I gave it away a few years ago to someone who could give it a better use (teacher), but now that I have a kid on my own, I'd like to give him something like this. Any recommendations?
My dad gave me a broken Mac Plus and told me that if I could fix it, it's mine to keep. I swapped out the motherboard myself, at age 8.
Later on, my dad bought me an iBook G3. At age 15, I bought a class set of 20 iBooks and sold them to friends for $150 each.
http://peterburk.github.io/blog/#iBookRepair
Don't worry about their computer not being new/fast enough. They'll figure out what to do with it to push it to the limits. Please do give them root access.
This pi-top seems like what I want, I need to check if it works with another board.
I used an X41 as my only laptop during my last year of college (2016-2017). I spent $35 for the laptop on ebay and $25 for a hard drive.
I don't recommend anything older than the X41 for most people; it was the first X-series laptop to have SSE2.
The thinkpad x100e, x120e, x130e, x131e, and x141e are/were specifically intended for classroom use, have decent specs, and can be purchased inexpensively on ebay.
Also: many people like the tablet form-factor x-series laptops, but I would not recommend one for a child.