It's highschool graduation season now. I need to help a recent highschool graduate set up a new Windows laptop and prepare for life off at college. Microsoft all but requires (read: requires for normal circumstances) a Microsoft cloud account for logging into a new Windows 11 laptop. This is a good reason to make sure all of your accounts are known, secure, and recoverable. It's also a good time to make sure everything that goes onto and happens on the laptop is backed up in a cloud somewhere. Laptops on campus lead a hard life!
Our highschool graduate has:
If you live near a Microcenter and the grad is going to a school near Microcenter, I recommend Microcenter and their accidental damage coverage. I call this "accidental death and dismemberment insurance" for the laptop. Alas, the grad is going out of state. The only laptop retailer near college will be Best Buy, but they also have an accidental damage plan. (When I sent my son to The Ohio State University, I checked the campus computer store -- but Microcenter is in town, my son had a car, and Microcenter has later hours than the campus computer store.)
What laptop to buy? Size is the personal preference that matters. Smaller is easier to carry but more expensive and smaller displays may be a problem. Larger is harder to cary, but easier to use and likely cheaper. For general business or school use, processor doesn't matter. 16G of RAM is important. 8G may work, but have you seen the memory usage of just a web browser? 16G. Storage should be solid state, SSD or similar and at least 512G. The grad and I will go shopping in person.
This is the perfect time to start them off right, see Password manager or vault. Insist on it. This is where they start a lifetime of habits.