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When Should You Buy Your Kid A Laptop?

Posted by Zonk on from the diapers-would-make-the-thing-hard-to-use dept.

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.'"

2 of 856 comments (clear)

  1. Worked for me by bigwavejas · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    "Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
    1. Re:Worked for me by cfulmer · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.