Usage

[Bosbeetle]

I am trying to think back to when I was 7 or maybe 10. We had a MSX at home with a whole bunch of disks (we were lucky to have a diskdrive and not a tape deck) First I just played the games that were in the menus. Later I learned the list command and thought myself to change the menus. Later I figured out some of the games were basic and I 'tweaked' the games to my liking. At that time I discovered MSX-Dos and things like spreadsheets and wordprocessing. (we switched to the msx2 by now) We had a matrix printer and I could make reports for school on the computer. I used to read MSX magazines and learned about a lot of stuff. At this point most of my friends had 386 PC's but werent able to do with it what I could with the MSX. I was jealous of the guys with a amiga because of their games, and tracker programs but not of the PC guys.

Then at the age of 13 the friend of my sister had a PC with monkey island, push-over etc on it and there I switched to 486 66MHz I devised start-up disks that boot the system so it could play demanding games. I completly delved into it using photoshop 4 and seeing the first small movies on the PC.

Friends that had just a SNES or a SEGA were completly baffled when they had to write an essay in wordperfect 5.1 to me it was as obvious as it could be.

I still thank my parents for sticking to the msx when PCs were already the mainstream and for not listening to me when I was whining for a SNES.

(and now I can finally play those games using emulators, but Im hoping more for the blueMSX port by zx-81)

It wasn't a Toshiba Hx10 was it? I had an MSX too, and I loved it. (sigh)

:wub:

Nope being dutch we had a philips vg-8235

:wub: non the less

 

[Asiyura]

Ahhh, MSX, at home we had the ZX Spectrum and a pre MSX Spectravideo...
My father has always been a computer fanatic .
At 4 I was able to put a floppy in one of the drives, switch the comp on, and choose which game from the menu... and my family always found it totally natural :lol:

 

[Sphinxter]

Pandora will not give him unconditional love and fetch a tennis ball while building up his immune system nor will a gameboy.

 

[juniorm33]

Wont it?
Hopefully there wont be a load of cancellations now!

 

[Bosbeetle]

Pandora will not give him unconditional love and fetch a tennis ball while building up his immune system nor will a gameboy.

But the unconditional love giving ball fetching immune strenthening organism will chew his iphone (or fetch it)



got to love dogs :wub:

 

[trooper]

When i was young, I was pretty much on the edge of deprivation.

I had to wait until i was eleven years old until i got anything gadget/computer related.

This was the first game system that i was able to have:

And i had to save up all my pocket money to buy it, It cost me £24.99, I loved it to bits,
And played it to death.

Kids these days, They don`t know there were born.

Trooper

 

[WizardStan]

Pandora will not give him unconditional love and fetch a tennis ball while building up his immune system nor will a gameboy.

I'm pretty sure there's an app for that :unsure:

 

[Bosbeetle]

Pandora will not give him unconditional love and fetch a tennis ball while building up his immune system nor will a gameboy.

I'm pretty sure there's an app for that :unsure:

:lol:

 

[SNESFAN]

best use for 7 year old

yardwork

 

[Asiyura]

yardwork

mudball fight with friends?

 

[SNESFAN]

mudball fight with friends?

no.. i mean like shovel the driveway, rake leaves, tend to the fields... that kinda crap.. make them earn their keep

 

[gingio]

I have not intended to be destructive, just curious as I am a developer myself and I like Pandora specs and intent.

As I already have _my_ IPhone GS, its free to me to give it to my 7 year old while driving him to school for a half an hour or so and load it with free apps from their store.
So my question was with regards to this one specific case, and the answer seems to be 'no'. He has his skolelinux (http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu)
on parallels vm at home, the best thing I have been able to find so far and some big screen games.
Thanks to all who took their time to reply.

 

[Bosbeetle]

Again we (the internet) were to quick to judge. Sorry.

 

[rabidpoobear]

Yeah, I half-apologize.

[edit] if he's a cool kid Pandora may be perfect for him. I started programming when I was 10, and it helped me a ridiculous amount. Now I'm 21 and 2 months from my master's in Computer Science. IF he's interested in computers for reasons other than games, it's never too early to start. If I had a Pandora starting I would've written even more games than I did and likely learned even faster. If I hadn't started programming I'd probably be a musician (which I still do - but I can keep it as something I enjoy / a hobby now rather than relying on it for economic reasons, which would just kill the enjoyment for me.)

[edit2] the reason I half-apologize is because I think we're far enough into the internet age that people realize that the words they say are the only representation that people have of them. We don't have his background story and we can't read his body language or facial expressions. And I still question the way the original post was written. But I am sorry that I gave him so much crap when it sounds like he's being reasonable.

 

[Nova]

Buy the kid a damn bike...

 

[Kyo]

Not sure if you are posting to enquire or to show off, But rather than spend even more money on your 7 year old,
Who seems to be doing pretty well for gadgets already.

Why not spend the money wisely and put it towards a decent education, Or take him on an adventure holiday to get him
away from all the gadgets he seems to be accumulating. He`ll love you better for it, And you may get to know him
better as a person, Rather than a child stuck in front of or behind a TV, Games console, Iphone etc.

Trooper

Am I the only one who finds this post really uncalled for? I mean, you're basically preaching about someone being a bad parent based on one forum post they made. Talk about jumping to conclusions.

 

[mali]

:blink:
Troopers post is abstract enough to not necessarily be taken as an insult. It's good to see sensible opinions regarding raising children in a gaming handheld forum, imo.

 

[cbox]

Pandora will not give him unconditional love and fetch a tennis ball while building up his immune system nor will a gameboy.

Apple has an app for that.

 

[kingoddball]

My Opinion: If a child is to have a game console, then a home system (PS3/Xbox/Wii) is the best.
From what I see daily, the children won't sleep at night, they'll screw around with their DS' at night, early morning.. Nothing will get done, esp school work.

Wii is the best console anyhow(for kids/home based)! It's fun!

 

[TrashyMG]

Not sure if you are posting to enquire or to show off, But rather than spend even more money on your 7 year old,
Who seems to be doing pretty well for gadgets already.

Why not spend the money wisely and put it towards a decent education, Or take him on an adventure holiday to get him
away from all the gadgets he seems to be accumulating. He`ll love you better for it, And you may get to know him
better as a person, Rather than a child stuck in front of or behind a TV, Games console, Iphone etc.

Trooper

Am I the only one who finds this post really uncalled for? I mean, you're basically preaching about someone being a bad parent based on one forum post they made. Talk about jumping to conclusions.

Yeah this does seem a little uncalled for.. I mean most of this is the old man syndrome... I didn't have such devices when I was a kid, so get off my lawn.. Lets just leave parenting to the parents.

When I was around seven I had a pretty decent electronics lab going on in my bedroom.. This was allowed by my parents just to distract me so I wouldn't dismantle everything thing in the house and getting electrocuted is a good learning experience. Let the kid have his gadgets..