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Hi.

For starters, 8gb ram minimum is a must if you use office applications.

Most touchpads still have the same buttons but they’re not mechanical - they’re zones on the touchpad.

A godsend for me is the Logitech MX Anywhere mouse - it’s wireless, works on any surface even glass, and charges over usb so you only need it plugged in when charging it.

Adaptors from USB to HDMI or displayport are cheap enough. I have 3 curved ultrawide monitors connected together with displayport and there’s just one usb cable to the laptop... giving me 4 screens in total.

I convinced my company to buy an ultrawide monitor for each desk when replacing old VGA dual monitors - cheaper, uses less electricity, more ergonomic, leaves an extra free power socket on every desk, and gives you the ability to put two documents side by side for comparisons.

With 28” or bigger, an ultrawide can display twice as many columns in a spreadsheet at once than the laptop screen.

So a good Black Friday deal on one of those can be a really good investment if you use it for work.

Yes, IF I bought a laptop w/ 4 GB RAM I’d upgrade it to 8 or 12 GB.

Noted on the “new” style touchpads. (I’ve just had the ol’ HP a long time, it has 8 GB RAM and a 256 GB SSD, i3 processor — it does, er, did, everything I needed, quickly.)

I use (mostly Logitech) wireless mice with dongles for most everything. Granted mine are battery powered, but the batteries last quite a while, and at Black Friday prices (Rural King has their own brand @ 14 AA or AAA alkalines for $1.99 @ present, and Menards has AC-Delco AA and AAA alkalines @ 30 for $4.98 after rebate [might be a little better battery]]) cost is nil. The Logitech mice seem to get flaky slowly as the battery runs down so @ the first sign of trouble I pop in a new batt. I have yet to be “away” and have a mouse “die” from a low battery. OTOH, I have had a couple M170’s just suddenly quit. One death was a static zap, IIRC. :-(

At my old consulting gig I’d connect my HP laptop to a 27” 16:9 monitor & use both the laptop screen & the 27”, which was plenty for what I was doing (which did not involve spreadsheet work. At “home” I have a 4:3 24” Dell monitor in front of me and a 16:9 24” monitor ABOVE that (limited space to the side) w/ the latter rotated long dimension vertical. Again, not doing much w/ spreadsheets, vertical height helps me more than width.

Shortly, however, the top monitor is getting replaced with a 43” UHD TV (2021 Black Friday deal). I did a trial run and text & graphics definition is “good enough”. (Even with new glasses my “senior” vision can’t handle super tiny text such as is on some product labels.) The area should easily handle side by side (comparative) windows (data curves) and such, and, I can lean back and watch TV or a movie in the evening while paying bills (or whatever) on the Dell. (A 43” UHD screen ~1.5 meters away isn’t bad...) Then to upgrade the speakers, for which I’ll build custom units. ;-)