Best Xmas PC deal for 6 year old son?

Dunscrimpin

Morning to all you happy Christmas shoppers!

Please, can anyone recommend a sensibly priced desk top PC for my 6 year old son.

Main features:
1) Deliverable prior to the big day.
2)Either with TFT screen, or available as basic box, with capability to add TFT screen of choice.
3)Suitable for educational games, and processing images from a digital camera, possibly digital camcorder in the future.
4)No more than £500, including TFT monitor.

Many thanks for any suggestions.

D. 8)

robnye

2)Either with TFT screen, or available as basic box, with capability to add TFT screen of choice.
3)Suitable for educational games, and processing images from a digital camera, possibly digital camcorder in the future.

and you say it is for a 6 year old..... ;D

lots of places are doing reductions, dixons/currys/pcworld

have a look at there websites

alternatively do you have any local pc shops... they offer good value

witha tft included will only leave approx £350 for the base unit

lofty_2

If it has to be for xmas then i one of these highstreet shops might be the best idea but if you were willing to wait until after christmas the prices are likely to drop. 3 years ago i got a 15"tft free upgrade on a high spec pc from pcworld, it was 700 quid but that was good at the time now the same sort of deal should cost about 4-500.
Look out for Dell's Sales as well, they have some just now but their better deals should come out after christmas.

steveymp

Got one of the Dell's M8 a few weeks ago for £183 including 15" TFT, check their site often as they have specials every few days all posted on this great forum

Dell 3000 celeron with 40Gb hard drive 256Mb Ram and integrated graphics card, not going to win any prizes for speed, but perfect for my 5 year old for his games

mcclim

Did you try dell.co.uk theya re doing a TFT with the base PC at the moment. YOu also get cash back with greasy plam when you buy of them

glenburg1

we got ours for our 6 year old from dixons and when they didnt have the one we ordered in stock they upgraded it from a 600 one to one that they were selling for 900. now her comps better than ours.
but its the best present we ever got her and she loves it

bernardh_2

My local Woolies had a Time computer down from £999 to £499 yesterday.Spec seemed ok,but not sure how reliable Time are.I do know that JAL computers are not.Going to the small claims court on my day off to try for a full refund.

fantasia_2

I got my girl one from dell (small business section) for £200 with a 17"CRT monitor- you have to check the site every couple of days as the prices really fluctuate.

just make a company up when you checkout - I've ordered one for myself from the large business section without any hassle.

royalsteve

the problem that you say you may need the PC to do video editing...if you do, then you should opt for a Pentium 4 CPU based machine with HT technology (usually denoted by FSB800)..

Celeron based PC's are ok for word processing, internet and as a door stop in 1 years time

High end AMD based PC's (Athlon 3000 and above) are ok for games

If you dont want to do video editing then most AMD or Pentium 4 PC's should be ok.

Top end PC's will be more future proof but as Intel (Pentium 4 775 slot based chip) and AMD (Sempron) have released new chips these will at a premium at the moment.

Also, it is worth noting that there has been a major change with the format used for graphics card recently...something referred to as PCI Express. If you buy a PC which has a PCI Express based graphics card this will also future proof your PC a bit more as well.

I used to build PC's, but dont bother now as its not cost effective. I am waiting until the Jan sales for deals. As much as I hate to say it, but Dell have some good deals even now.

new P4 775 slot 3ghz based PC, 160gb hard disk, 17 inch LCD monitor, 16x dvd writer, mouse , keyboard, speakers, 128mb PCI EXpress based ATI grahics card, Free printer, delivery

649 inc vat

you cant build one for that, trust me i tried!

Dunscrimpin

;)Morning!

Many thanks for all the kind replies.

All I have to do now is get shopping!

Cheers,

D. 8)

mhuk

To edit DV footage you'll need a good spec PC:

minimum:

P4 2.8Ghz
512MB RAM
100G hard drive

Try:

http://commerce.euro.dell.com/dellstore/default.asp?s=ukpad&l=en&m=gbp&c=622&n=1675&cu=ukpad&v=n&cc=&ogn=&kcd=&ad=&mc=&rs=&cuid=&cg=&pch=1&pn=1675&demo=&gc=&sbc=ukpad&co=nev

or try these value codes:

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/topics/promo.aspx/uk/en/fy2005_q4_w4_monitor_desktop?c=uk&cs=ukbsd1&l=en&s=bsd&~lt=popup