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Thanks, yes - have two 500gb SSDs in my desktop PC and they make a huge difference. I worry that 256gb is a little on the lowside - though that's more for me occasionally using it where I'd be working off an external drive. For what my partner needs it'd probably be fine.
I'm a bit lost with laptops really - with a desktop one I'd just put in a bigger SSD, but I presume that invalidates warranties, etc.
I'm totally out of touch with processors these days, so good to know that i5 is worth looking for.
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warranties
Probably but it also depends on how you get to the parts as to whether they'll know.
On both my ancient Samsung and my other half's moderately old Acer you could access and replace both SSD and RAM without anyone knowing.
For all your data 256GB is a bit small. But as an eg since moving the bulk of my media files to xHDDs and backups to the cloud I'm using <50GB of a 120SSD (although bare in mind the OS is much less than windows). I debated getting a bigger SSD, but I didn't think it was worth spending >£25 on such an old laptop.
You can also use a 128GB memory card or almost flush USB memory stick - neither are expensive and give plenty of extra room if you wanted a dedicated media drive.
hugo7
i5, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD minimum at that price point. This is a decent deal: https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/hp-pavilion-14-ce0501sa-14-intel-core-i5-laptop-256-gb-ssd-silver-10184651-pdt.html
HP hardware is decent for the most part. Much of a muchness at £600. Will probably be plastic. No exotic materials here. Make sure you don’t buy a spinning hard drive. I went back to a spinning hard drive at work after 7 years on SSDs (not out of choice!) and it is bloody miserable.