Is anyone getting their older DC a laptop for Christmas?

[bigTillyMint]

I have promised DD(14) a laptop for Christmas, but I am as to what to get. She will need it for homework, but mainly for YouTube/FB/streaming TV/films.

Heeelllllpppp!!!

If you have promised her it why not just let her choose .My eldest is having a Chromebook ,at least he will be if he ever makes a decision about which one and lets me know !

Flora, she's just as clueless as me

Apparently you can't install Microsoft Office on chromebooks - would this be a problem with school work. And printing, I wonder?

Best advice is go to a shop and tell them what you want to use it for and get some recommendations ,then go home and compare prices .Dont get suckered into paying for extras in PC world. We have had Toyota laptops in the past and they're quite sturdy and last well ,my son currently has a Lenovo which is 2 yrs old and apparently falling to bits ,although I haven't seen it myself and he is prone to exaggeration.

I would go with Asus X102BA Touch Laptop for £299.99, which comes with Office 2013 Home and Student version with full functions of Word 2013, Excel 2013, PowerPoint 2013 and OneNote 2013.

The laptop itself has:

• AMD A4-1200 1GHz
• 4GB RAM + 500GB HDD
• 10.1" Touchscreen
• HD Webcam + AMD HD 8180G
• Windows 8 + Microsoft Office 2013

is cheaper at £279.99 however it doesn't come with Office (which is expensive by itself) and the fact it doesn't have a USB 3.0 port. The Asus is also lighter. Guess it depends how much of a geek your daughter is :P

Ooh, thanks for the links milk! DD is not at all geeky. None of us are! TBH, I don't think she has to do a huge amount of homework on her laptop - just the odd document plus My Maths and research mainly.

Flora, I was looking at the Lenovo Yoga which has a touch-screen, but I am hoping to get something that lasts longer than 2 years. Is that unrealistic?! They are very impatient with technology, aren't they? DD always moans about how slow the laptop she is using ATM is and how it keeps freezing - not sure that can be avoided?!

Our computer geek at work says I should look for one with intelcore i3 at least - don't know how these other systems compare...

I think Lenovo are a good make ,what I would say is that for a laptop a 10" screen is pretty small ,standard laptop is 13.5+ ,so for doing work the one milk recommended may be a bit small ,more of a net book ( as they used to be called) .

Open office is free to download,and works with all existing Office files,so
don't pay for Office

Ohh interrregnum, that is exactly the kind of advice I need! Do you mean that you can open documents done on say microsoft word on it and then edit them, etc?

Flora, that's really helpful - does the smaller screen size mean the size of the text is reduced, or there is less of a document on the screen?