[dman762000]

Ok so my 12 year old daughter wants a netbook for her birthday, (sept something or other) and I was thinking the cheaper the better (the girl has already ruined two phones, the third one is holding up fairly well). So I was wondering what the users of this forum thought would be the best route to go. I would like to know what the best one is for the lowest price and where to get it.

 

[Mike]

A lot of people will recommend you something with Android, but I must say I disagree with this. I would find Android very aggravating to use on something with a mouse and keyboard because you're given this extra freedom and then constricted in using. I would check out the Dell Mini 10v which you can get now for under ?300 (around ?220). If you so chose to do so you could also put Mac OS X on this netbook without any issues whatsoever.

 

[lawman]

yeah. For a 12 y/o something running a win 7 variant, as cheap as possible. The more kids know how to use computers, the better off they are, and the younger they start, the better. Win still runs the world. In a few years she can move up to linux (then back to win out of laziness).

 

[Mike]

Stick a copy of Slackware on it

 

[spb37]

Just check everyday on this website for a netbook priced 250 or lower with windows xp or 7. dealnews.com: Best Deals & Coupons on Laptops, Desktop Computers, HDTV, Dell, HP, Sony, Apple. You missed some good deals last week. Lookup sale model on amazon. I got my 14 y'o a brand new 300 dollar ibook (a four year old model) dealnews deal which at 5 pounds and 12 inch screen is basically an apple netbook.Finally, since your asking on slatedroid you could get her a 250 dollar zenithink 10 inch android tablet with keyboard and carrying case and think of it as a netbook with a touchscreen. But android is not enough for school unless you have a home pc to remotely access and she has wireless access where she would use the netbook. And most kids want apple not unbranded china. If they are like mine will whine about the screen being less responsive than their apple products and being unable to play games that depend on g-sensor. So OT, rather than picking netbooks you may want to pick a med to premedicate yourself before all those teenage girl hormones kick in. Just kidding. Good luck.

 

[lawman]

Woot? : One Day, One DealSlickdeals.net: The best coupons, deals and bargains to save you money!CowBoom.com - Computer Parts, PC & Laptops, Video Game Systems, Electronics and more!

 

[dman762000]

Thanks everyone for all the advice. Thanks Lawman for pointing me toward Cowboom. I just bought a emachines EM250-1915 for the low price of $173. That should do her quite well. Now all I have to do is slam a copy of win7 on it and put a pink skin on the thing

 

[lawman]

I love cowboom. They always have ridiculous prices on certain things - $129 consistently for a 16gb zunehd? seriously? I nearly buy one three times a week...

 

[dman762000]

Another Zune user? WOW! I actually got my 16g ZuneHD from newegg around march for around $119. Too bad noone has figured out how to root the Zune yet. That would be a fun little platform to work with.

 

[lawman]

I don't actually have one yet... I sort of pick these things up and abuse them, and the HD part of the zune HD is very appealing. $119 is better than $129. That price might get me to jump. I got my gf one of the $39 8gb sansas from newegg last week, and am kicking myself for not getting 2.Back on topic: cowboom. Badass.

 

[tcindia123]

notebook with win 7 or win xp wil be best to learn

 

[roebeet]

ah, the ZuneHD - I had one of those for a few weeks, but returned it. Great little player, but the lack of open codecs (Vorbis, FLAC) killed it for me. I now own a Cowon S9, which has a great sound.As for the system for a 12 year old, I think a 10 inch netbook would fit very nicely. My daughter has a 9 inch one and its just a tad too small, but still functional. At that age, they don't need a powerhouse system - just something to surf the web, IM their friends, do their homework and maybe do some graphics work. Plus it's very portable versus one of those monster laptops.

 

[lawman]

Might be buying a 32gb zunehd used for $150. fun to toy with. Hdradio may be nice. Graphics with the tegra are amazing.

 

[dman762000]

The 12 year old loves the netbook we got her. I loaded win 7 enterprise onto it and it works great. The thing is every bit as fast as my laptop and I am a bit jealous of the size and weight. It was a pain trying to put 7 on there when all I had was a disk but using unetbootin to make a bootable usb drive worked really well and sped up the install (25 min to install windows, thats as fast as linux!) As for the ZuneHD. The screen is really crisp on it and the graphics are really nice. The audio is really solid and clear (even if the only codecs able to be loded are windows WMA and M3). Overall I would say that it probably has the best hardware on the market, but, M$ (as usual) is low on support for the device. It has been out for quite some time now and there are only like 20 apps for the thing, there have been only a handfull of firmware updates and as usual it is locked down so hard that thus far no one has figured out how to root the thing so that we can load something like rockbox on it (or even a custom port of android or other kind of linux). I enjoy my Zune quite a bit I just wish it was more hackable.

 

[roebeet]

The ZuneHD last year was like the Velocity Micro Cruz this year - I had purchased it on Day One but I returned it because the apps were not forthcoming and I wasn't willing to wait it out. It's amazing how MS can shoot itself in the foot repeatedly with that poor device. Great hardware, great UI, beautiful graphics but still crippled by MS's marketing and development teams. As soon as I heard that they weren't opening it up like Apple's App store, I knew it was doomed.Great device if you want it only for music/video and web browsing and don't mind living in MS's walled garden (yes, they are almost as bad as Apple - but at least they added support for DivX recently - points for that).

 

[dman762000]

Tell me about it, right. If M$ had bothered to even promote the thing a little bit they could have killed that ipoop thing and ran away with the market, but, alas, M$ did what they always do, fell short of expectations.

 

[lawman]

I'm getting it for 1. HD radio2. Tegra chip3. they now have cracked the [x]dk so people CAN develop on it4. Video is hot on it5. Gadget pron6. My gf will harass me about it, so I'll give it to her and get a cheap, used iphone 3gs to abuse.

 

[Miss Dragon]

[quote name='lawman;55738]I'm getting it for it6. My gf will harass me about it' date=' so I'll give it to her and get a cheap, used iphone 3gs to abuse.[/QUOTE'] lol...good one.

 

[lawman]

btw, HOWTO: deploying apps to the Zune HD - Zuneboards

 

[Miss Dragon]

Thanks for the link. Cheers.