This would be a great system, if the mouse was designed properly. This product is well known for it's mouse issues, which render the whole system unusable.
Various "fixes" (including setting the keyboard level with the console, clicking the mouse before playing the game, resetting the keyboard & game console themselves, changing the batteries, and unplugging & replugging the mouse) did not work. We have had this unit for 3 years & have only been able to use it a handful of times & unfortunately, it was a gift & it's too late to try to get a replacement or refund. We purchased 4 games to go along with the system, too, so we are out over $40 & have a useless hunk of plastic sitting in our home. Apparently Leap Frog is not taking accountability for this problem.
The conclusion to my review is that I would NOT RECOMMEND this product to anyone, period. It's not worth the potential headache & there are so many more reliable systems out there. I'd much rather use the old school method of teaching a child. It works better, doesn't require batteries, and never breaks down. LeapFrog Clickstart My First Computer Pink
My dad bought this for my daughter when she was 2 years old and in the hospital. Needless to say we couldn't use it... I had to wait until she was better and came home.. it was a couple months later when I realized that it needed batteries to work (he did not give us the massive amount of batteries needed or the optional adaptor that must be purchased separately). Eventually we got it going and my (by then) 3 year old daughter loved it! She is now almost 5 and I would like to share some things about the pros and cons for people interested in purchasing this. First of all the keyboard needs different batteries than the console, and the console needs a lot. Second, ours had some kind of glitch that it would not turn on unless you had a game (purchased separately) in the console... Once we got a game (Dora) it worked fine and will now turn on even without the game in the console. My daughter will spend hours playing this thing. She loves it! It has helped her with letters, matching, shapes, numbers and counting. It is a GREAT learning tool but they dont even know they're learning! She loves to go to the "Scouts house" game to play with him. In fact, she loves all the games that come with the computer. I cant even tell you how much she loves her "first computer". Sometimes, the mouse will stop working and you have to unscrew the cover of the mouse plug underneath the keyboard, unplug it and plug it back in and it will work just fine after that though obviously a hassle. I keep a small screwdriver on my bookshelf near the tv just for this reason. Sometimes when she has been playing for a while she will try to play the Dora game where she hops from stone to stone or lily pad to lily pad searching for stars and letters/shapes and the whole thing will have a glitch or something. She wont be able to "x out" she cant hop in the direction she wants to, the game will tell her to go the wrong way, it will tell her she has jumped on a (for example)"capital H" when she has jumped on a "lower case m" and it just has to be turned off and then turned back on. On the typing game that comes with the computer (basically free typing with a refigerator as the backdrop) my daughter wasn't able to spell her brothers name and we couldnt figure out why. His name is Killion. She would try to type the second "L" and it wouldn't let her! We spelled other names with double letters just fine and we just couldn't figure it out! Then I realized that it is sensoring my sons name!! The program will not allow bad words, even "kill", to be spelled. It is a wonderful thing of course, but too bad my son won't be able to spell his own name on his own game. Despite the flaws and inconveniences this game is well worth the price (though I didn't pay) and your child WILL love it. Just make sure that you get the batteries, the adaptor and a couple of games along with it so that your child will have a chance to enjoy it without you becoming frustrated!
I originally was given the green leap frog computer as a Christmas gift for my then 3 yr old daughter. (Due to our 1 yr old Shi-tsu chewing the cord running to the television, we have now gotten the pink one. ) She fell in love with the games right away- especially "Scouts House" where she could put Scout to sleep, feed him, water him, make him do tricks for bones. The games are characters the kids know. IE- Dora the Explorer, Thomas the Train, Cars etc... Not only do kids learn or enhance their counting abilities, letter recognition, color recognition, matching skills etc... but they are also learning important basic computer skills. Such as clicking and dragging, QWERTY key placement on the keyboard, using the arrow keys to move around the games. The only thing as a parent I don't like is some of the games seem to be the same thing with just different characters. Repitition is good, but when you put a new game in you look to use different skills and that isn't always the case. I would suggest getting the AC adapter to plug this in if your child is going to use it a lot - we go through a lot of batteries between the console and the keyboard. Overall my daughter loves her computer and plays with it almost every day for about 1/2 hour on her own, longer if I can play with her.
The games that come installed on the system come across as either repetitious and boring, or else require more coordination than my 2.5-3.5 year old can muster (particularly any of the activities that require clicking a moving target). However, my daughter loves this toy for some reason, and I can acknowledge that there's educational value in anything that acclimates kids in her cohort to the QWERTY setup or a typical mouse interface--neither of which is probably going anywhere anytime soon. I do wonder the pedagogy behind some of the gameplay progressions, though, and I wish there were more activities that simply required the user to click on a static target with the mouse cursor.Observation: any of the activities that allow you to type freely will not allow you to input any dirty words (not that I tried this...)--a useful feature that while sort of weird nonetheless evinces an attention to detail on the part of the designers.'
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