Back in my day if you were very lucky you had a Sinclair Spectrum in your bedroom etc. etc. Enough of that. What does every young person need these days (OK, one of the many things every young person or teenager needs). A laptop of course. When buying a laptop for a teenager (or even younger member of the family), it's hard to go wrong these days as most laptops come complete with wireless broadband adaptors and bluetooth built in. Even if they don't have some of the laptop specifications required, you can buy addons and USB plug in adaptors for almost pennies (for example, even if the laptop you buy doesn't have bluetooth included, you can buy a bluetooth adaptor for just a few pounds so it definitely isn't a dealbreaker when shopping around for a laptop).
A laptop computer is definitely firmly in the christmas top ten presents for kids these days. As a parent, if you're not up on the latest laptop whys and what-nots, you mainly just need to decide how much you want to spend, and roughly what sort of laptop you want to buy. If buying a new laptop and you don't have a lot of experience or knowledge about specifications, we would recommend buying something from a reputable computer retailer that costs around £400 and it's really hard to go wrong. The fact is, you can buy a great laptop these days that will do most things for well under £300, but it might look a bit basic, and, as fashion becomes a factor in laptop design, you might want to play safe and pay a little more for a slightly better specification (such as a bigger hard drive, better graphics card or more Ram (random access memory). Memory is so cheap to upgrade though that it's not really worth worrying about getting maximum ram when you buy a new laptop as long as you check before you buy to ensure that the new laptop can actually take more ram (as some low cost new netbooks can't be upgraded).
Here's our selection of sub £500 laptops, priced from high to low. If in doubt, buy one that looks good for a little more. Better still, get your kids to look at the specs in detail to make sure they're happy with Santa's order book.
What to look for when buying a new laptop as a christmas present:
- A 17" screen is great if it is being used in a bedroom and not carried about, but it's a real pain if it has to be portable (i.e. taken into school or college) as they are VERY heavy!
- Get one with at least 2gb or RAM, and preferably 4GB.
- Beware of "netbooks" with 10" screens. They are intended as ultra portable net surfers for light work use. If buying a laptop as a christmas gift, you probably want a notebook or laptop with a bit more power and a bigger screen (for "homework") so go with at least a 14" screen, but ideally a 15.4" screen.
- Most modern laptops have very decent built in sound and video capabilities for everyday usage but check whether your dearest intends to use it for any graphics intensive purposes (for example, online games) as you might have to raise your spec a little to get something to do the job.
- Make sure your chosen laptop has a DVD writer, or better still, a Blu-Ray player and a DVD writer. Most come with at least a DVD writer as standard, but you don't want to be stuck being only able to burn to compact discs (which only hold around 700mb of data as opposed to roughly 3-5GB on a DVD).
Have a look below and buy a great value laptop for christmas now.
Satellite L450D-13X
£329.00
TOSHIBA
This Toshiba Satellite L450D-13X is powered by the AMD Sempron™ Processor for Notebooks SI-42, which enables the smooth running of Microsoft's Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium operating system. This all-round efficient laptop is complete with a 2GB Memory and a 250GB Hard Drive, making both its capacity, speed and operating ability first-class. Gracefully finished in alluring silver and equipped with an ample 15.6-inch widescreen LCD with a High Definition resolution, the... More
