Buying a laptop for my daughter, carefully

I knew nothing about laptops and there were four hundred of them. Two weeks of reading left me more confused, because every review was about a machine slightly different from the one on sale.

In the end three questions settled it. What does she actually run — which turned out to be a browser, a word processor and one drawing application. How much memory does the listing state, not imply. And does the warranty mean a repair I can arrange locally.

That narrowed four hundred to six. Of the six I chose the one from a store that answered a specification question in two lines rather than pasting the description back at me.

It arrived on the estimated day and it has been fine for a year. The decision that mattered was not the model, it was deciding what she needed it to do.