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Dear Tom, Since our resident biochemist, Fraser Kendall, has entered the discussion with his recommendation of a ThinkPad, I see no reason to contradict this view - I don't own one myself, but I've never disliked any I've used. They are solidly built and have quite a following among free software enthusiasts too; notice that 8 out of the 10 laptops listed for Libreboot compatibility are ThinkPads! However, my specialism for hardware recommendations is at quite the opposite end of the price spectrum. Here's another way of looking at it: A good second-hand laptop, say, with 4GB of RAM, will cost about £200; a more new entry-level laptop could still be under £400, despite the pandemic forcing prices up. For basic web browsing, multimedia (I imagine the use-case will include no small amount of video-conferencing!) and word processing that kind of PC should be fine. 4GB of RAM and an Intel Core Duo is enough even for Windows 10, and will have no trouble running something like Debian or Trisquel smoothly. The key thing that separates this option from the ~£1000 possibilities is that you could buy up to four laptops of this value in the same budget. Whilst I imagine that a computer of this kind would still work well in 3 three years without so much as an 'apt-get upgrade', if it does break, your daughter can buy a replacement with next-day delivery, and (assuming your daughter takes regular backups of her files) could get back to normal in less than 48 hours. When one puts it like that, I think it seems like a much better proposition than any aftermarket warranties scheme, which from what I've read will invariable involve a week or two of hassle and back-and-forth of emails (if not the machine in question!) before one can get back to work. In other words, with a large budget one can buy something powerful, efficient and reasonably long-lasting, which may be what your daughter needs - but the more modest alternative has the benefit of peace of mind. And in the worst case scenario, the one in which it really does need replacing every year, you still end up with another three machines to tinker around with and salvage parts from! Best wishes, Sebastian - Freenode: 'seabass' -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG https://mailman.dcglug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq