Plenty of time for exposure to tech. At 6 months that kid's brain has only just now figured out the difference between sounds and colors. She's so interested in that tablet because every time that a notification dings and causes a popup she hears butterfly pudding and tastes blue sandpaper. She's been in a perpetual state of synesthesia while her brain tries to figure out what the heck is going on and that tablet is a source of all kinds of weirdness. She's not "interested" in tablets, she's trippin' balls.

And she still needs to figure out how the world works. Experiments show that children that young can have an intuitive grasp of physical laws, like how gravity works. That kid needs training in the real, 3D world, not the fantastic, inconsistent, 2D world in a tablet. Not to mention the emotional training that can only come from other ugly bags of mostly water.

Thanks for the replies. Saved me a couple 'learn the hard way' episodes.

1) Disconnect issue - I kind of had it in my head the X over SSH was for doing things I wasn't afraid to loose & was going right to the console for permanent system-wide changes. Good to know I had a reason for doing that.

2) Speed - My servers and I reside in the sticks of Arkansas. There is no such thing as "slow" here. It's all "normal" and "wow!" to us, so this one is kind of a non-issue for me. (To give you an example of the situation: some guy dug up one cable and 4 counties in NE Arkansas lost all connection to the outside world: cell phones, land lines, internet, everything. We were like Syria for about 8 hrs. Not that anyone but us noticed.)

3) DXPC - Nice. I'll make that next on my list of things to try.

I'm just now getting around to exploring remote admin options. I just recently discovered the joy of X over SSH and decided to be done with VNC. Now I see this...why would I use Splashtop instead of X over SSH?

Not a challenge, a request for info.

Mandrake > SUSE > Knoppix > DSL > CentOS > Ubuntu I'd try it, get dicouraged & quit for 6 months, try again, get discouraged & quit for 6 months...been doing this for just over a decade. Guess I'm one of those people waiting for the desktop to mature. I finally like Linux enough that I feel like if you took away Win & Mac I'd be fine with that.

I'm sick of hearing people getting pooh-pooh'd because there is a "lack of published science to explain the claimed effect". So what? Take a look at the documentation of the vast majority of the drugs you are popping into your piehole. You know what the most common phrase you will find in that stack of information is? "The mechanism of action is unknown." or something similar. Just because no one can explain how it works doesn't mean that it doesn't work. Wait for them to fall on their face before you start kicking them.

I'm going to answer the original question as posed. You choose a Windows laptop by process of elimination, kind of like the Mac/PC commercials show. The commercial was snarky but not far from the truth. With the breadth of the field you have to choose from this is the only way to do it.

First, establish your budget and eliminate everything not in that range. "Solid" is the $400-800, "awesome" range is $800-1500, "gigitty" range is $1500+. Loosely.

Non-negotiable specs: 4GB RAM, Windows 7.

Can go either way: Intel i5/7 or Core 2 Quad - Core 2 Duo 2GHz+ if you must - as your budget allows. For general use it doesn't make much difference at this point. (Its been a long time since I've had any computer where I felt like the processor was the bottleneck in a general purpose machine's performance.)

Find out if there are any features she can't do without, like backlit keyboard (I didn't think it was a big deal but now I'll never go back.), trackpoint, super thin, super light, super long battery life, etc. With Windows PCs the bewildering array of machines is usually the result of one unique feature per model line. For every new feature a manufacture comes up with they build a model line around it. If you find out what particular things she just can't do without then a couple models may jump out of the crowd.

When you've narrowed the field down to a few models check the manufacturer forums and sales outlets feedback and see if you can spot any patterns in the complaints or kudos. Random gripes and generally worded pooh-poohing don't mean a thing...anything that pops up repeatedly is a problem that will eliminate a model from consideration.

At this point you should have it narrowed down to a handful of machines. Pull out the one machine you think is styled best for each unique or cool feature. Present the short list, along with the best pics you can find so she can see styling, to your wife and have her pick.

Its called 'online presence' and it kind of the point isn't it?

Seconded.