I buy a new Mac laptop ever 3 years or so and hand my old one down to my wife for another 3 years and it has worked well doing this for many years. She has converted to an iPad since she is mostly a consumer of info instead of a creator and she seldom misses her laptop. Now I will have to decide what to do when I want to upgrade and I haven't worn out the old lap top yet :-)
Short answer buy a Mac and don't look back. If you mostly do eMail and browsers consider an iPad, even longer battery life and very small and light. She has Pages installed for light word processing and Numbers for a few spreadsheet needs she has. We also installed CoPilot to help with travel maps. Get the iPad with cellular service and you get a built in GPS and you can get cheap WiFi on the road. She has Verizon and can set up a hot spot so I can connect with my laptop.