My kid trashed the keyboard on my wife’s laptop, so it’s apparently gonna be his and we need a new one for her.
What she had was definitely overkill and was chosen strictly because it’s what I have and I wanted to avoid the “why do you have…” questions. About 90%+ of what she uses it for is web browsing and gmail. Things being what they are, another 5% is web conferences. Pretty much the rest is straight-forward Word. I don’t foresee that changing any time soon.
OK, so I’m thinking her needs are really just 15" screen and as good a feeling keyboard as she can get for as cheaply as she can get it. She doesn’t have a touchscreen and I don’t think she currently misses it. I’m guessing she might be averse to non-Windows just because nothing will be labelled “Word” and “why doesn’t my computer have …”.
Find a used Lenovo T540p. Add an SSD drive and bump it to 8+ gigs of ram. That gives you a 15" screen and one of the best keyboards there is on a laptop. Probably for the neighbourhood of $300-$400. They’re the volvo of laptops.
If they use it for a desktop, you can get a docking station that lets you add an external keyboard, mouse, and monitor.
My personal laptop is getting long in the tooth. I’ve been experimenting off and on, and have reached the conclusion that I don’t need much beyond a web-sufring appliance plus something that can run Citrix Receiver, an RDP client, etc. I don’t need portable horsepower; I just need the ability to connect to a work or personal machine that has horsepower.
Although I wouldn’t discount the possibility of a cheap, streamlined Windows laptop, I’ll probably end up with a Chromebook of some sort.