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.
