Purchasing inexpensive laptop?

I need to purchase a 3rd machine for my wife that will not have the heavy use of her office and home Win7 desktops. That would mainly be used at meetings for spreadsheet, Word, Quickbooks and mail. We'll get the same machine for her brother whose use is minimal.

We had previously purchased the now not available Acer 15.6" Aspire Windows 8 Laptop i3-3217U 1.8GHz 6GB 500GB | V5-571-6891 for another person at her office and he's been very pleased with the machine since.

The wrinkle in the pending purchase is the OS. I do not want Win8 for either of the machines. The current crop of Acer Aspires in the referenced price range ($5-600) come with Win8. The only Win7 machine I'm finding that BOTH is listed as a good machine and comes with Win7 is the Lenovo Edge. I've always had Thinkpads (model T) but the reviews all discuss woes with the trackpad and left/right clicker.

I'm sure I've missed something and that there is a machine(s) that fits my bill and YOU likely know the answer so I'm listening...

Mark

In the meantime I figured that the solution was talking to the business side vs. consumer even though the machine is not high end. I'm finding success. Btw, your hamburger looks damn good ;-)!