The Disney Netpal is going to be a great Christmas gift for kids ages 6-12 this year. It's made by Asus, one of the best producers of computers and netbooks. And it's not a toy computer. It's a full blown netbook with 8.9" screen. The technical details for the Disney Netpal is the same as most conventional netbooks. Specifically, it has 1.6 GHz Atom-based Intel CPU, 160 GB HD drive, 1 GB RAM, wireless access, and Win XP.

Children will truly enjoy the Disney Netpal laptop. It comes in two colors, Princess Pink and Magic Blue. It's desktop can be customized with choices of up to 10 design themes centered around popular Disney characters. The themes, which are exclusively available for the Disney Netpal, include Club Penguin, Disney Fairies, Disney Princess, WALL-E, Jonas Brothers, and many others.

There are applications that come with the Disney Netpal by Asus that will entertain a child for hours. The Disney Mix is a music software that lets kids make their own playlist. The older kids will really enjoy the Disney Mix especially if they're fans of Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers.

The Disney Pix is another software that comes with the Disney Netpal. It teaches kids how to edit pictures while having fun. For example, kids will be able to paste in their faces on other characters and create their own dancing scene. They can make other type of scenes as their creative minds allow. Additionally, they can share their creative works as videos or as postcards. If a child is creative and imaginative enough, he or she can have a portfolio at a very early age.

Since the Disney Netpal is designed for use by children, Asus and Disney made sure that safety is covered. After all, kids are kids and delicate electronic devices are not generally safe with them as primary users. For example, kids spill a lot. And we know that spills and splashes, not necessarily from kids, have broken laptops and computers before. Hence, the Disney Netpal comes standard with a spill-proof keyboard.

Children also drop things a lot. Some of them throw things when they're excited. Well, I'm not sure how strong the Disney Netpal is, but it comes with reinforcement to avoid (maybe mitigate is the right word) impact loss. In fact, it has a ShockShield Data Protection system that should protect from data loss caused by the Disney Netpal getting bumped too hard or getting dropped.

As mentioned earlier, the Disney Netpal is a full blown netbook. Meaning that children can use it to go online and do things over the Internet. And with that, there are increasing concerns over safety in web activities. The Disney Netpal has mechanism letting parents set up what content their children can view or which software their children can use. The parents are also able to control when and how long the Disney Netpal can be used by their kids. And finally, parents are able to create a list that their children can send and receive emails.

The Disney Netpal is looking quite like the right gift for the right child. It's not a toy, but a fun early learning device with safety features that could help in stirring a young creative mind.