What should I look for in buying a computer for my 12 year old son?

Question

My son is 12, almost 13 and is in the 8th grade. He does some gaming, nothing too complicated but I'm sure that will grow. He does use the internet and obviously uses it for school.

I want to buy a computer that may still be useable in 3 years and that will have enough speed and support to keep up with his needs.

I don't want to spend too much maybe $700 or less.

Is this possible? If so, what should I get??

Answer 1

Get a Dell XPS. Get an Intel core 2 Duo processor and 2 Gb of RAM and no less than an 80Gb hard drive.

I always recommend to people that they buy the latest and greatest processor available (currently Intel Core 2 Duo) and the fastest processor and double the recommended amount of memory that Microsoft says you need to run the operating system your going to put on it - in this case Vista.

The monitor and other ancillary stuff are just bells and whistles.

Answer 2

You can buy a decent system for $700 these days.

I would buy a desktop, as they are more "future proof" as you can upgrade components easily.

Pentium Duo Core 2 Processor is good and then you want at least 120 GB HDD, 1 GB (1024 MB) RAM, at least 128 MB video card (for starters, but more is better...256, 512 etc).

Check Costco or Sam's Club (if you're a member) and also checkout bestbuy.com, circuit city.com to get an idea of prices, specs, etc.

You can also build a good computer for under $700.

You need:
Case with power supply
Motherboard (buy one that's designed for CPU you want and that has built-in 10/100 ethernet adapter.
CPU
RAM
Video Card
Hard Drive
DVD-ROM, CD/DVD RW Drive
Operating System (you can buy Windows XP Home for less)

Answer 3

Hi! Walmart Super Center and Sam's Club have E521 Dell computers (tower or bundle packs). This would fit it your price range I believe. You can buy a basic HP printer that prints color prints for under $40.00. Your son will do lots of school reports, etc. Many teachers in middle school give students the option of a book or an interactive CD for science, math, etc. Many teachers accept e-mailed assignments, etc. I hope this helped. Wishing you all well! Oh, you'll want to buy (if it's not included) the MS Office Home/Student 2007 software. Both of you will use it!

Answer 4

I´m 12 and this is the computer I recommend, taking into consideration about what you put about what he does on the pc: An Acer Aspire ASL 100. To save your time by going and look in other pages for the specifications and price i´ll give it to you down below:

Processor AMD Sempron 3400 1.80GHZ
RAM MEMORY 512 MB expandible up to 2 GB
HARD DISK 160GB
VIDEO CARD 128MB
DVD-RW DL CAR READER I-LINK 1394
WINDOWS VISTA HOME BASIC
ETHERNET 10 AND 100
KEYBOARD
MOUSE

MONITOR CRT 17´´ 699.97 (I think that is the price. This is the only thing you have to check in another webpage or in a store)

Hope this helps!!

Answer 5

If you want to spen less than $700 and get a computer that is capable of gaming 3 years from now, you best bet is to build it yourself. I know that sounds intimidating, but everything comes with an instruciton manual, plus you can get help from people at stores like Fry's Electronics, or other computer stores. They can help you make sure all of your parts are compatable with each other and are good quality parts. Otherwise I give it 1.5 years at best if you spend less than $1k.

Answer 6

It is definitely possible, you can find a lot for that price.

To be honest, I'd get him something that YOU can still handle (not financially) and help him with.

You'll get the best advice in a store. Or in more than one.

For games, he'll need good graphics and a large memory.

But there are so many products that I would actually compare them & prices in a store.

Good luck,
Anna

Answer 7

it is definitely possible to get a laptop for about 700$ that can be used for about 3 years.

i would suggest dell, acer, compaq or hp for the price range. there are lots of sales going on for laptops so the best thing to do is wait for a good sale and purchase a good laptop cheap.

check out sites like pricegrabber.com or slickdeals.net to find good deals on laptop. dell also has laptops on sale most of the time. if you want to guarantee that he can use it for 3 years, get an extended protection so that if anything breaks, it is covered. most extended protection does not cover accidental damage such as screen damage, but they have supplemental warranties for that too.

Answer 8

You can get a nice Dell Desktop for $700 or less.

www.dell.com

Answer 9

buy a mac mini dont buy a idiotic and slow pc
hth hope this helps