Laptop for pensioner

The Black Oil

Hey,

I'm looking for recommendations for a family friend. Her current laptop is an old Philips machine, that's sort of creaking along - won't work without mains lead, running XP, low RAM, etc.

Moving to Win 8 might be a bit of a leap for her, but she has a smartphone and is adapting to that at the moment. Also, with classic shell for the start menu, it should be fine. She is currently using Outlook Express 6 for email. Opera and Thunderbird I think are possible alternatives - unless there are others you guys might have in mind.

I had a look around Currys, Argos (as this'll be a bricks and mortar purchase), but it's been years since did any real hunting on laptop specs. Are optical drives less common now? I figure 4GB RAM anyway. Don't think she needs an SSD, or vast amounts of storage. The other thing is her current machine is 11" and it would probably be best to stick to something of that size (cuteness factor!).

Yawlboy

Gave my mum (she is nearly 70) a Microsoft Surface RT - Netflix, Facebook, Email, Skype and Web - all she wants or needs. You can get the original ones really cheaply. They are well built and have a keyboard and mousepad as well as touch screen.

The Black Oil

Yeah, is the Surface RT basically the Surface 2? I presume there's some way I could bring her @eircom.net mail into an app, or similar.

Does your mother use Office?

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/support/office-apps/microsoft-office-home-and-student-2013-RT