Woot.Com - eMachines Laptop

[itlnstln]

http://www.woot.com/

For hardcore use, this is dripping in weaksauce, but for a kid's first lappy this might be nice.  It's cheap, runs Linpus (Linux), and it's cheap.  It's also an eMachines PC, so buyer beware.

[iMav]

For the price, I might be inclined to get a kid a netbook for their first computing instead.  But heck, the more options and price points we have available, the better.

[itlnstln]

For the price, I might be inclined to get a kid a netbook for their first computing instead.  But heck, the more options and price points we have available, the better.

You would probably get better performance and a better monitor as well.  You are right, though, the more competition, the better.

[bhtooefr]

Than a 2.0GHz Celeron? Do remember, the Atom is probably slower per MHz than the P4, and that's assuming it's a P4 Celeron, not a Core 2-based Celeron.

But, the keyboard on a netbook would be better for a kid (small fingers), and it'd be a more kid-friendly form factor.

[Eclairz]

For a kids machine software matters more than hardware unless your gaming of course. Forget about the hardware and just spend as much money on decent software (old or new just something they can use to do stuff).

Remember that these machines maybe slow for standards these days but when i was a kid all i had was a 486 66MHz(0.066GHz for all you younger people today).

But software was what limited what I wanted to do, of course nowadays its a lot easier to get opensource software, but i recommend any version of ms office and photoshop so at least they can learn to find out what are the pros and cons of commercial software and opensource.

A few manuals are always useful, but probably let them play around with it first so that they can learn on their feet and manuals for stuff they can't get their heads around(e.g. special effects in photoshop and programming).

[bhtooefr]

For that matter, when I was a kid, all I had was an Apple //c, and I wouldn't be a geek like I am now if it weren't for it.

<-- that avatar from the Apple II Forever conference in 1984, where the //c was debuted