Laptop help

Tom wants a laptop for christmas,nothing to expensive just so he can surf the net, and do homework on it...

I was thinking in the price range of £200/£300,any recommendations ?

Any laptop will do that.

They all have good specs now.

Acer, Toshiba - both good makes.

Don't forget to go to www.osalt.com rather than shelling out £££ for proprietary software!

Have you looked at netbooks? Cheaper than laptops, and you can find some with larger screens (same as a small laptop). They won't do loads, e.g. no good if he wants to play computer games, watch DVDs or stuff like that but perfectly capable of surfing the 'net and using Word on. Perhaps go to a computer shop like PC World and tell them exactly what you need, get a few brand/model names..then see if you can find them cheaper online!

Personally if a student asked me to get them a internet/homework machine or I wanted to replace my current very old workhorse laptop, I'd get hold of one of the bigger screened netbooks. I'd then wipe the supplied operating system and install something like Jolicloud. My reasoning is you'd then have a fast, safe machine with access to more free software than you can shake a stick at. You'd also have change out of £200, especially if you manage to get a refund for the pre-installed operating system you had no intention of using. It has been known for people to get some money back!