Other half needs a new laptop – nothing fancy, just something reliable for email, browsing internet, storing photos etc. Only thing is she needs it to have (or be capable of running) Word for occasional bits of work. I’m crap with computers and use an apple myself for work (I know zilch about PCs, tablets, Chromebooks etc) . Can anyone help me with info or recommendations? Simplicity, reliably and virus security are high up the list of priorities. Must have a proper keyboard for easy typing. Ta v much.

No one? I know it’s boring, so bumping for lunch. Cheers.

Any windows 10 laptop will do that. Plenty in that price range, you’ll just be trading off size/weight/storage/processor/battery life so you’ll need to work out priorities.

The refurbished stuff on the Dell website is always worth a gander;

http://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/InventorySearch.aspx?brandId=7&c=uk&cs=ukdfh1&l=en&s=dfh&dgc=IR&cid=296386&lid=5667687

nick and sandwich – thanks. Size, weight and battery not really a big priority. Storage and processor more so.

I asked this question a few weeks ago as my daughter was after a PC and went for an Acer Chromebook 14″. Its got a full metal body and 12 hour battery and is superb for the money, looks just like my wife’s MacBook air at a fraction of the cost. It only has a small hard drive but I have bought a 128gb tiny memory stick that will stay plugged in. You can run word etc on it too.

I got an Amazon warehouse deal for sub £170 and it was perfect.

thwapy – this sounds excellent. Thanks v much – I’ll check it out and buy if I can’t see a good reason not to.

thwapy – could she use her hotmail on it, do you know? Or would she need to sack it and set up a google account? I really do know bugger all about this sort of thing!

Any HP one with 8GB of Ram will do.

We’ve got 4 in the family at that sort of price and they’ve all been solid and reliable.

Thinkpad T440 – used from ebay

WL – hotmail works fine. You do need a wifi connection to make life easier but lets face it you can get one of those just about anywhere now!

No reason not to set up a Google Account though. You get free online storage with this machine too!

THIS is the one I got her. There is a newer version for just over £200 with a bigger hard drive HERE

thwapy – that’s really helpful, thanks v much. Sounds like it could be ideal.

dhyetiman – Member

This one from Amazon warehouse has a great spec

Same basic spec as my acer, which was bought new, for £30 less, with a wireless keyboard and mouse (although this did involve shouting).
It’s not purple either. 😆

Just replaced my 2.5yr old £200 Chromebook with a £700 windows laptop.

OK, it’s better for photo editing and I can use Tracklogs on it, but the battery life is dire and going back in time to a machine that constantly interrupts with popups and notifications is annoying.

PS You can’t use MS Word (unless it’s on the App store?) but Google Docs is very good and will open and save in compatible formats.

Regarding the Chromebooks mentioned…
OP mentions running Word on it…
Can you do that on a Chromebook?

I know you can save the document in Word format using the Google equivalent, but don’t know if it’s completely compatible and how much of a pain it is to swap between them…

I walked into PC world and looked for the highest spec/best reduced laptop I could find. Currently on a 5 year old aspire and I can’t fault it for exactly what you describe. Paid about 300 notes, reduced from 400 IIRC. Put a new battery in last year, all good.

Madam Kormoran did the same and got an HP, decent spec massively reduced as it was a weird colour. Very happy with that also.

I’d do the same again I reckon

Should do you research before buying the highest spec/special offer machines. For example, with the i3, i5 and i7 processors, there are different generations and variants. The ‘mobile’ variants with lower power consumption are significantly slower and are dual core, and the faster 4 core variants can be miss-leading, an newer i3 can be faster than the outgoing i5.

If price is the main driver, its fine to take this approach, but if you are looking for a balance of value and performance, take note of the numbers and letters that follow the i3 label.