free computer for my son
 

A friend of mine was over at the house the other day. His son makes motocross videos for a living and he was showing my 10 year old son one of them on his computer. Later he commented that my son's computer was very slow, which it is. It's still running the video card embedded on the motherboard with almost no video ram, 1.8 mhz AMD with 512 ram.

He said he has an extra computer laying around and he'd bring it by one of the days. I didn't think anything of it buy he just did.
It's a 2.2gig Intel dual processor, 2 gigs of ram, 512 ram video card, huge hard drive, fresh install of XP, all the good stuff.
This thing is way better than my computer. I felt bad and told him I couldn't take it for free, so he said OK, howz about $20? It's one of those with a clear plastic side on the case with all the different colored neon lights and stuff that flash like a light show. I don't care for that but my son thinks that is soooo coool.
I gave him $20 and told my son "happy birthday" (his birthday is next week). ;)

Now both my son and daughter have better computers than I do.

It's nice to have generous friends. Congrats.

LOL, it's nice to have friends period.

Now both my son and daughter have better computers than I do.

You aren't the first parent to say that.

"You aren't the first parent to say that."

+1. My computers come from the pawn shop and my kid gets NIB.
Jim

That was way cool of your friend to do that! I'd send him a nice christmas present this year!


Really though, new computers and fast hardware is dirt cheap. I've seen external USB port TERA-BYTE sized hard-drives at $109-129, for a FRIGGIN TERA-BYTE! That's 1000 gigs!

go out to Dell.com or other PC makers. You can get a pretty awesome machine for only a couple hundred bucks now, but "awesome" is all relative to what your applications are. You don't need 4 gig of ram to type a post on Pelican, or used Word to save recipes, but for gamers and video, yeah RAM and CPU along with mother board bus speed is your friend....

Have you checked the hard drive for porn?

My son just started in a new charter school this year. They assigned him a really nice Dell Business class laptop that rivals my Lenovo Thinkpad. The School claims it is worth $1500 so I opted for the $80 a year insurance on it... just in case.

He also souped up an old PC I brought home from my office for him, he put a larger HD and screaming fast Video card in it for gaming. He loves it. The machine was already a lean and mean cadd station so now its a screamer.

Congrats for your son, I would definitely find out what that guy is into and get him an appropriate gift on top of the $20 for the machine.

Get him a really really nice bottle of scotch.

If you're lucky it's loaded... just tell the son you have to "make sure it works ok" or something everytime he catches you on it!! :D

I have a stupid question: What do 10 year olds use computers for?

G

Same thing my 5 year old uses his DELL laptop for, internet access, and games. He's starting kindergarten in another week so hopefully the school will have a computer just like his pre-school.

Probably get my seven years old daughter a Sony e-book this Christmas so she can check out as many books from the virtual library as fast as she can finish reading them.

He's not a typical 10 year old.
He's never gotten a grade below an A. He received a rating of 99 on the Iowa aptitude test 5 years in a row, which means he has scored higher than 99% of all kids his age in the nation.

He types reports for school, he researches topics, he studies things most kids his age can't spell. He's mostly interested in astrophysics and construction geometry.
When he was 5 or 6 he asked me to help him create a 3D map of all the known galaxies. That didn't get very far.
He was 8 when he decided he was going to cal Tech.

Very nice! I bet your friend was glad to see his old PC go to someone who appreciates it!

My kids (10 and 12) both have text books that have online help and examples. My son's sixth grade classes had assignments that required he create and upload Powerpoint presentations. No way a kid can get through middle school w/o a computer and internet access.