Help me buy a laptop for my mom

So I've been tasked with buying a laptop for my mom. Unfortunately, I'm a bit out of the loop for basic consumer level laptops and don't even really know which sites to visit (CNET? Tom's?). My forte tends to be high powered gaming laptop and such. So, they want to spend between $600 and $700 on a laptop that will serve as a browser, email checker, photo looker, and video watcher, things of that nature. It should last for quite a few years, as it's probably not going to get upgrade or updated any more. My father owns an Acer that is pretty functional, I figure something like an Acer or Asus or MSI is probably appropriate. I'd like to avoid Dell due to lackluster previous experiences. I'd love some guidance on make and model from the GWJ community.

What kind of processor should I be looking for? i3, i5, i7? How much RAM is normal these days?

How much hard drive space do they need? Is your mom versed on cloud storage? Because if so, go the Chromebook route. I have one and really find that I need to store very minimal amounts of things on the hard drive, especially because Dropbox is free for 2 GB.

Heck, my Chromebook came with a free year of Google Drive as well.

Just a thought. I have a Toshiba I got for $300. Works like a charm. Great battery life. The speakers are a little weak, but I use earbuds a lot anyway.

They probably don't need much hard drive space, probably not so little as to go SSD though. I've contemplated a Chromebook, but I've been burned by the performance of netbooks, of which I own one. And Chromebooks remind me of that quick-burn trend. If possible, I'd prefer a more conventional laptop, but I'll look at those if that doesn't work out. Thank you.

Having done some IT training and support for chromebook users I'm not a big fan of them. Consider for example that (last I checked) Google does not support Java or the Java plugin for Chromebooks. Java updates far too frequently for piecing together a work-around to be viable IMHO.

Maybe her web use is basic enough that that sort of thing isn't relevant but you can find plenty of similar issues that arise from being a non-standard platform.

Have you considered a tablet? For the purposes you described a full laptop is probably overkill. I don't know how tech savvy your folks are, but I replaced my parents old laptop with an iPad and they love it. An added bonus is a LOT fewer tech support calls to me!

HP Stream 13.

Edit: At around $220 just buy three and crack open a fresh one when they pooch their current one.