What do a Japanese notebook maker and toy manufacturer have in common? Nothing until recently, when Kohjinsha and Bandai teamed up to ride the Netbook popularity wave that's seen almost every major laptop vendor sport one in their stable.
The Gachapin & Mukku Netbook has one interesting twist. It's a limited edition, and it's aimed at kids using cartoon characters (a dinosaur and a bigfoot) that Japanese tots are familiar with. Slated for a March rollout at 79,800 yen ($878), this is no toy, however. In fact, the pricing hardly falls into the Netbook comfort zone.
Still, this is one darn cute subnotebook in an appealing lime green casing, with the standard 8.9-inch 1,024x600 display, up to 160GB of HDD, 1GB of RAM, an Atom N270 CPU, and a 1.3-megapixel Webcam.
The onboard 1Seg Digital TV tuner should hint broadly that this is only for Japan, though it'll be interesting to keep tabs on how the Gachapin & Mukku Netbook pits itself against yet another cutesy cartoon icon which may remain silent on the matter, but has her feline claws firmly unsheathed for world domination.
(Via Crave Asia)