Laptop for 11 year old - Advice on spec please

lisa76

So I'm looking for a laptop for my daughter (11) to carry her through school. She won't use it for gaming but for school work. It'll need Office and Windows 10 I guess.

One thing she's very specific over is that it has to look like a Mac (which obviously I'm not buying her at this age - I can't afford it!). What she means is that the mouse pad can't have buttons - it has to be just a square (hope you understand what I mean).

I'm thinking around £350 ish - and I've got Curry's vouchers so that would be my preferred supplier.

Any help would be appreciated - like what are the basic requirements I need (RAM etc etc).

Thanks in advance.

agrinnall

Whatever you buy I'd start saving up now because I'd be surprised if it survives being dragged into and around school every day for the next 7 years.

It's unlikely that many of us would advise buying from Currys (although they were fine with a last printer I bought recently) but the vouchers probably mean it is the money saving option. My suggestion would be to see if there is something within your budget with a SSD rather than a mechanical hard drive to reduce the risk of problems through dropping or bumping it. And before paying for Office check with the school to find out if they are taking part in the Microsoft Office in Education programme that may ally installation of Office free of charge.

https://products.office.com/en-gb/student/office-in-education

Marktheshark

Currys are great, until.. something goes wrong then you have to sue them to make them obey consumer law.

lisa76

agrinnall wrote: »

Whatever you buy I'd start saving up now because I'd be surprised if it survives being dragged into and around school every day for the next 7 years

https://products.office.com/en-gb/student/office-in-education

Oh it's not going to be taken back and forth school everyday - it'll be sat on her desk in her bedroom.

I think she may fancy one of the ones that detaches - but I wonder about their durability.

If Curry's are a no-no then I don't mind going where you advise - I need a new washing machine so my vouchers can always go towards that!

tafelmoneysaver

The answer to this question depends very much on the exact demands of your daughter and likely that every other poster will have their own preference. You'll need to think about usage over the next 7 years which will be very difficult to predict.

If she will always use the device at home then I would also suggest you look at either a Chromebook or one of the larger screen Android or Windows10 tablets. You can connect a Bluetooth keyboard for "proper" typing. No need for a mousepad because they have a touchscreen and you can use Google Docs for basic word processing and excel but I don't know if these will be too basic for specific school tasks.

My advice would be:
1) Ask (ICT/Computing) teachers what might be good options
2) Ask other parents who might have an older child in the same school
3) What do other kids have and are how useful are they for school tasks

Another thing that might be useful would be to review homework from the past few weeks and see which of those would have been done differently with a laptop, tablet, desktop, etc. Don't forget that these are tools to aid learning and they don't work for everyone.

gazter

Anything with at least an i3 cpu, dont be conned into buying any of the extras. You dont need their cloud, their overprice anti virus, or their office 365, or their setup services or non existent support packages.

The Office 365 your child will likely get for free from their school email login.
https://products.office.com/en-GB/student/office-in-education

gazter

lisa76 wrote: »

Oh it's not going to be taken back and forth school everyday - it'll be sat on her desk in her bedroom.

I think she may fancy one of the ones that detaches - but I wonder about their durability.

If Curry's are a no-no then I don't mind going where you advise - I need a new washing machine so my vouchers can always go towards that!

Argos are fantastic. Currys are ok as long as you go in determined to not purchase anything else other than the device. Think of them like mogwais begging to be fed after midnight. They will persistently pester and 'advise' you that you need XYZ.

Order it online for pickup, pay at counter and leave. This will do the job perfectly well.

[FONT=&quot]http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/lenovo-g50-15-6-laptop-black-10139332-pdt.html[/FONT]

paddyrg

Curry's are fine, the prices are very much more competitive these days than in their deep history. The sales staff are a mixed bunch, but they should have someone nominated to be the more computer savvy in the store, and each time I've been in, it hasn't been a race to sell me the dearest model, but actually suggestions based on what the user needed. Steer clear of the add-ons like cloud, antivirus, etc., although if you need to buy an Office licence (ask at school first, they will get FAR better deals) sometimes the packages can work out cheaper, and you can just bin the AV and Cloud installs.

No hardware will last 7 years convincingly. Anything you but now will be woefully underpowered in 7 years, and that's pretty much when she might be doing anything that required any proper computing power. Right now she doesn't need anything special, you'll replace it in a few years anyway through damage, obsolescence, and changing fashions!

Form factor will drive price. Want a computer that looks and feels like a £1500 laptop and expect to pay for that. Something chunky and ugly will be cheaper but substantially better value, especially if it's going to live in a bedroom. It'll be heavier, not be milled from magnesium but made from plastic, internal design will be a bit more generic and less carefully juggled to get the best from every cubic millimetre, but this is actually no bad thing. The higher priced devices have tighter tolerances meaning they have more expensive repairs. Rather, if a £1000 laptop dies, you might spend £250 on a repair. If a £250 laptop dies, you might just upgrade as frankly technology and bang-for-buck will march on.

Look at OneDrive or Google Drive or Dropbox or copy.com for an effective online rolling backup of anything in the special folder - if there's a hardware fault with a computer, you just buy a new one, sync it back to Google Drive (or whichever you used), and all your documents are there waiting for you after a few minutes/hours. I use these services extensively now as they mean I can work from any computer (even a phone or tablet) if I need to, with minimal inconvenience.

Cutting to the chase, I'd be inclined to get a cheap and cheerful laptop which she can decorate with stickers/whatever, and expect to get a replacement when it dies down the road. If looks are all that count, expect to pay disproportionately high prices for the amount of computer you'll get.

Hope some of this is helpful

lisa76

Thanks all - some great advice and suggestions

20aday

OP My Mum needed a new laptop earlier on in the year and we stumbled across this:

http://www.tesco.com/direct/acer-es1-512-156-laptop-intel-celeron-4gb-ram-500gb-black/759-2255.prd?pageLevel=&skuId=759-2255

(Argos no longer stock it unfortunately) but for the spec it performs very well for my Mum's usage.

Fightsback

20aday wrote: »

OP My Mum needed a new laptop earlier on in the year and we stumbled across this:

http://www.tesco.com/direct/acer-es1-512-156-laptop-intel-celeron-4gb-ram-500gb-black/759-2255.prd?pageLevel=&skuId=759-2255

(Argos no longer stock it unfortunately) but for the spec it performs very well for my Mum's usage.

Avoid over priced and under performing rubbish like this, very poor celeron N2840 processor.






For an extra £35 get something with an i3 processor which is approximately 2.5 -3x the processing CPU power of the dreadful celeron, not to mention a vastly superior integrated graphics processor.

http://www.box.co.uk/products/cat/Computing~B~Laptops~B~Laptops/refine/46562~144411

This is just illustrative of pricing and not necessarily an endorsement of a particular company. Do also shop around on places like the argos outlet on ebay.