which laptop make and what does it need???? For a 9 year old boy. HELP!

[MrsS01]

Any advise on whats a decent-ish laptop/netbook to get and what hard drive operating system etc do I need? He likes to go on the internet, play internet games and some old pc games. Play music/watch iplayer etc. Don't want to spend more than 150-200 so am happy to get a refurbished one, preferably with a warranty.

Don't get a netbook, I got dd one and she never uses it. It was a topspec toshiba one but is slow and freezes a lot. Get a laptop.

thanks Viva - what kind of speccy things am I looking for?

You want to be looking at the best processor you can as this will affect the speed of the laptop. Then as many gb of ram as you can as that's your memory, then as big a hard drive as you can get.

I'd be willing to compromise a touch on processor speed but I wouldn't be so willing to do that with memory. It's no good having a fast processor if the machine is constantly swapping it's memory to and from disk as it runs out of room.

How much memory depends on which version of Windows you go for, and that will in part be driven by the games that he wants to play. How old is old? Any titles in particular?

can you have a look at the laptopcentre.co.uk and recommend a refurbished laptop, its all over my head!

He likes playing the sims 2 and 3/ age of empires 2 - but also likes older games - jimmy neutron old pc games for 98/XP

Games like that (which I wouldn't really call "old", old games to me came on tapes or proper floppy disks) do seem to have some problems running under Windows 7. There's a lot of discussion about the tweaks and fixes people need to do to get them running.

So if those games are important I'd suggest trying to get a laptop with Windows XP on it rather than either Vista or Windows 7. Windows XP also isn't as demanding on a machine, so you might be able to get away with a lower spec...

Yes, would agree, that on the games front, a s/h XP laptop would probably be best option. Check Ebay. Some businesses sell laptops there with XP Home or XP Pro installed, though not sure a laptop is ideal (battery life, esp for an older laptop battery, might disappoint if playing for a few hours... break for a meal and find that battery dead when he returns, possibly losing game).