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.
He's just 4, so a rugged device is a must. Also, one of the great things about these laptops was that they felt like a learning device, without sacrificing the general purpose computing aspect. Since I would like to avoid a consumer device, this is what I'm expecting.
This pi-top seems like what I want, I need to check if it works with another board.
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.