Advice on the best laptop to buy for a 9 year old?

lisae03

My 9 year old has sold his Xbox and Ds and now has nearly enough for a laptop. He has about £260 and wants to get something now opposed to waiting till he has a bit more as he is off off to Nans half term and wants to take it with him! We don't know alot about computers so would appreciate some pointers. We have a mini laptop in mind from Argos at £230...

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5071481/Trail/searchtext%3EGREAT+DEALS+ON+LAPTOPS.htm

Is that a good deal? Any recommendations would be appreciated :-)

Oscar_The_Grouch

I do love the way they've loaded the machine with a "disc creator" prog, when the machine doesn't have a DVD drive!! Seriously - who thought that was a good idea?

No netbooks have a DVD drive, so if he wanted to use it for watching videos you'd have to convert them to a playable format first which is a bit of a pain. Having said that, the one you're looking at seems to be a good machine with very good battery life.

If you want to save some money, try the outlet stores for the various manufacturers. HERE is the Dell one (remember to add VAT to the prices). I've used that before and the manchines they delivered were almost perfect. We got a netbook that was a "scratch and dent" as they put it. It took us 10 minutes to find the scratch!!

I think Toshiba only do outlet shops, such as the McArthur Glen sites.

socks_uk

My utterly honest answer would be... a second hand one! Sorry for being so blunt but if he has had gadgets such as an xbox and a DS and has now had enough of it and now WANTS a laptop, how long until he sells that for the next gadget.

OK, I may be wrong and he saved every penny to originally buy the xbox or DS himself but my friend's boy was bought every new PSP, xbox, wii going for birthdays and Christmas and he sells them later because 'he doesn't use them anymore'!

I'll hide now while everybody tells me to shut up! -x-

lisae03

Oh so no Dvd Drive, thats how useless I am! Really want something with advd drive so he can watch films when we are on the train etc.
Will have a browse at the recommended sights later when hubby gets up, he know a bit more than me.

Socks you know usually everything he has gaming wise is second hand, normally bought off ebay but with a laptop we were worried that we would end up buying a rubish one that is slow or has a virus etc so thought if we got a new one it would be better to play it safe.

The_Grandmaster

Not sure if it works out more expensive but could technically just buy an external DVD drive?

custardy

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330424146965

plus an external dvd drive?

saw it on hotdeals

http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/665005/msi-wind-u100-10in-mini-laptop-refu

TBH i would wait for a 'proper' laptop deal to come up

i got a basic dell vostro for not much over £200

this is about your budget

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/prods/Laptops/Novatech/XPL.html

Bowling_4_Gold

For £4 more, I would recommend this. Comes with Windows 7 (newest Microsoft Operating System) as opposed to Windows XP, which is around 8 years old now.

You can then get this drive for under £20 for him to watch his films on.

Note that he won't really be able to play proper games on this, as it is really only meant for web browsing, documents, DVDs etc.

flossy_splodge

socks_uk wrote: »

My utterly honest answer would be... a second hand one! Sorry for being so blunt but if he has had gadgets such as an xbox and a DS and has now had enough of it and now WANTS a laptop, how long until he sells that for the next gadget.

OK, I may be wrong and he saved every penny to originally buy the xbox or DS himself but my friend's boy was bought every new PSP, xbox, wii going for birthdays and Christmas and he sells them later because 'he doesn't use them anymore'!

I'll hide now while everybody tells me to shut up! -x-

Couldn't agree more, frankly, in fact I'd go further and say NO.
How about he spends time actually WITH his grandparent(s) or , shock horror, outside with friends etc.
Whoever thought it ok that because a 9 year old 'wants' so he 'gets'.
No wonder the upcoming generation are often so incredibly selfish and self serving.
They're being brought up to believe if they want it they should 'have it'
Dreadful.
Rant over.

flossy_splodge

lisae03 wrote: »

Oh so no Dvd Drive, thats how useless I am! Really want something with advd drive so he can watch films when we are on the train etc.
Will have a browse at the recommended sights later when hubby gets up, he know a bit more than me.

Socks you know usually everything he has gaming wise is second hand, normally bought off ebay but with a laptop we were worried that we would end up buying a rubish one that is slow or has a virus etc so thought if we got a new one it would be better to play it safe.

What is paid for it is not exactly the pont - it's the principle of a 9 year old having his own laptop.

lisae03

flossy_splodge wrote: »

Couldn't agree more, frankly, in fact I'd go further and say NO.
How about he spends time actually WITH his grandparent(s) or , shock horror, outside with friends etc.
Whoever thought it ok that because a 9 year old 'wants' so he 'gets'.
No wonder the upcoming generation are often so incredibly selfish and self serving.
They're being brought up to believe if they want it they should 'have it'
Dreadful.
Rant over.

To be fair he has just got rid of 2 of his gaming consoles to fund this laptop therefore making a sacrifice because we would simply not just buy him one. You are obviously stuck in the past with your narrow minded views. The title of the thread was simply 'Advice on the best laptop to buy for a 9 year old?' not pros and cons of my son having a laptop' I feel a laptop is more mature in the way that he can write his stories on Microsoft Word and he can use it to do his do his homework online without us all arguing over the fmily pc. I don't have to justify myself to you, I'm not the first parent to allow a child a laptop, times are changing.

spud17

Plenty of decent, but second hand laptops here, many are 'business' (better build ?) models, hence they are still going strong after a few years.

http://www.bigpockets.co.uk/cat.php?search=Laptops&nav=227