Kakids Posted August 25, 2013 Share Posted August 25, 2013 I am considering getting a cheap computer so the kids could have one dedicated for them, and I would get exclusive use of mine. I know I eventually want two computers but money is an object at this time. Is it a waste of time to buy one of the under $400 computers? It wouldn't be used hard, mostly for looking up information, some streaming of videos, and some basic games (nothing with major graphics). As you can probably tell, I am not very techy. Opinions? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
*LC Posted August 25, 2013 Share Posted August 25, 2013 Our 2 computers were both bought in the last 2 years for a but under $300. They are fine, no complaints. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hen Posted August 25, 2013 Share Posted August 25, 2013 we've bought chromebooks for 3 of our kids, and so far they are great, we've had two since last Christmas and just bought the 3rd this month. They are just browser laptops, you can't download any programs onto them, but you can purchase and get apps on it. It works for most of what my kids do; fb, email, some games, looking things up, and they can use google docs for writing, they can do their Aleks math and Veritas online history on them. There is no disk drive, so you can't do any other school programs that need discs or need downloads. I'm pretty happy with them, my kids are not on my computer so much anymore. They were just a bit under $250 on amazon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Um_2_4 Posted August 25, 2013 Share Posted August 25, 2013 I bought refurbished laptop and desktop from tigerdirect with no problems so far. I needed a new power supply after 3 mos ($8 on amazon) for 1. I would get the warranty if you are concerned, but I paid a lot less than $300 for each. With a budget of that I could have gotten much faster/more memory systems. Look at your current system's processor and memory and try to get something about equal so you won't feel the system is slower or the like. For the Hard Drive you can always add an external drive later, so I would be more concerned about memory/processor speed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AK_Mom4 Posted August 25, 2013 Share Posted August 25, 2013 Absolutely worth it. And there are lots of decent ones for sale right now. For example., Costco has this HP all-in-one for $429 http://www.costco.com/HP-Pavilion-20z-All-in-One-Desktop%2c-AMD-E1-1500-1.48GHz.product.100069626.html Beautiful little machine - pretty much run everything you want and be a good student machine for 4-5 years. Don't buy anything with less than 4GB of memory. Other than that, a sub-$400 machine is probably a decent purchase these days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lanny Posted August 25, 2013 Share Posted August 25, 2013 If you can increase your budget a little, you can get a great low end PC and monitor, from Dell. Look on their web site and click for "Student" offers. We bought a Dell Inspiron 660s and a 20" Dell Monitor last October for DD. It has a basic version of MS OFFICE 2010 on it (WORD and EXCEL). Extremely happy with it. At this time, I am trying to get Dell to sell us an Inspiron 660 and Monitor, with everything in U.S. English and a basic version of MS OFFICE. That is a huge problem now, because we live in Colombia. BTW, this has Windows 7 on it! Try to avoid Windows 8! The system I saw on the Dell web page for student discounts, was $699, with a $200 credit on Dell.com Hopefully, if you call them on the phone, you can get them to eliminate the $200 credit and give you an immediate $200 discount... GL with your choice! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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