Minimum spec required please

Dulchie12

Hi, I'd be grateful if someone could give me a quick idea of the minimum spec I'd need, it's for a 10 year old boy. He's started coding recently, so he wants it for that. He also intends to play minecraft/roblox on it, but I think he'll probably advance to other games later. We are complete technophobes in this house so the laptop needs to be ready to go. Any advice at all would be welcome.

for coding this is possible on any laptop.
minecraft would run on most low end laptops.
higher end graphic-intensive games require a dedicated graphics card which pushes up the price of a laptop considerably.

what is your budget?

here's something just over €400.
it has a core i3 chip and full HD screen

https://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/2EW13ESABU-HP%C2%A0250%C2%A0G5_2233253.html

you can order to ireland no issue and is a reliable site.

this will run minecraft and basic games but won't run high-end games.
you're talking 900 euro plus for a laptop with a decent graphics card in it at the moment.

Dulchie12

Thanks for the reply. That makes a bit more sense. Budget would be in and around the 400 mark. I had been looking at trying to get 8gb and 1tb (not even sure what these mean!), would that be something I should try to get?

Dulchie12

Dulchie12 wrote: »

Thanks for the reply. That makes a bit more sense. Budget would be in and around the 400 mark. I had been looking at trying to get 8gb and 1tb (not even sure what these mean!), would that be something I should try to get?

that's 8gb ram
1tb hard drive storage.

for 400 it's unlikely you'd get that spec tbh.

4gb ram is ok for windows. it's easy to add more later if you find that you really need it.

Dulchie12

http://www.argos.co.uk/product/7526020

Was looking at this one, it's in Argos uk but I'm close to the north. Any thoughts?

that's not a terrible option but the cpu is weak.
in this budget range you're not going to get everything.

another option is to wait for black friday (nov 24) and the following cyber monday.
places like dell (may have to use uk site) will have good deals.

TerrorFirmer

For a bit extra this is miles better!

If you really can't stretch that far, something like this.

4gb ram is ok for windows. it's easy to add more later if you find that you really need it.

Depends on the laptop. Most laptops these days require full removal of the laptops back panel at least - some even require the removal of the motherboard as the ram banks are under the keyboard, whereas older laptops almost always had simple access hatches for HDD and RAM upgrades. So maybe look into reviews of whatever models you're looking at to see what the situation there is.

Dulchie12

Thanks all, I have an idea what I'm looking for now. The budget may have to go up to 500 though I think!

Dulchie12

Dulchie12 wrote: »

Thanks all, I have an idea what I'm looking for now. The budget may have to go up to 500 though I think!

if you can wait 'til black fri nov 24 or the cyber monday the following mon you could get a good deal.

e.g. dell uk site deals last year. big reductions.

http://uk.pcmag.com/pcmag-deals/8627...day-2016-deals