I'm probably the wrong person to ask. I absolutely loathe proprietary machines (HP, Dell, etc.). My laptop is an iMac Professional because that's what my employer prefers, but my personal machine is a custom-built killer named Bessie. She was built to my specs three years ago and other than a few tweaks of my own choice, I've never had to have her serviced.

Well, she lost her main hard drive two months after she was completed, but that was a warranty replacement that cost me nothing.

What system are you going to be running on your new machine?

Why don't you just buy these shoes for your woman instead?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCHKXICefFw

I don't know laptops, and I've been out of the desktop loop for years now. For your purposes, I think that machine will be sufficient.

I recommend going to the library and looking up Consumer Reports and computer magazines for best values on laptops. Set a limit on what you want to pay.

I think a good rule of thumb is to get as much memory as you can afford.

Copious memory is essential if you plan on running multiple applications simultaneously.

IMO, processor speed is not as important as memory amount, particularly if you're not doing video or massive computations.

Windows and most apps today are poorly written, bloated memory hogs.