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I don't know much cause I only have a casio keyboard which is good for me cause I don't play a lot but the sound is less than on a more expensive one.
Go for touch-sensitive keys! There can be a huge difference in the pressure you have to apply on a keyboard and a piano. If your kids are taking piano lessons I'd take one with and never put it off. Keyboards make you lazy in this case, if I play piano now I have to push a lot harder or I'll miss notes, but I guess it's easier to play faster on a keyboard with non-sensitive keys though I suspect that's just about how much work you do for it cause I hear people playing a lot faster on piano than I can on my keyboard.
Further you should look at if you want background melodies and if they're good for what you want. The thing I really miss on my keyboard is a good rhythm you can use as metronome. Most rhythms have extra drums in it and the ones with just hi-hats aren't loud enough so at times I can't really hear them but I'm trying to learn counting the rhythm with my feet now. Also make sure the sound of the different instruments are OK. I don't know how much the difference in price is between keyboards with lots of instruments and with less but a lot of the instruments are barely used (less if you only use it for piano lessons, I only use piano, church organ and at times a drum set to practice my fingers and some instruments just don't sound right my distorted guitar sounds like a sax for example)
For piano lessons a real must is look at the number of keys. Keyboards have less than pianos most of the time so they miss octaves. I don't know how it works exactly though.
I think it's rather hard to say what's professional. I'd say don't get something synthesizer like which don't have inbuilt boxes. I think good brands are technics (played on that at my teacher's) and roland was supposed to be good a few years ago but I don't really know if they still are. The best way to find that out is in a shop I think.
They can probably tell you there about connecting it to your PC and options.
I don't know how prices compare but if you only use it for piano then you might check out an electric piano. Depending on how you play keyboards it can be completely different from piano and it's the question will you need a rhythm, different instruments, pitch stuff, automatic chords and other options like chords that you only have to hit once and then it will remember till you hit another (seriously put this option off it's really bad for your left hand playing) electric pianos might not have midi and pc connection though.
I don't know how old your kids are but you might want to avoid a too 'happy' look, like with lots of colours. I have one of those and now I'm older and the new thing is off it and I hate the looks (red and green text all kind of different color buttons) But that's personal as well.
That's all I can think of at the moment but I might be back later! Think about what you need well though and compare a lot. For some brands you'd better watch out for the cheapest models.
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