New laptop recommendation

[GeoffF100]

If she is used to a macbook, you will have problems replacing it with a PC. Here is a relevant article:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... user-apple

The only time you'll find decent information in a technical article in the Guardian is in the comments btl, much to be fair like the rest of the website.

It might be helpful if you tell us where the article is inaccurate. I know nothing about macbooks, but the article looked relevant.

[BobbyD]

If she is used to a macbook, you will have problems replacing it with a PC. Here is a relevant article:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... user-apple

The only time you'll find decent information in a technical article in the Guardian is in the comments btl, much to be fair like the rest of the website.

It might be helpful if you tell us where the article is inaccurate. I know nothing about macbooks, but the article looked relevant.

It's not what I would consider a reliable source, having read a reasonable amount of his and his predecessor's work. It might be relevant, that doesn't mean it is valuable. Personal opinion, but I would check to see if Good Housekeeping had a technology section before spending money basded on anything published above the line in the Guardian.

What do you know?

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/uk/con ... echnology/

Of course the web is quite a big place, googling Macbook alternatives will probably throw up quite a lot of food for thought, but in all honesty given that one of the prerequisites was budget it seems like the wrong approach to me. Identify the bits about the Mac which are essential to keep, put them in to the min spec/dealbreakers list and identify makes/models with acceptable equivalents.

[GeoffF100]

The only time you'll find decent information in a technical article in the Guardian is in the comments btl, much to be fair like the rest of the website.

It might be helpful if you tell us where the article is inaccurate. I know nothing about macbooks, but the article looked relevant.

It's not what I would consider a reliable source, having read a reasonable amount of his and his predecessor's work. It might be relevant, that doesn't mean it is valuable. Personal opinion, but I would check to see if Good Housekeeping had a technology section before spending money basded on anything published above the line in the Guardian.

What do you know?

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/uk/con ... echnology/

Of course the web is quite a big place, googling Macbook alternatives will probably throw up quite a lot of food for thought, but in all honesty given that one of the prerequisites was budget it seems like the wrong approach to me. Identify the bits about the Mac which are essential to keep, put them in to the min spec/dealbreakers list and identify makes/models with acceptable equivalents.

Your link does not appear to address macbook substitutes. I did a quick Google for up to date UK articles on macbook substitutes and the Guardian article came up. An article like that is going to be a starting point at best. An obvious deal breaker is an IPS screen, which he did not appear to mention. I tried searching for that, but just got all the laptops Google's highest paying advertisers wanted to shift, none of them appeared to have IPS screens. We now know that is not what the OP is looking for, but it is an interesting question nonetheless.

[BobbyD]

Your link does not appear to address macbook substitutes.

It doesn't, I was just surprised Good Housekeeping had a tech section.

You can take what you want from the article, and it might only be a starting place, Ijust weouldn't be confident it was a good starting place...

If I were the OP I'd spend a few hours between now and black friday honing his requirements like screen quality (min resolution), c[u, RAM etc. and working out what premium he might consider paying for the less essential aspects of the macbook like it's low weight.

A more direct replacement might present itself at an acceptable price, although not cheap cheap. I did once stack three voucher deals to get a Dell XPS 13 for £500 once I had ebayed the free Playstation 3 which one of the vouchers entitled me to, and bought it through a relative who was at the time a student, which turned out to be an unnecessary precaution, so miracles do happen but can't be banked upon.

[GeoffF100]

If I were the OP I'd spend a few hours between now and black friday honing his requirements like screen quality (min resolution), c[u, RAM etc. and working out what premium he might consider paying for the less essential aspects of the macbook like it's low weight.

The OP's last words were:

I'm lucky in that she uses a desktop iMac for production work, but a Windows laptop for presentations of finished materials. The laptop is a bit of a "who cares what happens to it" piece of kit, rather than a thing of beauty and elegance.

The requirement appears to be just to transport the presentation, open it with whatever software she is using, and click a mouse to go from slide to slide. This laptop exceeds our basic spec for £324.97:

https://www.cclonline.com/product/acer- ... vcgek-018/

The weight is 1.40 kg.