Laptops for Children

15peter20

Looking to buy my 12 yr old daughter her first laptop (for school work). Any recommendations? I don't want to spend more than £300 and need Windows 7. I value toughness and portability over performance - it will only really be used for school work and surfing.

Also keen to make it as safe as poss for surfing the net - she lives away from me so I can't police her all the time.

Any tips or ideas?

Ta

NervexProf

Can recommend Tech Depot. Bought a Lenovo Think Pad in October last year - just under £270 - after £100 cash back. Came with Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit.

This is a good buy from them currently

http://www.techdepot.co.uk/TD/product/C ... fault.aspx

Comes with 2Gb of memory and has a hard drive that spins at 7200 rather than the normal 5400.

donkykong

Buy a Dell, i have 5 of them, most over 4 years old - tough as boots and reliable.

Pigtail

Laptops are one area where I believe in big brands Toshiba, HP etc.

Although they are generally quite expensive PC world occasionally have good deals online. If you have one near you you can reserve and collect and you'll get the web price.

I would suggest you go an extra £50. At that point you should get a better processor and 3gig of Ram. If you are worried about safety you are probably better to avoid a webcam. My suggestion would be that you get a full-size laptop - that might not meet your requirement for portability, but it will make it easier for doing homework.

Neb

bompington

+1 for Dell - over the years I have bought about 60 for the school, of these only one has had what you might call a disappointing out-of-warranty failure. One has been in continuous use for 10 years now: they take a load of abuse from the toerags too. Usually around £300-350 for a basic 15" version, netbooks are a bit cheaper and more robust if the small screen doesn't bug you (I'm a pixel hog and refuse to use anything less than WUXGA)