If you have a kid in the house who is curious about programming (or if you are curious yourself), I suspect you'll like the Raspberry-Pi based Kano Computer Kit. It's on sale for $120 and the only thing you need is an HDMI monitor or TV. It's fun to snap the computer together and the programming tutorials for Python and Javascript are excellent. The quality of everything Kano does is top notch. I wish they made laptops - I'd buy one of those, too.
