Laptops for Christmas

[keepmehappy]

AIBU? I'm kind of expecting to be told I am ...

DP wants to get DS (13) and DD (11) Chromebooks for Christmas. My gut reaction is an instant No - I feel it's not like they need MORE screens in their lives fgs! DD veges in front of the TV far too much already and DS is obviously glued to his phone half the time. And if they had their own laptops they'd take them into their rooms and we'd have much less control over what they saw.

And it's the best part of £500 for two. We could just about stretch, but just seems over-the-top extravagant and flashy. Massive big present just for the sake of it - because that's Just What You Do at Christmas.

But what do people think? Am I being totally old-fashioned and 'holding them back' in some way?! I just don't think it's good for their brains to have so much screen exposure.

I think laptops are dying out to tablets and smart phones. Might come in useful for typing up homework but in general there's not much you can do on a laptop you can't do on a phone.

Arguably it would be good for DS when he does his GCSE's. You can put restrictions on them, including a shut down time, so they won't be watching/ looking at inappropriate things all night.

Personally, I think chromebooks are brilliant. Excellent security, no additional running costs of Microsoft office and Mcaffee etc
Will they use them for homework? They connect via a wireless printer. We've had two, one for me and one for DH and they've been brilliant. Relatively cheap for what they are and for what you'd have to pay for the comparison tech in a windows/Mac computer.

We're a hugely techy family and have computers costing over 3k and I still really rate chromebooks. I think every child should have access to a computer so they learn to touch type correctly and don't just rely on their phones for everything

What kind of computer do they currently use for homework? I'm at the point of praying that my kids laptops last another year as they are a few years old and pretty slow,

I've just bought my 8 yos chromebooks, they need something better than their kindles to access app based stuff for school. They are fab, really recommend them. We paid about £190 each I think.

At 13 and 11 I think you are massively holding them back.

They both just use our big main house computer for schoolwork, where we can see what they're doing.

Holding them back, really?

I'm sure they'd appreciate them but i doubt you are holding them back given that they have the main computer to use. My 14 year old has his own laptop but that's because we don't have a main household computer.

Will they continue to use the big main house one as their work load increases? I don't see how that's going to work out in all honesty. By year 9 I was doing 3+ hours of homework every few nights, even more as GCSE approached.

I could imagine the stress of having to share and negotiate computer time, especially when there's essays and revision involved. I worked for a major technology company for a years, I know work for the Government in the Education sector. Laptops will never be replaced by tablets/phones when it comes to typing, research and day-to-day business. Children need to know how to properly use documents and understand how computers work, not just phones and tablets.

I'm so shocked that my 15 year old SIL knows nothing about browsers, browser extensions, firewalls or how websites work. She's not even confident with google docs or how the online drives work and it's so important that they do understand it. Some children rely too heavily on apps on their phones

I've gone off on a big rant, but basically, if you can afford them, I think every child/teenager should have access to their own laptop

Chromebooks are great but I get your point that if they neither particularly want nor need them then it is a waste. I also think that you could easily get two decent ones for £400 or less.

*now work! (Would have annoyed me!)

I needed laptops for GCSE and A levels, but apart from that they're not really needed for much else these days. iPads/tablets/smartphones seem to have all the functions a laptop does, apart from the Microsoft word/PowerPoint elements.

I wouldn't spend the money, as you said they have a phone and TV already.

Holding them back, really? Only if you want to keep up with the Joneses!

Reallybadidea, I'm sure they would be over the moon if they did appear on Xmas morning! But it would be the same with plenty of other electronics which I think are just overkill.

Exhausted, I would have expected to get DS one in a year/18 mths or so for National 5s (we're in Scotland). But DD, at 11? She doesn't get much homework anyway and would use it to watch endless box sets of Millie Inbetween or whatever it is ...!

I don't really see a problem with laptops for kids.
My DS (9) has an iPad and a laptop plus games console. He's getting into coding and so there are things he can do on the laptop that he can't do with an iPad. He does play games on his laptop and regularly plays online with his school friends, so effectively a cheap playdate as I don't have to feed his pals or drive him anywhere.
The laptop stays in the sitting room as he isn't allowed devices in his bedroom. He's 9 so accepts the rules without any complaints but I guess it might not be so easy when they're older?

I’ve just bought a couple of Chromebooks for my 13/14 year olds in the Black Friday sales. Our old laptops were taking 40 minutes to boot up. They have App based homework to complete and we were having to go in early to complete it in the school library due to the lack of a up to date laptop. Surely every child needs their own fully functioning laptop now? Most written work eg essays, reports, presentations needs laptops. You can’t do a presentation on a phone.
I take my phones off all my teenagers at night and I will do the same with the Chomebooks.

If they are both secondary school age then sharing one desktop is not going to be practical for much longer. They will both need access to a computer for homework. Laptops are better for writing essays and presentations than tablets.

A computer is a great educational tool. Personally, I'd get them a proper computer rather than a Chromebook because the former is less limited but I acknowledge that the average 11/13 year old isn't going to have much interest in programming, ect (although, if they do have any interest, please do support it). If nothing else, developing good typing skills before the homework really starts to bite will be of enormous benefit.

It's a little hard to relate because, at their age, if you were using a computer you definitely had to understand some programming.

Regarding what to buy, might I suggest a refurbished business laptop in place of a chromebook? A fairly competent machine can be bought for around £200 and they can be a lot more rugged. They may have some scratches and marks (watch out for ones that mention screen damage) but any laptop in the hands of an 11 year old is probably going to get beaten up pretty quickly.

This isn't an endorsement of Tier 1 in particular but, just as an example:
www.tier1online.com/728-4290fc1-b/refurbished-thinkpad-x220-i5-2520m-12-5-grade-b-webcam
could be configured with a 120GB SSD (less susceptible to damage if they move them while running than a conventional hard disk) and a 2 year warranty for £204.

For people like teta (not that I wish to call you out specifically, just by way of example). If you have an old laptop that's running slowly, do consider changing out the hard drive for an SSD, reinstalling Windows (from scratch) and seeing how it runs. A lot of machines that run slowly do so due to 'Windows rot', the accumulation of unnecessary programs running during startup, it is possible to manually clean these but doing so takes a little more experience than a straightforwards reinstall (make sure to grab all the drivers from the manufacturer before you begin and save them to a flash drive).

Mine got laptops at 10/11 for starting secondary school. All essays were researched and typed up. They accessed maths resources in the peace and quiet of their own rooms.

It's the way the world works nowadays.

For me, buying anyone a laptop for a Christmas present, is not a "big present", but it's much more like buying someone a new hoover, it's just a tool. Now of course buying a chromebook is an over the top waste of money, so maybe it is like buying a really fancy hoover that is more than you actually need. But it's still buying something that is basically a need not a want.

Of course for many people a computer is not a need, but rarely are secondary school kids in that camp.

Laptops could be a sensible gift, your own family attitudes to gifts is what will really decide if it is a great idea or not. What should really matter is what the kids want for Christmas...

Actually gronky dh had already done all that and the speed did not improve. These were all refurbished laptops that are very old. Chrome books are currently £159 and are brilliant for schools/ uni.I believe they don’t slow down over time which is a major advantage when your son wants to do his Latin homework on Quizlet now not wait 40 minutes for it to load. Even dd1 doing vet. Medicine has a Chromebook ( hp) and it’s a good basic work horse.

If it's really meant mainly for homework then it sounds like your older child might need a laptop now or next year but the younger one doesn't yet. You'll probably get more for your money the longer you wait so buying before it's really needed isn't wise.

That argues for not thinking of it as an Xmas present. Maybe make it the next birthday present for the older one, and promise the younger an equivalent when they reach that age. Or at the start of a school year - we've generally got our DD tech stuff when the need arises eg better laptop when she began sixth form.

Actually gronky dh had already done all that and the speed did not improve.

Terribly sorry, you wouldn't believe the number of laptops I've rescued from being binned by colleagues at work that just needed a clean install. I should have mentioned that a clean install generally won't make it faster than it was when it was brand new (unless there's a lot of bloatware from the manufacturer) but an SSD can help if the HDD is a bottleneck. 40 minutes just seemed like an awfully long time for a laptop to load up with a fresh install. About the only time I've seen a laptop be slower than new with a clean OS (in the absence of serious hardware damage that leads to it crashing spontaneously) was a slightly damaged Southbridge, causing HDD and other mass storage operations to be painfully slow.

Even dd1 doing vet. Medicine has a Chromebook ( hp) and it’s a good basic work horse.

Sorry for disparaging them, I can certainly see the appeal if all that is required is standard office software, a browser and media playback but, as I understand, certain tasks involving additional software (media editing, programming, CAD, certain pieces of scientific software) are rather hard to achieve.

The thing is dh is a skinflint😁. These are binned work computers that are several years old, essentially from the dinosaur age ( like dh.....) .

DS has a Chromebook through school. They all had to have one in his year, from the school, either borrowed or brought. We brought his and he uses it every day at school and home. I would find out if your school has this sort of thing first as we got him a laptop then had to get a Chromebook 6 months later! Ds2 has made good use of the laptop

No way for my kids