cheap and cheerful laptop for a 10 year old

[Peter Venkman]

The best thing then Arriba is get the fastest ghz processor you can afford (minimum of 2ghz) make sure its at least a dual core, avoid Intel Celeron & AMD Sempron by choice although the newer Celerons (M) are satisfactory.

Make sure it was at least 2048mb (2gb) memory and 120gb hard disk with built in wifi.....then you cant really go wrong as they are a much of a muchness for a basic lappy.

Windows 7 as a preference or XP but try and avoid Vista if you can.

If you get a Windows 7 lappy try and get one with 3gb memory as it works much better with the more you have.

[Sippo]

It's completely upto you. Obviously they're not brand new.

[pauld]

are those ones on the site pauld recomended no good then?

They're underspecced compared to what you'd expect if you're going out and saying "I want to get myself a new mid-range laptop", but then I had one like a lot of those for work 4 years ago (albeit slightly bigger hard drive) and I was managing to write enterprise-level work management systems on them.

I can see why people would be a bit sniffy about them tbh. They'll do a job for surfing the web etc but you won't be able to run a lot of newer games on them (or on some of the ones with 40Gb hard drives install a lot of software on them). Also they're all running XP which I'm not sure how much longer MS will be supporting it and I don't think they'd be able to run Vista or Windows 7. So if you're confident that all you'll ever need to do is surf the internet, do some word processing and that's about it, yeah sure they'll do a job. But I think most people think that and then find they end up doing all kinds of other stuff as well, in which case they'd find these machines pretty limiting.

I thought about it after I posted and if I'm honest if my kids were a bit older and asking for a laptop, I don't think I'd get them one of these because I think they'd be disappointed.

[Arriba]

thanks for the response paul, but i dunno what to do now.
will wait a bit i think,and see what else is about.

[dporter]

Arriba: why don't you see what free laptops 'phone companies are offering with their dongle deals? You might get a better laptop that way and not have to fork out all at once for it. I know you'll be tied into a contract for the dongle but you could use it too

[Arriba]

Arriba: why don't you see what free laptops 'phone companies are offering with their dongle deals? You might get a better laptop that way and not have to fork out all at once for it. I know you'll be tied into a contract for the dongle but you could use it too

my mrs said the same thing.trouble is i have not long changed my contract,and the mrs is under contract too until may next year.

[jonny72]

You have a few choices;

- Second hand laptop costing £150
- Netbook costing about £200
- New laptop costing £300

My niece and nephew are a similar age and I wouldn't trust them with a netbook or new laptop, as there is a good chance they will; lose it, break it or it would just fall apart. I've always found the build quality to be poor at the budget end of the new market, which is just a recipe for disaster with young kids.

Hence why I stick to the second hand laptop, if you get a Thinkpad they have an excellent build quality which reduces the chances of it getting trashed (they would have cost £1000 plus 3 or 4 years ago). The performance will obviously be poor compared to a new laptop, but they're more than capable for the internet and office - especially if you bump the ram up to 1 or 2 Gb.

Maybe find out what your kid is expecting and if the second hand option would be ok.

[Arriba]

thanks jonny.i'll have a chat with my little un.must admit a thinkpad look the favourite at the moment.

[pauld]

jonny makes some good points which actually probably makes the bigpockets ones more viable - they're refurbs so although they are second hand they'll be in better nick than (for example) buying one second hand off ebay.

[Sippo]

PM'd you Arriba

[stfcinbmth]

Found this on Ad Trader, possibly get the price down a bit

http://www.adtrader.co.uk/computers-and-consoles/laptops/wlan-made-in-japan-family-line-sony-vaio_218690_cpn.html

[Arriba]

bumpage...
bought a cheap recon thinkpad for the little un which does the job well.good value imo.

anyway,i need to install a dvd decoder for it to play dvd's.
are there good free ones available,or do i need to pay for one?
it is an xp pro lappy.

[stfcinbmth]

VLC arriba

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

[Arriba]

is it free,and will it work with windows media player?

[Peter Venkman]

You just need the right codec pack Arriba....download the K-Lite XP full pack from here and it will let you play all DVDs in windows media player.

http://www.codecguide.com/download_kl.htm