Laptop buying advice for middle schooler

splunge · Mar 24, 2015

My son needs a laptop for 8th grade and his birthday is coming up. I'd like advice on slecting one for him. I received a Best Buy gift card for subscribing to an audio journal and so would prefer to buy through them to use the balance.

1. What is your budget? Ideally $500 or less

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? Portability and weight matter, so maybe 14"

3. What screen resolution do you want? not critical

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? Portability (back and forth from school) is important. He currently uses the desktop for homework

5. How much battery life do you need? On and off use through the school day with recharge overnight.

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? Doubt it. He happily plays Mount and Blade on the PC

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.) Maybe streamed movies

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? Not critical- mostly stored school work, Itunes. We can sue external for overflow (photos etc)

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links. bestbuy.com

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop? Hopefully though high schol (5 years)

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ? DVD-ROM, maybe writer for back ups

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons. No preference

13. What country do you live in? USA

Thanks in advance for your advice!

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.

willard · Mar 24, 2015

I'll weigh in just to say that you're better off avoiding Best Buy. They're legendary for having the worst prices in the industry with sales staff whose only job is to push you into as many high margin upgrades as possible (which is why they're struggling to remain solvent at all and are shuttering stores left and right).

You'd be better off using that gift card on something else (though finding something without ludicrous markup at Best Buy is a Sisyphean task) and going someplace more reputable for the laptop, like Amazon or Newegg. You can get a refurbished laptop for less than $500 pretty easily, and it's going to be nicer than anything Best Buy is going to have at the same price.

Also, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that your son absolutely WILL want to use the laptop for gaming. He might prefer the desktop's power and screen size, but he's going to have the laptop available a lot more often. Unless you really don't want him gaming on it (understandable, but not really achievable), I encourage you to consider that as well.

splunge · Mar 24, 2015

willard :

I'll weigh in just to say that you're better off avoiding Best Buy. They're legendary for having the worst prices in the industry with sales staff whose only job is to push you into as many high margin upgrades as possible (which is why they're struggling to remain solvent at all and are shuttering stores left and right).

You'd be better off using that gift card on something else (though finding something without ludicrous markup at Best Buy is a Sisyphean task) and going someplace more reputable for the laptop, like Amazon or Newegg. You can get a refurbished laptop for less than $500 pretty easily, and it's going to be nicer than anything Best Buy is going to have at the same price.

Also, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that your son absolutely WILL want to use the laptop for gaming. He might prefer the desktop's power and screen size, but he's going to have the laptop available a lot more often. Unless you really don't want him gaming on it (understandable, but not really achievable), I encourage you to consider that as well.

Thanks Willard. With those caveats in place, what laptop(s) would you reccommend? I can always get the lap top bag (with 5 year extended warranty of course!) through Best Buy.

willard · Mar 25, 2015

Well, I'd been recommending Lenovo, but after they preinstalled malware on their machines in order to allow an ad partner to decrypt all secure connections to serve you ads on your banking website (really, they did that), they're no longer getting my recommendation.

Sorry, don't have a second brand I can recommend. Somebody else want to chime in with some more specific advice?

jaguarskx · Mar 25, 2015

Based on what is available at Best Buy, I would say that the following 14" Acer TravelMate is basically your best option for $500. The Core i3-4030u is the best CPU you can get in a laptop within your budget and it seems to be one of the few 14" laptops with a DVD drive. It is relatively thin at about 1" and weighs in at about 4.6lbs. It is a business laptop so it comes with Windows 7 Pro instead of Win 8. I am not sure if there is a free upgrade to the professional version of Windows 10 when it is released. I do know desktops / laptops with "regular" versions Win 7 and Win 8 can be upgraded to the "regular" version of Win 10.

http

/www.bestbuy.com/site/acer-travelmate-14-laptop-intel-core-i3-4gb-memory-500gb-hard-drive-black/4227015.p?id=1219621582539&skuId=4227015

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