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Hi, I am buying a laptop for my son as an xmas pressent.
I am buying it after the xmas period so that i can get it cheeper. it must be good at surfing the web and performing such tasks as the huge amount of homework he gets. it also must be a great multimedia performer and pereferably have bluetooth. my buget is £500-£600
thanks
harry 7567

In short, get the one with the best screen and the longest warranty of that screen.
You will get a lot of opinions here.
We focus on reliability. Kids want "Hot" or fancy. Whenever you buy a laptop, you must know that it will eventually fail or have expensive problems. Here are our views based upon reliability and good sense. You must remember that 97% of all Laptops are made in one Province in China... many times in the same building with other brands. The innards are the same. Others are made in Singapore, Philippines, Hungary, and Mexico... but you cannot find out which ones.
The best: Apple, Lenovo, and HP.
Apple refurbished laptop is a first class choice that saves you money by being a refurb.. You can go to www.apple.com and search for refurbished store.
Lenovo Thinkpads T-series and X-Series, gently used, are more rugged and reliable than most new other machines. And they have discounted ones every four months as they get to the end of a sale cycle.
The problem is usually in the screen and inverter in a low priced machine... They may work fine for 18 months to two years, but then the repair can be $150.
Any laptop in the upper half of the manufacturers selling range is better than any of the low priced ones.
There isn't a lot of real difference between an expensive and inexpensive laptop, so you have to ask yourself "what did they do to make the cheap one cheap" and how long will it last.
One clue is the warranty. If they offer a three or four year warranty, you know the company believes in the machine. If the maximum warranty is a year, you will have additional expenses.
We repair large numbers of laptops, and support great numbers of them for real estate and sales force teams, and have done so since 1992.
The real question boils down to which ones to avoid. Which ones have good sources of parts after two years, how long does it take to service one.
Pretty ones too often fail. For lower priced laptops, we like Gateway, Toshiba, Dell Latitude (recently renamed to something I cannot remember), Most Dell XPS, and HP. For more money, the Lenovo is clearly superior, but may not look fancy enough for a son of school age.
We would absolutely avoid these machines due to warranty, repair, screen, reliability and/or parts problems: Sony, Sony VAIO, eMachines, Alienware, Compaq, AJump, Fujitsu, ZT Systems, Dell Inspiron low end models, Gateway low end models, Store brands, no-name brands, Acer, Asus, WinBook, Polywell, Averatec, Cyberpower,IBuyPower, and SystemMax.

By saying it must be a great multimedia performer, have bluetooth, surfing, you are limiting yourself.
Remember that Software must be an additioinal cost.
Good luck. Please let us know about which one you decided, and why.

get a custom made computer, they are cheaper and run faster as well as more reliable

Except for the fact that you have no idea what parts availability will be in three years hence... and where can you get one in his price range... in fact, where can you get one at all? Where do you get warranty work if the "Custom Maker" gets out of the business or gets hit by a truck. Custom made laptops have as high a screen and inverter failure rate as the infernal Sony.

Thnks Raybay, My son is not realy botherd about it beaing "hot". If you could have one laptop in my price ranger what would it be?
Thank you very much for the huge quantaties of advise! Also, has anyone herd habout it beeing cheeper to import a laptop to the uk from america? If yes, which website
Thanks
Harry7567

It would be a refurbished Apple or IBM/Lenovo... if it were me... Others I could be happy with are Toshiba, Gateway, and Dell Latitudes...
I may be crazy, but I would rather have a refurbished apple or IBM than a new anything else.
You can look at the Apples at www.apple.com then doing a search for the Apple Store or Refurbished Apple Laptops. IBM/Lenovo's are a bit harder to get. I can tell you about some, off line if you send your email address to DryCrick@gmail.com
You will also have to convert pounds to dollars for me... as I am very stoopid.