What options are there to relplace a laptop?

[Poly Hive]

It's not the machine that is stumping us so much as the software. She is currently using win8 and seems to get on with it ok. I am running win7 and have no intentions of changing until the support is dropped and then it probably be Ubuntu.

So as we have heard nothing but negatives about win10 and the thought of it makes me shudder so what can we do. She browses and mails and thats about it apart from a couple of small simple spreadsheets.

PH

[Tod28]

Well here's a positive!.  Happily running Win 10 here and have been for 3 years.  Actual purchased copy not an upgrade or oem that came with a machine.

[Phil W]

Win 10 is to win 8 is as Win 7 is to Win Vista.  More than happy with Win 10.

[Kim]

I suspect it comes down to whether the couple of small spreadsheets require proper Excel, as that ties you into a Windows platform.

[Poly Hive]

The spreadsheets are OpenOffice.

PH

[chrisbainbridge]

I run a mixture of Win 7 and 10 with Mac at home and travelling.  Win 10 on a laptop and 2 tablets.  Works absolutely fine. Slightly different but so what.

[ScumOfTheRoad]

I have an HP Spectre laptop, quite high end with a 4K screen and touch. I am a longtime Linux sysadmin, but I admit to loving windows 10 on this device. I dual boot with Fedora.

But to be honest we also have a Chromebook in the house. I would say that the Chromebook is an perfectly good replacement for a laptop.
You can just factory wipe and start using a Chromebook again without losing anything.
If you are happy with Google Drive and Google Docs then look at the Chromebook.
Heck, just buy a cheap one and see if it suits you. You can always get a higher spec one if it does.

[Gattopardo]

Upgrade of memory might be a good idea.

Check that things like wifi cards work with win 10.

[tonycollinet]

Browse and email and a couple of simple spreadsheets - I'd at least consider a chromebook.

[Afasoas]

Windows 10 is an annoyance. So much so, that I barely use my Windows machine at home - I've got Debian on everything else and I enjoy

• a nice add free experience
• applying updates when it's convenient for me, as opposed to when it's convenient for Micro$oft
• an array of quality libre software at my finger tips
• not having the utter depression that goes with having your data slurped and moneytised

You can buy Dell XPS laptops with Ubuntu pre-loaded.

[321up]

It's not the machine that is stumping us so much as the software. She is currently using win8 and seems to get on with it ok. I am running win7 and have no intentions of changing until the support is dropped and then it probably be Ubuntu.

So as we have heard nothing but negatives about win10 and the thought of it makes me shudder so what can we do. She browses and mails and thats about it apart from a couple of small simple spreadsheets.

PH

C. upgraded from windows 7 to Linux and she prefers it.  I removed (and kept) the old hard drive with windows, installed a new ssd drive and installed Linux - it boots unbelievably fast despite the age of the laptop.  Her mum was duped into the windows 10 upgrade and it didn't run properly so she bought a new laptop with windows 10 and it failed to boot after an auto update - unfortunately she lives overseas so had to pay to get it fixed.  If your laptop was supplied with windows 8 then it is a lot newer than any of our computers and it should run better with Linux than windows.