In message 20150810140907.0fee4931@jmspc, Johnny
writes
My wife has a Dell laptop with Windows 8.1 and it's slow compared to
Windows 7 and Windows 10.

I just checked Newegg.com, and you can still get New laptops with
Windows 7.

I would be very careful if purchasing a "Windows 7" laptop from a major
store. I've just been through a gruelling few weeks with someone who
bought a "Windows 7" Lenovo B-series laptop from PCWorld Business in the
UK.
Just out of the 1 year warranty, it failed to boot. It had, as far as I
could tell, a Windows 8 recovery partition and automatic activation to
Windows 8 via the bios. All her work was on it and matched her office
Windows 7 system.
PC World were no help. They said it was out of warranty and that they
would have told her to take an image when it was new. She insists that
they did not ever mention taking images, but they did sell her their own
cloud-based backup. With this she has backups of files, but not the OS.

I eventually got the machine back and got what we believe was the
culprit, AVG, working again, but it was a huge job. None of the W7
recovery options helped at all, and in the end I had to use Linux to
"slide" the old W7 setup and data files across onto a fresh W7 install.

FWIW, I dislike W10 because of the pushed advertising and the vanishing
scroll bars, which I find really annoying. I find W8.1 awkward to use.
W7 is fine and XP is OK because anti-virus organisations are still
dealing with it even if MS isn't.

As someone else mentioned, a good, little used, ex-corporate W7 business
quality laptop would be my choice. It is what I am buying.
--
Bill