Originally Posted by Dominae

Whether you are aware of it, or not (probably not), I review this thread daily and seem like I know you all personally, although you don't know me. There is such a wealth of knowledge among all those you participate here on almost every subject imaginable, and I thought maybe you would allow me to take advantage of that? This question has nothing to do with bikes (or I certainly wouldn't be posting it here!) but instead involves laptop computers. I am woefully ignorant about technology in general and computers in particular. We would like to buy our son a relatively cheap (around $500) laptop that will allow him to play the game minecraft. That is it. He may use it for school, the internet or Skype occasionally, but that is secondary. Could anyone give me suggestions about what to look for or particular laptops to recommend? We are not looking for state of the art here. I do not want to build my own laptop as has been suggested to me over and over again in computer forums. I just want an off the shelf computer, realizing that it might not be the perfect machine to optimize performance. Now, if we were talking bicycles, it would be a completely different story. Its all about priorities.

Thanks for your help.