When Should You Buy Your Kid A Laptop?

GuitarNeophyte writes "Marketwatch News reports that some people say that we should be buying our kids laptop computers well before they get into the higher education realm. Even as early as middle school. From the article: 'These days, it's almost unquestioned that college-bound students will tote laptops back to school. For parents of high school and middle school kids, the decision to invest in a laptop is far from given.'"

Comments

Worked for me

[bigwavejas]

With the affordability of laptops I opted to purchase my child one as opposed to an Xbox or PS2. My thinking was it allowed him not only to play games, but also familiarize himself with the keyboard, internet, word processing program, etc. He quickly became proficient and amazed me how much I actually learned from *him* about computers. I was a bit reluctant at first letting him use the internet; however, we had a discussion on what's acceptable and I have parental control on the internet. I think in today's society you're doing your kid an injustice if you wait until their high school years to introduce them to this technology.

Re:Worked for me

[cfulmer]

I'm in law school right now and laptops are a must for most classes. Here are some indications of when they'll be useful:

1. There are not many diagrams, drawings, formulas or charts put on the board. While I can type much faster than I can write, I cannot use computer drawing tools as easily as I can draw by hand.

2. You need to shuffle a lot of papers. In Law School, you read thousands of court cases. While these are generally edited and aggregated into casebooks, professors often supplement the casebooks with additional cases, articles, &c. Because all the cases are available electronically, I have found it much easier to download them in PDF and use Adobe Acrobat to write them up virtually.

3. You need to search. Face it, pouring through 100 pages of hand-written notes for something does not work well in class. Computers excel at this.

4. You're disciplined. There are a million times more distractions on a computer than there ever were on paper. When I was an undergrad (86-90), there were a few people who read the newspaper in the back of class, but that was about it. Now, then can be playing poker, IM'ing each other, reading the news, writing e-mails, etc.... If you're not disciplined enough to keep your use of these things down, then the laptop may be a problem.

5. Lousy handwriting. Not being about to read your own handwriting makes reviewing hand-written very difficult. The only way that's going to be bad on a laptop is if you're a horrible typist or you use a bad font.

Re:Worked for me

[Drakonite]

Their solitaire during class was supporting social promotion (grade inflation, etc.).

No, what promotes social promotion is homework based grades and a lack of testing. If social promotion bothers you then bitch at your teacher to base grades off of tests and grade on a curve.

Then if these people on laptops really are just fucking around they'll fail the class and make things a bit easier for everyone else due to the curve, but if they are like me they'll pass the tests and not have to do the piles of homework designed for those that learn slowly.

Either way, grades will become a measure of whether you understand the material rather than whether you can afford to pay someone who understand the material to do your homework for you.

Re:Worked for me

[phaggood]

> wish for better battery life

If all you're doing is a lecture dump via keyboard, then you may want to consider a Palm + Keyboard. Then you're looking at 10-15hrs between charges, and you can upload directly to your PC/laptop later. I know the included memo editor was small a few years ago, but there are other editor options (even free) that could suffice.

Used Laptops

[RobertB-DC]

My first thought was, "When their rich uncle gets out of the poor farm." But I've actually been considering a used laptop from RetroBox -- they dispose of corporate assets and have laptops starting under $50 -- though you'll have to get over $100 before you can get anything over 300 MHz and 128 MB.

Of course, all you bargain hunters will now swoop in and grab them... where's that "back" button?

Re:Used Laptops

[lactose99]

I second this. Over the last two years I've bought 5 laptops from Retrobox for myself and various family/friends. Reasonably priced and all problems are mentioned up-front. Just be sure to price a spare battery on eBay after buying one, as the battery is not warrantied and my success rate with Retrobox's batteries are less than 50%.

I just bought a ThinkPad A30P from these guys with a 15" 1600x1200 UXGA screen for under $500 and its the best computer purchase I've made this year.

Answer: In Cobb County, they won't have to!

[955301]

Yes, that's right folks. Because I'm buying their kids a laptop. Me and my closest friends, geographically speaking. Our taxes are buying a bunch of kids that I don't have equipment that will be obsolete real soon which most of them will never know how to truly use. Except as email and chat hardware of course.

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7416

So don't worry about it! Move to Georgia, specifically Cobb County. Sure, we'll force your kids to listen to Creationism being equated to Natural Selection, but they'll be hearing it from an mp3 on their very own iBooks!

Re:Hmm..

[Teja]

A really good idea would be for school boards to develope a little knoppix type system that could be provided to kids as nessecary - on a DVD-RW perhaps, to allow for saving their projects.

Such systems already exist. There is Edubuntu and also some Live CD's based on Knoppix with focus on education. I'm sure others exist, but those just a few.

Clamshell iBook...closest thing to kid-proof

[MsGeek]

If you're going to get a kid a laptop, I suggest you go the cheapest and most durable route possible.

Voila: http://wegenermedia.com/ibk300bby.htm

These are clamshell iBooks, which are basically designed for K-12 kids. They are made with that Fischer-Price ABS plastic for a reason: durability. Wegener Media refurbs iBooks. They are a bear to upgrade, so have Wegener stuff the iBook with all the RAM you can (512MB SO-DIMM, bringing the onboard RAM up to 544MB) and a nice fat hard drive. When I got mine upgraded by them, I got a Fujitsu 30GB drive.

These won't run Tiger without something like X Post Facto to convince Tiger to install, so stick with Panther. Current patch level is 10.3.9. MS Office 2003 will not install on an 800x600 resolution, so look for Office v.X Student-Teacher which is very happy running on a Clamshell.

This is not a good gaming lappie under X. ATI Rage Acceleration, which allowed these machines to play games like Unreal Tournament (1999) and Quake III Arena under Mac OS 9.x, was not carried over to X. There was a whole class-action lawsuit over this, and if you have an old-school iBook or a Beige G3 or a Wallstreet PowerBook you can get the cost of X refunded if you turn your disks in. However, in some cases, this inability to do 3D Acceleration might actually be a good thing.

You should be able to get away with a fully loaded Clamshell iBook for about $500. Yeah, you can also get a new Dell Inspiron lappie for a little more. But that Dell will be toast after a few weeks of being toted around in a kid's backpack. They are flimsy even for adults. Give one to a kid and it's dead meat.

Re:When? Never.

[The Cisco Kid]

I think you may be looking for this:

http://www.resurgence.org/resurgence/issues/quince 205.htm