This year, both our old laptops gave up the ghost and we had to buy new ones. I first did research for my wife. She likes to move her laptop to various chairs around the house. Once online, connected to the world through WiFi, she looks up news and other things, checks her email, does banking, and watches a few videos. Sometimes we talk to family and friends on Skype. I know a lot more about computers than she does, so she asked me to find one for her. A touch-screen wasn't important, so I was looking for a thin, attractive, high-resolution screen laptop, with reasonable speed and a solid operating system. We've also tried tablets , but without a decent physical keyboard, found them lacking. The bonus was, judging by her needs, I didn't think we needed to break the bank to find a decent machine at the lower end of the scale. When we bought it, just a month ago at the time of this writing, the price was a hair under $350. Today, a quick review of the product page shows they've shoved that up by $70 to $420. Why?? I have to say, that might have been a deal-breaker.However, I did choose this Acer Aspire 5 Slim Laptop. It arrived and I went to work to set it up for her. It was pretty intuitive. Plug it in, press the power button, and follow the prompts. Easy. However, we like to use a lot of apps not made (or even approved) by Microsoft. The laptop comes with Windows 10 on it, in Microsoft's "S" mode. In other words, they set it up so you can only get Microsoft programs and apps that come from their online store. If that doesn't suit you, don't despair: you can opt out of that "Microsoft-only" mode during setup.For example, we like using the Opera browser, not M's "Edge." As soon as you try and download the program, Microsoft pop ups appear, all concerned: "are you sure?" "Apps not approved by Microsoft may be dangerous -- may damage your computer." And "once you abandon S mode, you will not be able to get it back!" Don't worry, go ahead and press the button. You'll still have Windows 10 and can choose apps from wherever you want them.I'm not going to go through the technical stuff in this review. You can read all about that on this product page. I'll just tell you, the laptop is attractive, light and thin, the screen is big enough for everything you want to do, including watching videos and movies, and it is in good resolution. It runs quietly, and its interface with WiFi and online webpages is good. The backlit keyboard is nicely laid out and easy to type on. You get 3 x USB ports, plus others. You get 4 gigs of working RAM, which may not sound like a lot, but it's plenty to handle watching videos etc. You get 128 gigs of memory on the harddrive -- again, not huge, but it is solid state, which means, dependable. And these days, it's so easy to add an external drive or get yourself a bunch of thumb drives which are now cheap - cheap - cheap. And of course, you can use Microsoft's One Drive (installed) or any other cloud memory service you prefer.My wife is happy with her Acer. And then, a couple of weeks after we got hers, my own laptop went down for the final count. I happen to do advanced video and photograph editing on two different desktops, a PC and a Mac for various applications. But I also like to use a laptop for much of the same things my wife does. My choice was even easier this time. I chose the same Acer we'd just acquired for her. Fortunately, I also got the $350 price, or we would have paid an extra $140 on our two purchases.In the meantime, we're enjoying our Acer laptops. Recommended!