the parents of this student who want to build their son a laptop would be better off making a tin can , putting beans into it and sealing it up.
Go buy one for Pete’s sake! The would be smart if they went to computer repair place to see if they had any re-manufactured ones all cleaned up for sale. Generally these places give out a warranty, too. I have two laptops and that’s how I purchased my Dell Latitude with Windows XP Professional for $350.00 with a warranty. My other one is a larger screen Toshiba which works perfectly fine and I bought that at Wal-Mart.
They already built their son one and he uses it. I don’t know what all he uses it for. My son says he would take it to the Robotics meets they had. He went online with it, so it must work for something.
I just wasn’t sure I wanted to go that route and as someone else mentioned, maybe the kids father planned to make money of us. I don’t know.
At this point I think we’ll check out Wal Mart and Best Buy for looks and comfort, then wait til the end of June when we have to go for orientation. Our son will have to stay overnight and hopefully he can get with someone familiar with his course of study and get a heads up on what he will need. Then we can go from there.
At least I know we can rule out having the kid’s dad build one. :)