Fisher-Price Easy Link Internet Launch Pad

I love the easy link launch pad. My three and four year old would play with it on the internet all day long if I let them. They go straight to the websites and I don't have to worry about them messing anything up on my computer. My kids are learning from the activities and games they play on the websites and they are also developing great hand-eye coordination as they practice using the computer mouse.The smart keys are durable enough that I let my baby play with them in his highchair. My only complaint is that a couple of the smart keys take you to the same websites...the kids don't seem to mind because they might prefer one character over another, but I wouldn't have bought multiple smart keys that take you to the same place. And to keep the peace with my two kids...it would be great if there were a way for two kids to play some of the activities simultaneously with two separate mouses.

I am absolutely shocked to see a single positive review here. This toy is absolute trash.All of the games are available free on the internet so we had already played them. The software is buggy and doesn't want to install on most of our computer even though they are all fairly up-to-date machines.The software is laggy and it takes a while to pull up the games sometimes, even though we have a blazing fast upgraded FIOS connection.The most annoying part is that it requires a password to close the software, so my kids can't exit it on their own. I realize this is supposed to be a "security" feature, but how about an option to turn it off?The character pieces do not sit securely in the pad and are easily knocked over.I am ashamed to have given this as a Christmas gift to a niece.

We bought this for our 2 year old and it is definitely made for children who are at a reading age. My son still loves to play with it because he can click his little heart out and we know he will not be able to ruin anything on the computer. So we will most likely get more use out of it the older he gets but it still fun for the meantime.

This Fischer-Price device is far from a simple Plug and Play device you may think it is (something they do not disclose in the advertising) or packaging. To use this you must successfully install a piece of their software (not mentioned on the box) which is on a disk enclosed (and it appears then successfully update it to a later version). If your toddler or his parents are not computer sophisticated and good at system integration, this product may not work.There is only weak documentation provided. I found it did not work out of the box on two computers. I believe the problem may be firewall related because it could be made to work if you disabled your firewall. Hence those with firewall protected computers or a Microsoft operating system with the defaults in place (i.e. firewall on) may not find this works. Some firewalls permit granting permission to certain programs to access the internet. If you know the name of the program this can probably be done. Fisher-Price appears not to state the name of the software that has to have access to the internet and the person who answered their help line could not supply this or tell how to do it. While the first of my two calls for technical assistance were promptly answered, they took the position that determining whether access was being blocked by a firewall or telling the firewall to let it through was something they did not no know to do.The program open its windows on the full screen (with no way to shrink it), possibly hiding any firewall messages. Upon exiting their program, there was a firewall message asking whether I wished to provide access to the internet. Once access had been provided for their update program it was eventually possible to install their program and even make it work partially on a computer system with a firewall.The same problem was encountered on a Vista computer and eventually was solved in the same way. However, attempts to actually play certain games produced a cryptic message about "you do not have flash", with no hints at how to solve the problem. I guessed this was reference to Adobe Flash Player and with a Google search found there was a free download for it. This did not solve the problem and attempts to reach their technical support (my third phone call for assistance) have failed. (ringing is followed by a busy tone rather than a recorded message). If this toy indeed requires other pieces of software to get full use of it, this should be clearly disclosed on the packaging. Ideally the full name of the required software would be disclosed and directions provided for obtaining it in the manual or on the relevant websites when they give an error message.While the idea behind the product appears good, the documentation is weak. It also appears that you should plan on a significant expenditure of time to unpack it (very solidly packed) and to get it to work and may fail. The original version provides access to only three sites (it may pay you to go to them ahead of time and see if your child would like them), and you will need to buy extra figures for each additional site. It would be nice if the documentation (or a web site) gave the addresses for the individual sites so you could decide which additional figures should be bought (possibly doing that on the same trip as you make to buy the toy originally)Because of the need for a password to start up and exit the program, parents will probably have to turn the computer on and enter the password for their kids (and provide the password to any family members or others who may want to use the computer), but it does appear that it would be possible after that for the kids to use it on their own.

I saw this product kindof by accident through an email I was about to delete. After researching it, I thought it would be great for my 4 year old. She wants to spend more time on the computer. I love the way it locks the sites in and the kids can't mess with anything else on the computer desktop. It's so easy to go from site to site by just removing a charater and replacing it. Only a couple of things I would say is negative: putting the charaters in place are a bit scary, because I feel that they might break because of how hard you have to push them in and it makes wonder about the longevity of the product (this may be just us getting used to it though.), the second thing is some of the sites don't talk for all the games and I feel that since this product is for young users, who can't read yet, and a big draw of the product is that the children can play by themselves safely on the computer, this is a problem for them navigate the games (again, I'll be carefull to state that this is new for us and my computer my not have all the plug-ins, if this is not a problem for others) An example is on the Author site, I believe, there is a game where you build an icecream cone according to what the customer wants. Well on my computer there is no talking just the speech bubble with the words in it. So if others have this products I would love to know if it's just my computer or is the site really that way.Fisher-Price Easy Link Internet Launch Pad