First post, by Kerr Avon
A friend of mine is looking for a laptop to replace her old desktop, and she's asked me to recommend one, preferably one she can purchase locally (we are in England), so probably from:
https://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/index.html
The operating system probably doesn't matter, as all she wants it for is web surfing, internet browsing, and at most, playing Facebook games. I've not played any Facebook games (I can't stand Facebook, it baffles me why people use it) but I'd imagine that they're all browser based and so don't use the host computer's 3D ability? If so, then that should knock something off the cost, as the laptop won't need a good GFX card, I imagine.
She wants a large screen, and for the laptop to last for years (would 8GB be enough for what she wants for the next decade or part of a decade, or is 12GB or 16GB more desirable?), an SSD drive probably isn't necessary I'd have thought.
She doesn't think she'll want to install any new software (though I'd put Avast! and Malwarebytes on it if it has Windows as it's OS), and if it's not Windows then that's probably OK, as long as it allows full web browsing and maybe basic word-processing, which I'd imagine is standard with all OSes now. And unlike most people, when she says she won't be gaming on it, that does mean that it doesn't need to run commercial games, as she lives on her own and so no one in the house is going to want to play anything demanding on it, and she just plays Facebook games.
Cost is an issue (she's retired, and if you know England then you know that a pension isn't much nowadays), so nothing too expensive, and the screen should be large. And even though she'd prefer to buy local, I might be able to convince her to buy online, so any online purchases might be worth looking into too.
Any advice or help would be much appreciated, thanks.