Baby's first PC

[Tony Butler <lists@xxxxxxx>]

Given the wealth of knowledge available here, I thought you guys might be
able
to help.

I want to put together a PC for my (nearly) 3 yr old boys and I'm looking
for
suggestions/help.

I am thinking of an EPIA based fanless system, since this will be a PC in
the
main house and noise ain't nice.

I was thinking about a touch screen, but will probably settle for using
a "spare" LCD screen and ideally a wireless keyboard and mouse.
I say "ideally" because what I would like is a small, child sized
mouse (I have
seen one or two chorded ones only) and a child friendly keyboard - but I'm
not
sure I can get them wireless.

I would also like to be able to have two mice working at once and possibly
even
two keyboards, to allow an adult to take control the PC as required without
having to wrest the mouse from the child's grasp (said child will be
attempting
to wrest the mouse from his brother's grasp as it is).

That last line gets me thinking actually - might be nice if I could have
two "virtual" PC's running on the same box so that 1 pc, 2
monitors +
keybords/mice means both children have a "PC each".  Though it
may be more
expensive to do that than to just buy two separate boxes....

Anyway, the control thing is the important bit for now - I have seen a
small
(chorded) mouse on Amazon which looks okay, but the only keyboard they have
is
not a proper keyboard at all - it's an add-on for a normal one that hides
most
of the buttons and is only really usable with the supplied software.
I'm thinking really a board with bigger than normal keys and possibly
colour
coding and maybe some of them (control type keys) not available.

Is such a thing available?  Wireless?

While I'm here, I guess some software recommendations would be nice - I
suppose
drawing, counting, abc's at this stage....

Although this is an OT post, I am breeding the automators of the future, so
in
that sense, it is relevant :)

cheers peeps,


Tony