[chrisinva]

Ineed new laptop & I'm not tech savvy. Please recommend something: I need a laptop to run WORD, & EXCEL. I surf the web & shop online. I use hotmail/outlook. I save lots of pictures (.pdf, .tiff. jng) from my iphone to my laptop. Currently I have used 100 GB of my 225 GB Dell laptop that we got 5 yrs ago. I don't do any gaming & don't want to. Weight is important, current laptop weighs 2.2 lbs.; I'm willing to go to 3 lbs. Backlighting is VERY important. Battery life not so important. Chromebooks look interesting but I tried a MAC years ago & could never adjust to it so went back to WINDOWS. Thanks for any recommendations.

[JohnN]

Chromebooks don't have a hard drive, so you'd have to save your photos to the cloud somewhere. I'm much like you. I just bought a Lenovo laptop with 4 mg RAM (more than enough if you're not gaming nor stream ing vids) and a 125 gig hard drive. It was something under $300 from Walmart. There are a lot of black friday deals right now.

You don't need a high end PC. HP, Dell, ASUS, Lenovo, any of those will do.
Don't spend over $400. Just my opinion

[retiredguy123]

Have you considered subscribing to Microsoft 365 for $70 per year? It will allow you to use all of the MS Office programs: Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook on all of your devices, and you can download the programs to any device. It will also provide 1tb of cloud storage using One Drive. You would not even need to have a Windows computer. Any Internet device will work, and the programs are always up-to-date. So, any laptop will work, even a Chromebook. I have subscribed for several years. Your photos will fit on a flash/thumb drive, but the cloud storage will allow you to access them from any Internet device.

[CarlR33]

I assume you’re using a usb cord to get the photos from iPhone to laptop since you did not mention a cloud service? Anyhow, I use both windows and iPad for work and personal and much prefer the iPad (with a wireless keyboard). You said you tried MAC but your using an iPhone that is a Mac? You can subscribe to a few gig of icloud storage for like 50 cents a month and you’re not in danger of your storage being stolen, damaged, or hard drive issues just using an PC storage, etc. I have seen a few people post in here about using local storage like a PC but the cloud is the way to go as pictures taken on your phone will automatically sync with your iCloud and be available on your iPad (or it does have windows capability via a windows app).

[MorTech]

Asus Vivobook S 14 at BestBuy on sale at a good price. AMOLED 14 inch screen.
Model:Q423SA-U5512 - On sale now for $650 - 2.87 lbs.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-vi...xtStoreId=1156

[dewilson58]

Best Buy is a good option.

I'm a Lenovo Yoga user.

Light weight & powerful.

[Arctic Fox]

Take a look at what Amazon has to offer in the Acer Aspire range - I went with the Ryzen CPU which does everything the more expensive Intel option does.

[MorTech]

Light weight and inexpensive never seem to get together

[Stu from NYC]

Do you belong to either Sams or BJ? If so pay them a visit

[dtennent]

Why do you want to buy a new computer? If you are having trouble with storage, the cloud storage options could be helpful. If the computer is running slowly, a clean up of the files running could extend the life for a few more years. We are using a computer that is 10 yrs old though we don’t play games on it.

We did have a lap top which finally came up with the message “This computer can no longer be updated . Buy a new computer.”

[OrangeBlossomBaby]

Originally Posted by JohnN

Chromebooks don't have a hard drive, so you'd have to save your photos to the cloud somewhere. I'm much like you. I just bought a Lenovo laptop with 4 mg RAM (more than enough if you're not gaming nor stream ing vids) and a 125 gig hard drive. It was something under $300 from Walmart. There are a lot of black friday deals right now.

You don't need a high end PC. HP, Dell, ASUS, Lenovo, any of those will do.
Don't spend over $400. Just my opinion

Chromebooks all come with USB ports where you can insert a flash drive, and store everything on the drive for when you can't access the internet. You just have to remember to upload any changes or new files to the cloud when you do that.

Google docs doesn't download anywhere though - you'd have to convert the file before you can move it out of the cloud storage. Which - if you're into software, isn't hard to do, it just has a learning curve.

[OrangeBlossomBaby]

Originally Posted by dtennent

Why do you want to buy a new computer? If you are having trouble with storage, the cloud storage options could be helpful. If the computer is running slowly, a clean up of the files running could extend the life for a few more years. We are using a computer that is 10 yrs old though we don’t play games on it.

We did have a lap top which finally came up with the message “This computer can no longer be updated . Buy a new computer.”

Windows 11 is out, and Windows 10 is being officially retired next October. A machine that's 5 years old MIGHT not be updateable. Mine isn't. I just bought a new desktop because some of my old apps were updated for Windows 11 and weren't working properly anymore. They still worked - just not well.

Security updates will cease to exist for windows 10 next October. That means they're already barely stable now, and will be UNstable next year.

Thanksgiving sales are when you find the best prices, so Windows has basically forced everyone into having to buy a replacement a full year before they turn windows 10 into legacy machines.

I'll have to buy a new laptop too for the same reason.

[FloridaGuy66]

Originally Posted by JohnN

Chromebooks don't have a hard drive, so you'd have to save your photos to the cloud somewhere.

Chromebooks DO have a hard drive. I'm typing this right now on my Chromebook. I have plenty of movies, photos and documents saved to my Chomebook. Mine has a 64GB solid state hard drive. Paid $299 for this Chromebook.

I don't deal with Windows computers anymore. Too much bloat and nonsense like viruses to deal with.

[FloridaGuy66]

Originally Posted by chrisinva

Ineed new laptop & I'm not tech savvy. Please recommend something: I need a laptop to run WORD, & EXCEL. I surf the web & shop online.

Chromebooks look interesting but I tried a MAC years ago & could never adjust to it so went back to WINDOWS. Thanks for any recommendations.

My main computer is a Chromebook. It's fantastic, light and fast.

You can load Word and Excel using Google Docs and Google Sheets and still save in Word or Excel format if that's what you need.

Most younger people just use Google Docs and Sheets for everything. It's FREE, better than the Microsoft products, you can do 99% of what they will do, plus you can easily access your documents and spreadsheet from your phone or another computer if you ever need to through Google Drive which is also free.

[OrangeBlossomBaby]

Note to the OP: If you prefer Word and Excel, you'll need MS Office. The off-line version of it is not free. But if you want a free office suite I recommend LibreOffice. It works the same as MS Office, it's open source software, offered by The Document Foundation, a non-prof that's been around for many years. It's the same group that produced OpenOffice (LibreOffice is basically OpenOffice, with more functionality and wizbang sparkles).

They do accept donations, but use of the product for personal use is 100% free.