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Amen, brother. I've taken apart a few HPs. Very flimsy components. You half expect them to dissolve in direct sunlight.
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I'm a big fan of Dell and recommend getting a refurbished one[^]. They come with a full warranty and you can get some amazing deals. I recommend getting one with Windows 7[^] and an SSD. Don't worry about the amount of RAM - you can easily add more yourself. Feel free to email me if you have questions.
One more thing - refurbished Dells come with ZERO bloatware - nothing but the OS!
/ravi
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Agreed. On a Dell XPS right now. Great build for the money in my opinion. Excellent advice.
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get a lap top ...
slide it up closer to the hips it'll keep the 'tackle' warm in winter even after an argument or night on the booze.
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What's worse, a stock market crash or a divorce?
The stock market crash. In both cases half of your money is gone, but after the stock crash your old dragon still makes your life miserable. So, you are a very fortunate man if you can trade her in for a new notebook. Don't wait too long.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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I would consider a laptop of 17 inch and with an i5 processor and 4 GB. An SSD is also an advantage. So the laptop has good performance and everybody will have fun for years with it.
I favour Lenovo because it is good quality for a reasonable price.
Press F1 for help or google it.
Greetings from Germany
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In that realm, I bought a refurbished Dell M6500 laptop. It's rather heavy as it's referred to as a portable desktop. Nice keyboard. Two HDD. It really is nice to work on. It's bottom of that line, an i5, but they go up from there if you got the money.
Refurb: $399 (in USA, at least).
That being said, I could also recommend you get a bare-bones and put it together, yourself. It doesn't save that much money these days - but you pick all the parts and have all the various manuals should a fix be needed. Depending upon what she'll do with it, and that she might be use to other O/S's due to cell phone usage, you can load Ubuntu or other Linux - save about $100 and get better performance (and less chance of her getting infested from online evil).
One last thing: I don't go anywhere near Lenovo systems - I just plain don't trust them (china has shipped spyware laden machines, before).
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Not sure of the Lenovo quality. I've got a top end 17" Lenovo Ideapad gaming laptop, bearing in mind these things had an RRP of £2.5k I had to send 2 back before getting one that had no faults. Not a great start and customer service was dire until I posted on their Facebook page stating how poor the customer service was, funnily enough I had a response within 8 minutes and everything went top speed after that.
It took exactly 1 month from ordering the laptop to getting a working one. I also had to order the third one as they are unable to send a second replacement which meant at one point I had payed for 2 of them. In fairness to Lenovo they did give me a discount for my inconvenience.
First fault was not obvious as the laptop did work so would not surprise me if there are other laptops out there with the same fault with the owners not aware of it. Second fault was one of the fans clearly did not work, on a machine with on overclocked i7 and GTX 1070 this is fairly important. And I would have thought fairly easy to spot in quality control.
That aside it is a lovely laptop if you can get a fully functioning one, how long will it last who knows.
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Agree -- I prefer the Thinkpad series. Better keyboard and a mouse-stick stuck in the keyboard.
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A new wife, factoring in the cost of divorce and/or possible alimony and/or child-support, may be more expensive, but, in the long run may give you more pleasure.
cheers, Bill
«... thank the gods that they have made you superior to those events which they have not placed within your own control, rendered you accountable for that only which is within you own control For what, then, have they made you responsible? For that which is alone in your own power—a right use of things as they appear.» Discourses of Epictetus Book I:12
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It all depends on what she will be using the computer for.
If it's just browsing, emailing and watching online videos then a chromebook is a good choice.
Printing can be a bit of a faff apparently(I don't own a chromebook), however she could share documents with you to print from your own computer.
Chromebooks are cheap and there is very little than needs supporting with them.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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Depends, is she in a good shape?
Is she having a lot of moodswings?
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depends. Take her into a store. Bestbuy for instance let her try some out. Find out what she likes. Screen size, keyboard layout etc. In the end for my wife it came down more to ergonomics than power of the computer. We tried iPad pro, Surface, some Dell Laptops etc...
Ended up with the Surface pro. It was the one she liked best. Costs a bit more. But I think it was worth it for a happy wife.
To err is human to really mess up you need a computer
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Trading your wife for a computer is probably not a good idea unless she is just too far out of warranty. 
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OK, so now a real response. As others have said, depends on what she will do with it.If it is really an entertainment device then I recommend what we did for my wife: an iPad. Although I *really* don't like Apple or the interface, the iPad has provided very easy access to the web and various entertainment applications. It is pricey, but you can't beat the convenience of the size and weight. I think we have had her iPad for about 4 years now.
I will echo a few other comments: a laptop probably makes the most sense since you can move it anywhere in the house. Kudos to Dell and brickbats to HP. My son had nothing but issues with his HP laptop at university and we both have had issues with HP desktops with poor customer support. The extra money for a Dell is probably worth it.I haven't had a "Lenovo" since they bought the line from IBM, but they seem to have continued the engineering and quality from what I can tell. I had an IBM Thinkpad and it was an excellent machine.
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I want to get another; but it will not be a "wife-type" computer (i.e. "lame").
I would like to share my XR experiences; so the next one (for the wife) will be at least a (AMD) Ryzen 7 with a GTX 1060 / 1070.
I'd look for the same in an Intel box.
Unfortunately, due to "crypto-mining", GPU's, etc. are short in stock and over-priced; which means, you should build your own and save at least a few $100.
My dealer will put all your custom hardware picks together for $100. Hard to beat that.
"(I) am amazed to see myself here rather than there ... now rather than then".
― Blaise Pascal
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You're thinking about it all wrong. You give her your old computer and buy yourself a new one.  If you like to tinker and do your own upgrades, these laptops are good. Easily access drive bays, memory, video cards, etc. Customizable backlit keyboard colors, options for really nice screens. My daughter bought a 17" model, pretty big, solid, she really likes it for her designing and programming, she doesn't game. But if you travel much, it's a bit big. You can order them off Amazon also.. Eluktronics[^]
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I bought my wife a Mac on the grounds that I know nothing about them and the questions would stop.
It didn't work.
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I just got my wife a Lenovo Yoga. Very nice laptop indeed.
14 inch touch screen monitor. You can flip the screen around and use it like a tablet. (small enough for sitting in bed and working on)
If the price aint a thing I'd recommend at least 8gb ram and 256gb SSD. (That should be fine for your wife. CPU go for i5 and up. For OS, Windows 10 Home is pretty standard these days.
Otherwise 4gb ram and 1 tb hd will also suffice. RAM and HD can always be upgraded afterwards.
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Patient: Doctor, I think I'm a chicken.
Doctor: How long have you felt this way?
Patient: Ever since I came out of my shell...
Sorry! 
Keep your friends close. Keep Kill your enemies closer.
The End
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You're eggsactly right that was a bad yolk.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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Eggscuse me!
Keep your friends close. Keep Kill your enemies closer.
The End
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Hmm, eggsactly the reply I eggspected....must ...stop...now...
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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Eggscruciating. - the yolk is on you!
Keep your friends close. Keep Kill your enemies closer.
The End
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Now you're eggsaggerating a bit.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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