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Like most members of middle and senior management these days, my husband and I are often found with a laptop dangling off the ends of our wrists.   We've both seriously considered, with our respective boss's encouragement, buying smart phones, but then there would go all our free-from-the-office time, like when we are stopped at traffic lights.

Our seeming reverence and dedication to our laptops has not gone unnoticed by Jack, who can only figure that laptops must be THE MOST FUN TOY IN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE since Mommy and Daddy spend so much time "playing" with theirs.   Jack loves the computers and we spend a good amount of time shooing him away from them.   If he gets his hands on one, he starts typing furiously on them and shouts at us, "I'm working!".

So it'd be logical, I thought, if we could get him a toy computer that looks like ours and that runs simple programs.   Perhaps a program that teaches him PC basics along with a few simple (ok, yes, Dora themed) educational games.   The shelves must be over-runeth with them, I figured.

Not so much.   Instead of realistic computers, what the toy industry has thoughtfully offered our tech-savvy children, is a glimpse back at the Atari games of the 70's, fit into a 2 by 3 inch screen surrounded by a plastic with bright fake computer-stuff looking stickers.   Um, what the heck is this?    The graphics tend towards black against gray backgrounds with pixilated fonts.   The game instructions stumped me, and I'm in Mensa for heavens sake.    Worse, it seems like all the vendors are offering similar products.   It's like the worst case of group think ever.

I don't advocate filling a child's life with electronic toys, but a learning laptop would seem like a fairly reasonable place to introduce a slightly more sophisticated toy.   So far, I'm not impressed.