For my daughter just starting GCSE year at school. I’m aware it will limit choice, but for ease of use I’d prefer Windows 7, unless someone can convince me 8 is worth learning to use?

The cheaper the better, as she takes after her mum when it comes to clumsiness.

I’d just go to PC World and see whats on offer – its unlikely she’ll need anything particularly high spec. My daughters just finished A-Level photography using our 5-yr old PC World HP laptop which was £350 back then, and its been fine (a bit slow towards the end and takes forever to start up, but sufficient, still ran Photoshop and MS Office OK).

If she’s that clumsy, take out their insurance which covers all breakage for about £6 a month for peace of mind.

You’ll struggle to find a new machine with Win7, Win8 can be made to look and function very similar to Win 7 without much effort but its pretty easy to adapt to anyway.

Consider something with a matt screen rather than the normal glossy ones – for working it is significantly easier on the eyes without all the glare problems of reflections on the screen – unless she is always going to work in a dark room.

Unless she wants glasses at an early age, of course…

Windows 8 is a bit of a pain IMO, unless perhaps you buy a machine with a touchscreen.

I did a bit of research & bought a 15″ machine from John Lewis, who were cheapest in the end. It must be good, I’ve hardly had my hands on it since – the kids are always using it.

It was an Acer Aspire (sadly with a glossy screen, I wish it was matt)

I’d go with windows 8, in part because your daughter is growing up in a world of continually changing and evolving technologies and it’s for the best she gets used to adapting now.

Hopefully at some point in the future the inability to adapt to a new OS, regardless of whether it is better, worse, more or less intuitive will render a person unemployable.

I’m currently considering this one http://www.ebuyer.com/630026-hp-pavilion-15-laptop-f5c21ea-abu

As a replacement for an older (dying) Acer Aspire.

Do any of these laptops have anything approaching a retina standard screen? Genuine question. Not looked at laptops for a few years and am surprised at the specs available for not that much cash nowadays.

Most of those laptops will be 720P – like a HD-Ready TV at 1366×768 pixels.

That’s not actually that great, especially if it is a 15.6 inch laptop, so it is better to aim for a full HD screen, or 1080P, or 1920×1080, if possible as it is a lot more workable.

1920×1200 is better still but it is pretty hard to get such a screen on a laptop nowadays.

Going into windows settings and reducing the size of each windows element helps.

I’d go with windows 8, in part because your daughter is growing up in a world of continually changing and evolving technologies and it’s for the best she gets used to adapting now.

getting used to the Windows 8 user interface probably has little relevance to your daughter getting a job – microsoft have been forced to put the start menu back as that is a pretty poor interface to use on anything above a mobile/tablet.

Put Linux on her laptop and she will be a lot more employable by the time shes ready for a job – i.e she will probably know what she is doing with a computer rather than just being able to navigate it.

Acer i5 Laptop Windows 8

Acer are doing cash back on some of their laptops

Asus i3 Laptop Windows 7 Pro

Windows 8 is fine, particularly if you get a laptop with a touch screen.

Put Linux on her laptop and she will be a lot more employable by the time shes ready for a job – i.e she will probably know what she is doing with a computer rather than just being able to navigate it

As much as I like Linux (I’m typing this on an Ubuntu loaded laptop) I wouldn’t suggest it for a schoolkid, unless you’re 100% sure you won’t need Word or similar to do assignments. Also if you’re going to be the one providing support I’d make sure you get something you understand – again Linux can be great, but it’s not something I’d really recommend to someone without much IT knowledge.

A red one. Or maybe blue.