You can get a nice one these days for around $500 - $800 or so. Just be sure to try and go with some of the more well known name brands like HP, Dell, Gateway, for the potential to have less issues post-purchase, and if you do, they have larger support departments so you should hopefully get better support. Newegg is a good starting place for good deals and user's who have previously bought one from there usually rate and review them, so you know what you're getting into before you buy.

Tigerdirect is another place similar to Newegg for good deals. It all kind of depends on what your kid plans to use the laptop for --- heavy duty gaming laptops will cost much more than say, a laptop mostly used to Instant Message, email, Facebook and video chat.

Get an entry level Macbook.