Just replaced my still perfectly running 9yr old Acer Aspire i5 win 8 with WIN 11 Acer a315 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz 2.42 GHz basic mid spec less than £400
Managed by chance to notice a currys short lived glitch and bagged it for the same price as the i3 version saving £ssss
Been dabbling with comps since XP virtual drives partitions running 3 operatng systems on the sam comp
Lost count of friends comps that I brought back to life
Personally would not get anything running less than i5 Intel(R) Core min 8GB Ram as this is the sweet spot for my needs ( never been a gamer )
Firstly yes my new Acer was bloated with crap and its out of the box set up took me 3hrs to unpick/delete/block/set up and make my own
Anything Edge was shut down and replaced with Brave browser allowing me to enjoy all the latest releases if you get my meaning.
Another lesson learnt is to turn off auto microsoft updates
Not to say you should not update but I simply delay and wait and see if any released updates are causing people issues
Usually MS will follow up with another update to fix
Although a constant pain make sure to rejects 99% of isited sites cookies
I use chrome as little as poss emails/Drive/G MailGreat
step by step You tube vids out there showing how to minimis MS tracking
Being wary of sites visited and using free ccleaner will only help
I turn off ( not advising you do the same) windows defender as it can slow down the best of systems
My old 9yr old Acer still runs sweet but as no longer supported by MS it was time for this OAP to upgrade lol
The free PC Decrapifier may well be a good starting point for a novice
Remember to address what is allowed to start up and run on your system
rant over lol