I bought the precursor of the one
http://www.laptopcentrale.nl/product...+Gebruikt.html
a few yrs ago for my wife, the Dell D430.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-La...30.6043.0.html
Bought it 2nd hand, put a SSD myself in it ... it still runs ok.
The E6230 may already have a SSD, so look out if it is there...

Those 12 inch machines have much more power than any tablet.... and more options, if you want them....

Get something with decent nvidia graphics if possible. I would also consider getting a SSD and replacing the original one if possible. These make less noise and boot faster.

The specs are more important than the brand name.

Even though she will just use it for light duty purposes, avoid getting low rent junk hardware. The Internet gets more demanding on hardware every day and the networks will only get faster.

You still need to use a live CD or USB to make sure all your hardware and peripherals work whether or not you let her test it.

Stick to a user friendly distro.

Looks like my wife would like to have a ~10" Detachable 2 in 1 Touchscreen Laptop Tablet (or something like this). It looks like all are served with Win7 or Win8. Do you know if they work (which one) with linux?

Type the exact model into google and combine it with Linux or the name of Linux distributions you wanna use. That was always very helpfull to me to find other persons experiences too (often blog pages).

pan64,

As advised above, please do your research to make sure of Linux compatibility.

The keyboard problems on this Acer Aspire Switch 11 are fixable, probably with a more recent kernel such as the 3.19.3 on Ubuntu 15.04.

http://liliputing.com/2015/03/ubuntu...let-video.html

Do check what wireless cards are fitted to any particular notebook and check them for Linux compatibility.

Avoid Broadcom cards!

Chromebooks do have great graphics, if you buy one with a an HD 1080p display. Like other laptops, they run the gamut. If you need something light, portable, quiet, and easy to use, a chromebook is a great choice. It's easy enough to run Linux on one if you want, but for most people ChromeOS is all they need. It boots from cold in ~10 seconds including password entry, and battery life is excellent, up to 10 or 12 hours for some models. You have to decide what's important to you, like any other computer. If you want great battery life, an ARM CPU is a good choice, and they're getting faster and more capable. They also come with the latest Intel CPUs if you need performance. Displays are all over the place, aiming for different niches in the market. I never thought I would say this, but for most people, most of the time, ChromeOS is the best choice. Windows and OSX can't compete, and Linux is only competitive in some areas. By far the best bang for the buck is a chromebook.

I do a lot of my computing, (music, movies, internet, etc.), on a 1Gb/1.6Ghz netbook with a 10" screen running AntiX, A Debian based distro. http://antix.mepis.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
(Debian has the largest repository of programs of any distro.)

Get her a Mac. It's Unix hardware that is guaranteed to work.

Crazy how perceptions vary. Ever since I made the mistake to buy a Laptop with an nvidia graphics card back in 2012 I avoid these like the plague.