, it was harder to find Disney merchandise than it is now and it seems to be more common then something special. Most of the time, I would only see Disney merchandise in Disney stores and I kind of liked it that way. Maybe it's just me, but I'd like to see less Disney merchandise out there to keep Disney shirts, towels, etc. from feeling like something you can pickup anywhere like a Hershey bar.
Thats an interesting point u make. When i read it i have to say i feel the same way. When i was younger, going to disney world, and getting a souvenier was somewhat of a novelty, and now u can go anywhere and find something with a disney logo.
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I really don't like the huge expansion of Disney products across the country. In years past, it was harder to find Disney merchandise than it is now and it seems to be more common then something special. Most of the time, I would only see Disney merchandise in Disney stores and I kind of liked it that way. Maybe it's just me, but I'd like to see less Disney merchandise out there to keep Disney shirts, towels, etc. from feeling like something you can pickup anywhere like a Hershey bar.
