Looking for a cheap PC for kids homework, just needs Word or something similar and be able to access the internet, browsing ebay and this seems to fit the bill:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/FULL-DELL-CORE-2-DUO-DESKTOP-TOWER-PC-TFT-SYSTEM-WITH-WINDOWS-7-WIFI-4GB-/331033644089?pt=UK_Computing_DesktopPCs&hash=item4d13248c39

Any thoughts? seems like ex-office pc’s refurbed…

As an added bonus would the above be able to run Minecraft?

Well, it’s cheap, if you take into account it comes with a monitor. It’s quite old though; it’s got a “HUGE” 80Gb hard disk, I’d be surprised if you could buy less than a 500Gb drive these days. CPU could be anything, it doesn’t actually say. Reasonable amount of memory.

Yeah its dated, but 80Gb is plenty for wordy documents and the odd picture, we have portable 500Gb drives knocking about if it became a problem though.

Assuming it isn’t super slow at startup/shutdown I think it should fit the bill but don’t won’t to get something that frustates the kids turning it on.

I thought the answer to this would be a rasberry pie?

chromebook…

less viruses to catch and stuff for kids to install/mess around with

Chromebook could be an option, are they just like a android tablet but with a keyboard?

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/chromebook-1

Thread here, makes a lot of sense and takes up less space.

No, they’re not android. It’s more like a computer that just has a browser (the Chrome browser obviously) but since google have various apps that replicate the main MS office ones, that’s fine. Read the thread linked above.

A core 2 duo without a fair graphics card will struggle with mine craft if you select much beyond the basic graphics settings.

That seems overpriced to me for a system that underpowered.

If its the Dell optiplex as appears to be pictured, they are reliable business workstations.
Nothing much wrong with them at all.
The fact it comes with a monitor too makes it very reasonably priced.

Besides, you could buy the very latest 8 core Xeon server with 64gig of RAM, but a week after the kids have installed their random bloat ware/malware/various crap, it’ll run like spectrum ZX anyway.