Since ASUS sells a lot of laptops through Amazon.com and since Amazon happens to offer a Kindle for PC application, they figured they would team up and pre-install the app on the ASUS netbooks and laptops that are sold through the online e-tailer. Makes sense right?

So starting today, select laptops, like the Eee PC 1005PE and UL30, will be sold with the e-book app already loaded up. While we don’t generally like pre-installed software cluttering up our new devices, this makes sense.

Remember that PA school district that was caught spying on kids at home? Well, according to the Washington Post, the school district has admitted to remotely activating those laptop webcams forty-two times over 2 years. (You have to wonder how many times they didn’t admit to.)

So now the FBI is involved and would like to determine if the school district violated any wiretapping or computer-privacy laws. Should be an easy call. Remember the school district claims that the remote activation of webcams was simply to recover stolen laptops, but the incident came to light when they tried to punish a student, using a webcam shot taken while the student was at home as evidence. The only thing stolen here was privacy.

Here’s an interesting laptop to get your child if you’ve recently spawned a next generation hero by getting it on with Catwoman or some other costumed freak. Or if your kid is named Robin and you dress him up in a tiny costume maybe. Oregon Scientific is making sure they get a slice of the Dark Knight pie, by offering your children this laptop sprouting bat wings. When closed it looks like Batman’s chest. Or as your child would say, “It look like dada” just before you leave for the next Comic Book convention.

C’mon people, even the kids in Gotham don’t sport Bat laptops. It’s known as the Batman Powerwing Laptop and runs on 3 x AA batteries for $89.99. If any of you adult geeks without kids get this thing for yourself, I suggest you don’t brag about it. For the rest of you, make sure that you let your kids play with it too.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) has announced they are launching OLPC America and will be offering Nicholas Negroponte’s “$100 laptop” to needy students here in the United States. Negroponte stated the reasoning for launching the laptops, which were originally intended for children in developing nations, in the U.S. is party due to building “critical mass” and getting some more momentum and production volume going. He also said the goal was to proved education for U.S. children, communication with kids in other countries. “To have the United Sates be the only country that’s not in the OLPC agenda would be kind of ridiculous,” Negroponte said.

The OLPC has been in the news quite a bit over this past year. The original goal was to provide a $100 laptop for children in poor, developing countries, helping their education, communication and understanding of current technologies. The program has met a number of “bumps” along the way, mostly with the production numbers. In order to obtain a $100 price tag Negroponte needed to have large orders of the XO laptop, targeting the governments of many developing countries. To date the orders from these countries have been limited and have kept the price well above the $100 mark. The OLPC has also be working with partners such as Microsoft with rumors of a dual-boot system that would be able to run Windows which has not yet come to fruition. They also had partnered with Intel on development of the XO, in which Intel has recently withdrawn.

Oregon Scientific and Lucasfilm want to help your kids learn Star Wars style. To that end they’ve unveiled some new Star Wars themed learning laptops targeted at different age groups – Darth Vader (ages 5 and up, $60) and R2-D2 (ages 3 and up, $25).

The Star Wars laptops are currently available as electronic learning devices for youngsters. The Darth Vader laptop offers over 50 activities, letting children “pick-up the interactive lightsaber and join the iconic villain on a variety of missions.” Activities include logic, memory and music games and the laptop is equipped with a QWERTY keyboard. The R2-D2 laptop, meanwhile, lets kids learn by “expanding their vocabulary, having fun with numbers, and developing logic and memory skills” via interactive adventures with R2-D2 and C-3PO.