We bought an OLPC (one laptop per child) machine for DS when they had their first give-one-get-one scheme. I think it's cute, but DS, though he's had some fun with it, has never been as interested in it as in using my own netbook. I think that the special children's frontend was actually a turn-off, because nobody in the family was familiar with it, so whenever he had a question someone had to actually come and look instead of just shouting out the answer, and it made it seem like a toy to him rather than like a real computer. My netbook (which I use for hours every day for my job) is a Dell Inspiron Mini 9. Despite netbooks' reputation for not having much memory, it has 2GB (chosen as an option at the time) and despite its Atom processor is in practice every bit as powerful as the conventional laptops I've had in the past. I haven't had any problems running any application. It doesn't have superfast graphics, but unless your DD is already seriously into high-speed games, I think it would be highly suitable (what I do includes youtube videos, occasional game use by DS, etc., and I never notice any problem with the graphics; it's just that I know this is relatively undemanding use) Mine runs Ubuntu, but I'm pretty sure XP was an option on it when I bought mine, and it was within your price range. Dell's a good make and the build quality, battery life etc. is excllent. Recommended.
