Daddy's little helper

Inbox:  'Daddy, can I play something on the Pooter?" This is what my little boy sounds like when he wants to get his inevitably jam- covered mitts on my laptop. Suddenly the inbuilt evolutionary desire to nurture one's offspring enters battle with a highly persuasive instinct to protect one's gadgets. The horror, writes Mike Butcher.

I need alternatives, and quick, but I've never really been convinced by those plasticky fake PCs they sell in toy stores. The child learns how to work it, only to be presented at school with something quite different.

However, I was excited to see that there may be an end in sight to my daily inner turmoil in the form of a tantalisingly cheap and highly portable PC which is being aimed at the education market. Enter, the Eee MiniBook from Asus, costing as little as €242. The MiniBook will be available from the UK-based education IT supplier Research Machines (RM) in November.

The small laptop, announced back in the summer as an educational aid, weighs only 890 grams, is smaller than an A4 sheet of paper, has a seven- inch display and packs either a 256MB or 512MB of memory.

It holds 2GB (for €242) or 4GB of solid-state memory and a 900MHz Intel Celeron M processor. The MiniBook runs Linux and goes up to €285 if you want one with 512MB of RAM and a 4GB Flash drive.

Asus has also said it will offer a version of MiniBook with Windows at some point, although this would increase the price. The laptop can also be configured either to display a simple user interface for first- time PC users, or full desktop mode for greater functionality. The battery is said to last for about 2½ hours.

It is also quite well featured, coming with a VGA webcam, 802.11g wireless internet, Ethernet port, dial-up modem, SD card reader and three USB ports. You can even add in an optional 3G datacard too.

Suddenly the MiniBook looks like it could be a very handy lightweight computer for adults, not just kids.

Although RM's non-education customers will have to pay 17.5 per cent VAT on top of the purchase price, there should be other sellers of the MiniBook coming along soon. There are plenty of people who might be interested in a small cheap laptop which can surf the web over Wi-Fi and do a small number of other tasks, such as word processing.

In fact, the simplicity of the machine belies its utility - it requires under 15 seconds to boot. Bundled software includes OpenOffice, Mozilla Firefox, as well as Skype.

But for my money, this laptop is going to be best for accessing the web. With web e-mail and lots of clever web applications from which to choose nowadays, you can pretty much get away with a web-only machine.

It looks like Daddy will be able to keep his laptop free from jam- stained little hands after all.