Laptop recommendations please........my mind is boggled

[northender]

We are looking for a new laptop for dd who is 15. Top budget is £500. She has just started y11 and would like this to last her through A levels and beyond. She likes photography but as a hobby, not enough to need special features. Would she be better with 4 or 8GB memory? She has a good sized portable drive. Good battery life is important to her.

I have just got completely boggled with the array of devices out there and all the different specs, I would really appreciate recommendations.

8 GB is really the minimum.

Read the reviews and see what they like that is in your price range.

uk.pcmag.com/laptops/158/the-best-laptops

Thanks Miss but all those are well out of our price range except the Lenovo 2 in 1 which is not what we are looking for.

The goog sez

www.techradar.com/uk/news/the-best-laptop-deals

www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2334524.m570.l1313&_nkw=cheap+computers+laptop&_sacat=179&LH_TitleDesc=0&_fsrp=1&_osacat=179&_odkw=cheap+computers&_dcat=179&rt=nc&vbn_id=7023490443&Operating%2520System=Windows%252010

Microsoft Surface is a nice laptop/tablet combo.

This is in your budget, although the processor is only an i3, 8GB RAM and an SSD means that it will be nippy enough for most purposes and Lenovo is normally considered to be a decent brand. The claimed battery life is 6 hours.

www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/-82c500g5uk/version.asp

Have a dig around and see if you can find some reviews for this model.

Argos are doing this one. www.argos.co.uk/product/5029976
Decent enough I5 cpu which should keep DD going and it has 8gb ram memory. Not the biggest SSD in the world but at least she has an external drive. You get 1 year subscrption for Norton Antivirus but no Office suite but I expect the school may supply Microsoft Office Student at a sensible price. If not then you can get Open Source LibreOffice free of charge.

Have a look at Chrome books. It runs on apps but There is an app for everything these days. I set up a business entirely on a chromebook. Depending what she uses it for, check them out. Mine was half the price of the equivalent laptop. Best thing is, i open the lid and it's ready to go immediately. I'm never going back to Windows, ever.

Chromebooks are very good at what they do and are meant to be more secure than Windows based machines, but just make sure that they are compatible with DD's school requirements (if she intends to use it for school work of course).