I was asked for advice from a non-technical person about buying a laptop for their 15yo daughter. They were looking to spend $200 or $300.
I suggested that stretching their budget to $500 for a new EeePC would be a better option than the risks associated with a second-hand laptop (laptops are all different in their hardware).
I also suggested that waiting a few months to see what happens with the new EeePCs might be a good idea. There are rumours about the development of new EeePC models with bigger screens, this would be a benefit for those who can afford it, and for those who can’t the current model may drop in price. They took that suggestion very well and I suspect that they weren’t planning to purchase in the near future anyway.
I asked for advice on the LUV mailing list [1] for further suggestions that I could offer.
One suggestion was that larger laptops of a more traditional design have been driven down in price recently and might be worth considering. I will have to mention it, but suggesting that someone who wants to spend $200 should spend $500 seemed enough of a stretch, suggesting that they spend $700 or more might not be taken well. Of course there is the weight issue that Matt raised in a blog post [2]. The last thing I want to do is to convince people not to buy computers for their children!
A complaint was raised about the size of the keyboard in the EeePC (personally I wouldn’t want to use anything smaller than the T series Thinkpad I’m using now). In a quick google search the best information I could find about average finger sizes was the Danforth Diamond blog [3] which says that in the US women average a ring size of 6 while men average 10. According to the ring sizing page on the same site [4] that means ring finger diameter of 16.5 and 19.8mm respectively. So it seems likely that given the same level of typing skill an average woman could happily use a keyboard that’s 83% the size of the keyboard that an average man uses. Of course there’s a lot of variation between individuals, for example my fingers are thinner than average and I prefer a full-sized keyboard.
One thing I recommend when considering a keyboard (or a laptop) is to type your name a few times quickly. Typing something about a quick brown fox will take some thought, but typing your own name requires no thought so you can concentrate on the feel of the keyboard. Using this method it is very easy to go to a store and determine whether a laptop is likely to suit you.
The screen resolution and size is a significant issue, one EeePC owner described it as “too small to do anything useful“. Rumour has it that the next version will have a screen that’s a significant increase in size and resolution.
A final interesting comment was about the social aspect of owning a laptop. The suggestion was made that a teenager who owned the smallest (and possibly cheapest) laptop in class might have other kids tease them about it. I will be interested to see comments on this issue, it had never occurred to me that the laptop use in schools would be high enough for the ownership of any type of laptop to be a cause for harassment. Also I’m not sure which would be considered as being of lower status, an old second-hand laptop or a new low-end laptop. I’m pretty sure that owning either would be considered to have higher status than having no laptop.
A quick scan of the GraysOnline.com.au auction site suggests that a second-hand Pentium-M laptop (a few years old) could be purchased for about $550 and a Core 2 Duo based laptop might go for about $700. So it seems unlikely that for less than $500 you could buy something suitable for a novice user (something that will just work with recent software). I’m not planning on offering the full IT support package that I offer to my relatives so I can only recommend things that can be self-supported.
Of course as the people doing the buying seem to have no definite plans for the use of the computer then anything they buy will fail in some way to meet the requirements that they discover. :-#
Update: fixed a bad link.
a eeepc is IMHO the worst choice you can do if you search a notebook for a teenager.
Let’s ignore the fact that it has enough power for office and instant messaging.
Playing even one game everyone plays on their Windows notebooks? Not possible. Remember: we are talking about a non tech person and a teenager, so I won’t say that it is not possible that they want a Windows notebook. Let them choose what to use. (especially let them choose if they want a messed up Distro or want to install a clean system)
The screen sucks. It’s to small for nearly everything and using such a laptop on a regular basis without comfort is nothing that makes you happy.
Beside that it’s just to tiny. I think we all know what happens when you often work with such a small screen and a small resolution… your eyes won’t thank you.
The keyboard – see screen (beside the eye thing)
>The suggestion was made that a teenager who owned the smallest
>(and possibly cheapest) laptop in class might have other kids
>tease them about it
That is a possibility, but I believe that the “w00d U g0t a ultr@ sm@ll 0wn3r linus notebook” (yeah, I know what I’ve written) would be the common reaction. I don’t think that they’d think that the price matters – you get cheaper second hand notebooks and also no one cares…
I don’t think the eeepc is the worst choice, in fact it’s about a week since I got mine, and I’m fairly happy with it, beeing 22 years old (not exactly a teenager) and with not so thin fingers, using the keyboard sucks the first 5mn or so, then you get used to it and it works very well.
about the size of the screen I just downstripped everything and the fonts are about 10 for everyting, and the application where it is the more annoying still is firefox, but it now feel a little smaller than a 1024×768 screen with default fonts.
I don’t think anyone would get a laptop of that quality at the same price…
about games… well, just go to youtube and see some people playing hl2 or other not-too-old games it work well too, I did not test this because I did not switch to xp but to eeexubuntu.
watching movies and listening music on this device is pretty good too, as the screen as a fair resolution IMO.
And with 3hours of battery using compiz, well I’m not sure it would not be cool for a teenager ;).
the only issue I see with it is the ssd size, mine is 4G and it’s a bit short, but with a big usbstick or an external hdd this is not an issue IMO.
my2cents
i love my EEE, and would recommend it to anyone!
http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=285
The above review is useful. The main complaint is the keyboard size.
i have a old toshiba TE2000 which is pretty crap by todays standards and i get bagged for it all the time because its 2ndhand, only the nerds have the big laptops, thee eee is way cooler because its samll and white.