Refurbs scare me since it is my moms and not mine. I could fix about anything, but with her not so much. So I need a warranty for the first year or so just in case something happens.
Refurbs, in my experience, aren't any more likely to fail than new machines. In fact, in my experience they are less likely to fail. The reason is that most laptops that are sold today as a refub were likely returned because the hard drive was bad out of the box. They pop a new drive in and actually test to make sure the whole machine works before selling it as a refurb. They don't test new machines, just slap them together and ship them out. Most new laptops aren't even powered on at the factory. The drives are imaged outside of the machine before it is put in.
on the win 7 - 8.1 ... I was mainly thinking about the compatibility to her school stuff. They are not the most techilogically advanced school. I just dont want to have to buy win 7 after she gets a new laptop just so she can use some of her schools software. Although, I have her going to ask her tech guys at school if 8.1 will work with their old ass software. So if it will then 8.1 will be just fine.
is 4GB for 8.1 acceptable? no lag or anything with that OS? Have not had a chance to use it longer than just messing with it at the store ...
Like I said, if the program works in Windows 7 it will work in Windows 8.1. There haven't been any changes in the way software is handled between 7 and 8. There was a major change between XP and Vista with the move to 64-bit OSes(which made old 16-bit programs no longer work) and with the addition of UAC(which runs all programs as a limited user some programs didn't like this). But since then, there hasn't been any change in how programs are handled, so if it runs on Win7 it will run on Win8.
And 4GB is easily acceptable for 8.1. Win8.1 idles using less memory on my laptop than Win7 did. I have yet to run out of memory even with 10+ tabs open on the internet and several work documents open.
