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My mother is stuck in the house as one of those that had a letter from the NHS so is isolating for 12 weeks.
She is a NHS worker too and wants to do some work from home and has asked me to help her sort a new laptop.
Budget is £500
Needs a large screen
Windows 10
Decent speakers.
I have no idea about laptops so if you could help with some ideas that would be great.
Many thanks.
Dell outlet for bargains. Lenovo for build quality. Get something with an SSD. It's worth searching the forum, there's a "what laptop?" question like once a week and it's always the same.
You can add a second monitor if screen real-estate is important.
'Mom'? For goodness sakes... The only acceptable excuse is if she and you are both septics...
Whats she going to use it for? My 94 year old mum Got a new iPad about 6 months ago. Its her 3rd or 4th after starting with our old cast offs. She has over the last 10 years kept upgrading on her own account. Does all her shopping, email, simple games like Scrabble, video conferencing on FaceTime, WhatsApp and Zoom, research and TV catchup in a straightforward way. Keeps her entertained and in contact. Complains about her younger friends not embracing technology. Sometimes asks for help about symbols or how to format documents but basically foolproof.
Cheers.
They have an iPad.
I think she wants it so she can do her NHS work from home.
£500 is where the likes of dell like to sell this years basic intel "I core" laptop range, with a reasonable spec IME. So anything under that is 'older'* or has a crap processors, cheap processors (Celeron/Pentium) are outdated so quickly its wasting money and a decent spec one will last (home users) 3-5 years without issue. That said being a older and not the latest spec laptop, means very little realistically for home laptop use, so last years £500 laptop reduced to £400 is absolutely fine.
So I would looks for a laptop with am Intel i3 (i5 is nicer, i7 pointless for home use), 4gb ram and an SSD will suffice (I'm not up on the AMD laptop processor, their desktop ones are cheaper and better, so maybe some one else can chip in, as to what worthwhile with those). The Dell outlet is touted quite often, but my view is unless your used to looking at spec's it can be very hard to pick out the true bargains (£50 off but dented and scratched is not a bargain), or mainly the true bargain are top end computers being reduced to a price, that is still way above your new basic laptop cost.
*The latest Intel "I core" range are in their 9th generation, but anything from probably the 6th gen upwards would be fine, TBH my work laptop is a 2nd gen and works fine if a little slower. They like to sell you a huge 1TB HDD, ignore those in favour or a small SSD (even 120GB is fine unless you storing lots of photos/downloads) . Memory 4GB as a minimum & is absolutely fine, 8gb is nicer but don't get caught up thinking 16Gb must be fantastic, it's only great if your (specialist) software makes use of it.
That's my very simplistic view, there's lots of (geeky) holes in it but as a basic guide, I think it works & should help
Z1ppy's post ^ is very good.
For tech advice I've never found a better place than this: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack
Jack was thorough and fair, and had an understanding of what people needed. Sadly he died about a month ago, so there'll be no more of his advice.
Computer advice dates quickly, of course, so his last 'which laptop for mum' column is probably not much use, but this article might help:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2020/jan/30/whats-the-minimum-specification-for-someone-buying-a-pc
Brilliant stuff much appreciated.
As she works for the NHS she thinks that there is a NHS discount at Dell direct so I might just point her that way