Whatever you decide on set him up with a backup system of some sort to backup his classwork. I've been using CrashPlan (www.crashplan.com) with a subscription to their CrashPlan Central service for a bit over a year now and it's been a great solution. I've got my wife's laptop and my own backing up to CrashPlan Central for offsite backup and an old workstation running at home of on-site backup. Working great and it's saved us data loss on a couple occasions already. CrashPlan runs on Windows, OS X, and Linux. It appears this isn't what you're looking for, but as a heads up for you and anyone else who may be interested: Apple is running their back to school sale again this year. (http://store.apple.com/us/browse/campaigns/back_to_school?mco=MTg2OTQ5OTE) On top of the education discount ($100-$200 off depending on the computer) you get a free iPod 8GB Touch (after mail in rebate). On top of that they usually have a mail-in rebate on a printer as well. When we got my wife's MacBook two years ago we got the MacBook, free iPod, and a nice multifunction ink jet printer. We picked a printer that had copy/print/scan capabilities as the only way we would get another printer was if it was free (or low cost) and did something we couldn't do with our current laser printer. It hardly gets used for color output, but it's been nice to have a copier, scanner, and fax machine. The printer only cost $20 after the mail in rebate. The Mac can run VirtualBox (or other virtualization solutions) to run Windows or Ubutnu, and there's the Boot Camp option as well. -- Andrew S. Zbikowski | http://andy.zibnet.us IT Outhouse Blog Thing | http://www.itouthouse.com