I'm planning to buy a 2nd-hand computer for my 14 year old son soon and would appreciate some suggestions on what to look for. He wants to be able to play games (of course!) and I want him to do his homework. He is showing an interest in programing and game design and wants to upgrade the graphics when he can afford it. I'm not sure if we should look for a pc or a laptop and what minimum specs I should look for. I was looking at refurbished ex-government systems as I thought they would be good quality and come with a warranty. Any help will be appreciated Thanks

I'd say go for a desktop. A laptop is more limited if you're planning to upgrade it. If he wants to play games, then the spec has to be higher than average. Specs are dependent to the type of games but at least the RAM has to be 1GB at min.

If he wants to play games, he's going to want to play modern games that his friends are playing. A refurbished computer is probably not going to be able to do the kind of things he's wanting to do, as it will be an older system with lower capabilities and less ability to be upgraded to anything good - especially in future.

You might be surprised at the prices that you can get on brand new systems. What's your approximate budget? I've seen some -sweet- full system builds for about $600.

For a computer capable of lasting him a while and doing what he wants I'd say no less than:

• 2.5 gHz dual core processor
• At -least- 1 gig of RAM but I'd say 2 if you're getting an XP system - RAM is cheap
• A motherboard upgradeable to 4 gigs of RAM (so he can later upgrade to Vista and get more RAM)
• A decent graphics card. 256 mb minimum, 512 mb is common nowadays. nVidia GeForce 8600 is decent - anything above that is usually pretty good. PCI-E is the main type used nowadays so the motherboard must support this - most older ones will not.
• At least an 80 gig hard drive - 7200 RPM or greater

It might be tempting to just go, "Well sheesh, I don't need him playing the modern games, I just want him to be able to do online research for his homework," but if you get a system that is nice and solid now and upgradeable in future, it can last him for years easily. I purchased my computer more than 5 years ago for $600 and it's still going strong because I got a system I knew I could upgrade to the newer technologies (SATA hard drives, DDR2 RAM, PCI-E graphics). If I had gone with something less, a computer with older technologies that's less upgradeable, I'd have had to buy a whole new computer already, rather than putting a couple hundred bucks into it over the course of 5 years to upgrade it. It may be a bit larger investment to start, but it totally pays off.

Thank you so much for your advice it gives me an a jumping off point to work from and your right I'd rather spend a couple of hundred more and get something that will last. Thanks again