Do you need to buy a budget laptop for someone who is not a power user, but needs to sometimes do semi-powerful computing tasks?  Get this laptop!  I've never had a recipient of this laptop complain about it.  To the contrary, I always hear about how absolutely fast the laptop boots, and how gorgeous the screen is.  It's more than powerful enough to handle office-related processing, especially if you get an adequately powerful configuration.  I'd advise adding another stick of RAM, if possible.