Laptop for year 10

[sighbynight]

My son, who has mild learning issues, needs a laptop for school as his typing is a hell of a lot better than his writing. I wondered if anyone could recommend something? I've been told that Chromebooks are good, but I'm pretty unknowledgeable in this area. I don't want something that will be more of a distraction than a help. I don't think intense YouTube viewing will assist him much.

This is very vague, I'm sorry. But if anyone can shine any light, I'd be very grateful.

Chromebooks are great but he'll still be able to access YouTube and anything else distracting. But, light and fast and affordable. Only wish I could work out to print from it

I would assume that school would block access to youtube etc. And I could block it at home during homework hours. The printing might be an issue though!

DD has a notebook for school, can't remember what, I'll ask her when she comes in. We got it pre-owned from ebay or somewhere.

She keeps it at school to save carrying it home all the time. She has a weak back and even with a light device in a rucksack she found it a bit much.

She prints out at school or brings home stuff on a memory stick to print.
She has access to a separate laptop at home for normal schoolwork.

Only uses it for wordpad. If she needs excel or whatever, then the rest of the class will too and will use the school computers. Does not need internet access on it.

Uses wordpad as that is what she has to use in exams (not word due to spelling checkers etc) so needed to get used to it. Needs to know how to produce fancy accents for the MFLs but there are control-alt keys that do that.

You need fast boot-up time, a good battery life, and a decent keyboard. Also robustness in case it is dropped.

why would you assume the school would block YouTube?

Is that the norm in UK schools?

I regularly show YT clips to enhance a lesson.

(Sorry, I'm not addressing the issue at all here)

Thanks Teenandtween. That all makes sense.

Social networking, gaming, file sharing etc sites are blocked on the student wifi. I'll be surprised if Youtube isn't too. I'm sure teachers can override it or access another wifi stream.