posted 08-06-2004 04:14 PM                       

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The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week
Page 2

Mouse Clicks
Disney's kiddie computer

2. M-I-C, K-E-Y, B-O-A-R-D
So Disney (DIS:NYSE - news - research) is getting into the computer business.

Lots of luck.

On Thursday, the multimedia conglomerate unveiled its new Disney Dream Desk PC -- we call it the DDDPC -- at a press event attended not only by Mickey Mouse himself, but by cast members from ABC's sitcom Hope & Faith and its soap opera One Life to Live.

Featuring a kid-friendly hardware design, lots of Internet-filtering software and all sorts of Disney-brand software, the PC has a suggested retail price of $898, mouse-eared monitor included.

Disney believes the product has the usual things going for it: demand from the underserved youth computer market, positive attributes of the Disney brand, nearly three years' worth of development.

But, cranks that we are at the research lab, all we can think of is the inauspicious history of consumer-branded personal computers.

Back in 1999, you may recall, Patriot Computers introduced the Mattel-licensed, his-and-her Hot Wheels and Barbie-branded PCs. A little more than a year later, Patriot was bankrupt.

In early 2002, news surfaced that Viacom's (VIAB:NYSE - news - research) MTV planned to market an MTV brand PC. But the product's subsequent disappearance makes us speculate that the total request for the MTV PC was, uh, dead.

Could it be that if parents are going to spend $900 on a computer, they want it to look like something their budding Einsteins will grow into, not out of?

A Disney spokeswoman dismisses our concerns, pointing to the value in such DDDPC elements as its proprietary movie, picture and audio software suite. "From a bundle perspective," she says, the DDDPC "really does demonstrate its value."

And after studying the Hot Wheels/Barbie debacle, she says, Disney folks concluded it wasn't a lack of demand that sunk Patriot. "It was a quality problem," she says.

Still, $900 for a kids' PC? No matter how cool it is, that strikes us as a little Goofy.

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So, who's interested in either the computer or watching Disney's stock go even lower?

The picture of the machine seems very easy on the eyes.

posted 08-07-2004 02:50 PM                       

quote: posted article

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Could it be that if parents are going to spend $900 on a computer, they want it to look like something their budding Einsteins will grow into, not out of?

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My thoughts exactly. I gather when kids grow up and leave for college, the computer they take with them is not a new, top-of-the-line, store-bought PC ... they take the POS they grew up with, and can't do , while the parents buy the new one.

Imagine moving into your freshman year dormroom and setting this thing up when your roommate walks in to meet you for the first time. But at this point there are stickers all over the ears, and the keyboard's all dirty ... I don't think you'd be very popular.

Oh, hey, and look, the keyboard doesn't have a 10-key numerical pad! That's the last straw ... it's useless now!

posted 08-07-2004 04:50 PM                       

quote: Brian Michael Weidemann

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I gather when kids grow up and leave for college, the computer they take with them is not a new, top-of-the-line, store-bought PC

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