notebook or laptop

amanda47

Can someone advise me what would be best for my DD who is ten years old, laptop or notebook I have no idea I'm clueless.
she wants one to help with her home work when she moves schools next year. Thank you.

Cisco001

What are you talking about???
notebook = laptop

Do you have budget in mind? Or just grab a cheap one?
Would you consider refurb product?
Can I assume there would be no gaming & standard 15.6" would fit?
And I assume you will be OK to shop online?

westy22

Laptop and notebook are basically the same thing. The main choices available today are tablet (iPad etc); notebook or laptop (range of screen sizes and weights); Chromebook.

To some extent it will depend whether your DD is just using it at home or intends to take it into school with her. Personally, I would rule out a tablet as it is designed more for entertainment than work.

Chromebooks are fine but you need to have access to WiFi to use them effectively. Also the Chrome Docs software may not be fully compatible with the programmes they use at school i.e. Word, PowerPoint etc.

Best value available is likely to be a 15.4 inch laptop but it will be quite heavy to carry around. An 11 inch laptop is much smaller and lighter but will probably not have a CD/DVD drive.

amanda47

westy22 wrote: »

Laptop and notebook are basically the same thing. The main choices available today are tablet (iPad etc); notebook or laptop (range of screen sizes and weights); Chromebook.

To some extent it will depend whether your DD is just using it at home or intends to take it into school with her. Personally, I would rule out a tablet as it is designed more for entertainment than work.

Chromebooks are fine but you need to have access to WiFi to use them effectively. Also the Chrome Docs software may not be fully compatible with the programmes they use at school i.e. Word, PowerPoint etc.


Best value available is likely to be a 15.4 inch laptop but it will be quite heavy to carry around. An 11 inch laptop is much smaller and lighter but will probably not have a CD/DVD drive.

Right I see still lost LOL. my budget is about £400 she won't be taking it to school just to use in the house for homework etc and take to her dads on the weekend.
Will have to ask her about the dvd ? but she wants word, and power point etc? thank you for your help.

amanda47

Cisco001 wrote: »

What are you talking about???
notebook = laptop

Do you have budget in mind? Or just grab a cheap one?
Would you consider refurb product?
Can I assume there would be no gaming & standard 15.6" would fit?
And I assume you will be OK to shop online?

Budget is £400 ! no I don't want to grab a cheap one.
no I don't want a refurb product.
Yes OK to shop on line.

Thank you.

westy22

Well then, a 15.6 inch laptop will be just fine.

Anything like this or a similar spec would be a good buy:

http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/hp-pavilion-touchsmart-15-n070sa-15-6-touchscreen-laptop-21729450-pdt.html

The best (free) option for a MS Office compatible suite to provide word processing, spreadsheet and presentation programmes would be to download Open Office from the internet once you have the laptop.

scheming_gypsy

do you mean NETbook or laptop?

For a ten year old a netbook will probably be a better idea.

amanda47

westy22 wrote: »

Well then, a 15.6 inch laptop will be just fine.

Anything like this or a similar spec would be a good buy:

http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/hp-pavilion-touchsmart-15-n070sa-15-6-touchscreen-laptop-21729450-pdt.html

The best (free) option for a MS Office compatible suite to provide word processing, spreadsheet and presentation programmes would be to download Open Office from the internet once you have the laptop.

Thank you that looks a nice one.

boatman

Amanda47, i've sent you a PM message on here.

esuhl

scheming_gypsy wrote: »

For a ten year old a netbook will probably be a better idea.

I'm not sure I'd agree. With netbooks you're paying a premium for portability (which you "pay for" in terms of reduced performance, limited memory capacity, and a lack of optical drive). If the device needs to be small, portable and performance isn't an issue, then a netbook would be fine, but a laptop would be better value-for-money for most, I'd have thought.

westy22 wrote: »

The best (free) option for a MS Office compatible suite to provide word processing, spreadsheet and presentation programmes would be to download Open Office from the internet once you have the laptop.

OpenOffice is pretty-much dead after Oracle p***ed off most of the developers and they left the project and migrated to LibreOffice (which effectively is a continuation of OpenOffice in all but name).

Neither OpenOffice or LibreOffice are fully compatible with MS Office -- there are a number of features in MS Office that are completely unsupported in LibreOffice/OpenOffice, but most people won't notice the difference, and most (uncomplicated) documents will open (more-or-less) identically in either version.

https://www.libreoffice.org/

Hope this helps...

boatman

Adding an optical is no issue, you can buy a usb one for £20, then you only carry it round if you need it.