Reply to Computer rec for middle schooler

Forum Index » Tweens and Teens

Reply to "Computer rec for middle schooler "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]$1-1.5k is the sweet spot for PC laptops.  This will get you a well-built business laptop (Lenovo Thinkpad, Dell Latitude, HP Pro/Elitebook).  These are durable and repairable.  Get the extended warranty and accidental damage service (from the manufacturer, not a third party).  Laptops are somewhat delicate, and get carried around, dropped, etc.  You can save money by buying refurbished and then adding the warranty later (Lenovo lets you do this and has an Outlet store...not sure about Dell or HP).  Last year's model is fine.  Don't go older.  These will be great for school and programming.  They tend to not have dedicated GPUs and aren't the best for gaming (older or simpler games are fine, but not the latest Call of Duty or Cyberpunk or anything like that).  Most will now accept external GPUs if desired, but you would want an external high-refresh-rate monitor to take advantage of that.

As an alternative, for about the same price, you could get a PC desktop that would be better and more powerful for gaming and a Chromebook (or older, cheaper laptop).  Check to see if Chromebooks would work for your school's curriculum.  They are good for web browsing and web apps.  For programming, you would need to enable developer mode, which would give access to a full Linux shell.  This might interest your kid, or might be a total turn-off.  Or just buy a better desktop and skip the laptop if your kid diesn't need portability.

Don't buy the following:
- cheap, consumer-grade laptop ($500-ish) (these are not well built, won't last, and generally are not repairable); buy a used business laptop if you are on a budget
- high-end workstation or gaming laptop ($2k+) (very few people need both portability and performance, and performance at this range is way overpriced relative to what desktop machines can do)

A sub-$1k gaming laptop might be another option.  These tend to be repairable and upgradable, but at the cost of battery life.  You are lucky if the batteries in these will last more than 2-3 hours.  That might be fine for some people, but not for many.  They are also somewhat fragile, relative to business laptops.  They will be better for gaming, however.  These always go on sale, so never pay full price for them.  Black Friday is the best time to look for something like this, but Labor Day might be good, too.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics