First laptop for 11 year old daughter

Cornucopia

NiftyDigits wrote: »

Has battery life been mentioned as being important?? £200 for a Packard Bell Netbook? What is 'money saving' about that?

It's not a £400 laptop. Netbooks have not changed significantly over the past 3 years, so having established that requirement, buying a second-hand/refurbished one should be pretty straightforward.

Unless portability and battery life are of the essence, why pay a laptop price for a Netbook, which is inherently inferior?

In the absence of firm requirements from the OP, I'm imagining what will actually work. These days, most people are running computers that are way over-specced for their actual needs.

The child appears to use the parent's laptop at home, so weight may not be an issue. Neither will size.

Have we established this?

NiftyDigits

Cornucopia wrote: »

It's not a £400 laptop. Netbooks have not changed significantly over the past 3 years, so having established that requirement, buying a second-hand/refurbished one should be pretty straightforward.

In the absence of firm requirements from the OP, I'm imagining what will actually work. These days, most people are running computers that are way over-specced for their actual needs.

Have we established this?

What has a £400 laptop to do with it? I linked to a
£203.98 laptop

I have already linked to a pink Netbook costing £123.98

But why suggest a Netbook for the same price as the laptop already recommended?

Yes.

...is forever borrowing my work laptop....

jaydeeuk1

Pop down local tesco, look for any laptops that come with Windows 7. Ignore the sticker, take one or a selection to the till and see what it scans in at. There have been some crazy bargains this week, lots of pretty decent spec stuff (mainly AMD, some pentium ones) for around £150-£200 in clearance.

I was too late in my local, but friend got a bit luckier.

Failing that, theres always something like this

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Asus-X53U-SX173V-Laptop-15-6ins-3GB-RAM-500GB-Hard-Drive-AMD-C60-Processor-/290897777450?

£224 inc delivery. but at least its a laptop, and new.
1 left though.

zarithia

How about a tablet with an attachable keyboard or something?

NiftyDigits

jaydeeuk1 wrote: »

Pop down local tesco, look for any laptops that come with Windows 7. Ignore the sticker, take one or a selection to the till and see what it scans in at. There have been some crazy bargains this week, lots of pretty decent spec stuff (mainly AMD, some pentium ones) for around £150-£200 in clearance.

I was too late in my local, but friend got a bit luckier.

Failing that, theres always something like this

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Asus-X53U-SX173V-Laptop-15-6ins-3GB-RAM-500GB-Hard-Drive-AMD-C60-Processor-/290897777450?

£224 inc delivery. but at least its a laptop, and new.
1 left though.

It might be 'new', but it is relatively poor in comparison to the other laptops in this thread.

duncan32

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all of the advice. I have ordered the pink Netbook costing £123.98.
I think she will be really happy with it, fingers crossed.
:beer:

Duncan

NiftyDigits

duncan32 wrote: »

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all of the advice. I have ordered the pink Netbook costing £123.98.
I think she will be really happy with it, fingers crossed.
:beer:

Duncan

Seems exactly for what you were looking and at the right price. Battery life isn't great, but that's not a problem if she used it at home.

If she finds it a bit slow when opening programs, try upping the RAM for £12.96.

Video guide

Not sure if all Netbooks have a built in microphone, so if she will use video/audio chat, you made need one

Saint_Andrew

For the £200 budget finding a decent speced machine will be hard; even if refurbished. I don't know what your daughter likes so I'm guessing social media and general browsing?

Your best bet is find yourself a refurbish ThinkPad - T61 is recommenced. There's a number of sellers on eBay and on other sites like Spotbuyer. The builds of the ThinkPads are amazing, they are unbreakable. You'll never have to worry about the screen getting smashed.

Having just used Bing I found the perfect build:
CPU: Intel x2 T7100 @1.80Ghz
RAM: 1GB RAM DDR2 (extendable slot for more memory)
HDD: 80GB (not sure on the frame rates/speeds)
GPU: Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M
OS: Windows XP Pro-SP3 (simple, fast and effective - wish I still had XP)

http://www.studentcomputers.co.uk/IBM_Lenovo_ThinkPad_T61_Laptop_-_Refurbi_1411008.html

VoucherMan

Saint_Andrew wrote: »

Your best bet is find yourself a refurbish ThinkPad

Already suggested that in post 13.

But if you read back the 2 posts before yours you'll see the op has already ordered a netbook.

NiftyDigits

Saint_Andrew wrote: »

For the £200 budget finding a decent speced machine will be hard; even if refurbished. I don't know what your daughter likes so I'm guessing social media and general browsing?

Your best bet is find yourself a refurbish ThinkPad - T61 is recommenced. There's a number of sellers on eBay and on other sites like Spotbuyer. The builds of the ThinkPads are amazing, they are unbreakable. You'll never have to worry about the screen getting smashed.

Having just used Bing I found the perfect build:
CPU: Intel x2 T7100 @1.80Ghz(CPU Benchmark 1042)
RAM: 1GB RAM DDR2 (extendable slot for more memory)
HDD: 80GB (not sure on the frame rates/speeds)
GPU: Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M
OS: Windows XP Pro-SP3 (simple, fast and effective - wish I still had XP) Supported for another year at most. four month warranty.

http://www.studentcomputers.co.uk/IBM_Lenovo_ThinkPad_T61_Laptop_-_Refurbi_1411008.html

Seriously?

Toshiba Satellite C850-101 for £203.98

Processor type : Intel® Celeron® Processor B815
clock speed : 1.60 GHz(CPU Benchmark 1355)
Front Side Bus : 1,333 MHz
3rd level cache : 2 MB
Operating System / Platform Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-bit (pre-installed, Toshiba-HDD recovery)

Design Colour colour : Matt Black Finish with textured pattern, black keyboard
System memory standard : 2,048 (1x) MB
maximum expandability : 8,192 MB
technology : DDR3 RAM (1,333 MHz)
Hard disk capacity : 320 GB
drive rotation : 5,400 rpm
DVD Super Multi drive (Double Layer) compatibility : CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-R(DL), DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+R(DL), DVD+RW, DVD-RAM
maximum speed : Read: 24x CD-ROM, 8x DVD-ROM/ Write: 24x CD-R, 4x CD-RW, 10x HS CD-RW, 24x US CD-RW, 8x DVD-R, 6x DVD-R (Double Layer), 6x DVD-RW, 8x DVD+R, 6x DVD+R (Double Layer), 8x DVD+RW, 5x DVD-RAM
type : DVD Super Multi (Double Layer) drive
Display size : 39.6cm (15.6”)
type : Toshiba TruBrite® HD TFT High Brightness display with 16 : 9 aspect ratio and LED backlighting
internal resolution : 1,366 x 768
Graphics adaptor type : Intel® HD Graphics
memory : up to 781 MB shared memory with 2 GB system memory installed, and up to 1,696 MB with 4 GB system memory, (with pre-installed 64-bit operating system)
memory type : shared
Internal video modes The following internal video modes are supported: :
resolution : 1366 x 768
Max External Video Modes Max Resolution : 2,048 x 1,536
Max Refresh Rate : 100 Hz
Non-interlaced resolution with max refresh rate : 1,600 x 1,200
Interfaces 1 × external monitor
1 × RJ-45
1 × external microphone
1 × headphone (stereo)
2 × USB 2.0
1 × Multi-Card Reader
(supports SD™ Card up to 2 GB, miniSD™/microSD™ Card with adapter up to 2 GB, SDHC™ Card up to 32 GB, SDXC™ Card up to 64 GB and MultiMedia Card™ up to 2 GB)
1 × HDMI-out supporting 1080p signal format
1 × integrated 1.0MP HD Web Camera (1,280 x 800) with built-in microphone
1 × USB 3.0
Expansion 2 × memory slots
Wireless communication Compliancy : Wi-Fi®
Network Support : 802.11b/g/n
Manufacturer : Realtek
Wireless Technology : Wireless LAN
Version : RTL8188CE
Wired communication topology : Fast Ethernet LAN
speed : 10BASE-T/100BASE-TX
Sound system supported audio format : 24-bit stereo
speakers : built-in stereo speakers with SRS Premium Sound HD™
manufacturer : Realtek ALC269Q-VB6-GR
Keyboard keys : 102
Windows keys : Yes
special features : Flat matt black keyboard and 10-digit numeric keypad
Pointing device type : Touchpad with multi-touch control supporting various scroll, zoom and launch functionalities at your fingertips.
Battery technology : lithium-ion
maximum life : up to 5h30min (Mobile Mark™ 2007)
12 month warranty

Superior to the old, outdated ThinkPad in every way apart from build quality.

Perhaps also worth a mention is that until the 7th of May Argos are running a buy 2 and get a 10% discount. Bringing the above laptop to perhaps £184.