constantly having one issue or another for a year now.Battery issues,screen randomly shutting off,unusually high RAM usage despite me tracking it,overheating,you name it. Your Vostro sounds like it is at a point where it is going to nickel and dime you to death, and it looks like the processor is 7th generation , too old to be supported for Windows 11. My advice would be to replace it. I have my eye on macbooks rn sooo.... MacBooks are good laptops (I own one, and the build quality is a good as my 7000-series Latitude), but MacBooks are not a good choice for gaming, even casual gaming. Look before you leap.
I'm an IT consultant so I work mostly in business and in business series computers, nobody games - but also gaming is a wide open topic that dictates the computer you'd buy. If you play solitaire, then any computer will do. If you play anything with real 3D graphics, then you're into a painful selection process. That being said, no computer should ever have had only 4GB memory in it, even at the time of covid in 2020. So chances are your gaming needs are very minimal, which makes providing advise easier here. No computer today should have less than 16GB memory. Any computer with just 8GB is a budget machine that you will underserve you in a couple years. No computer today should be less than an i5 level processor, and here's where you have to get wise to what you expect in the future. An i5-1335U will likely suffice for basic business uses for the next 3-5 years, because those uses are not compute-intensive. Who knows what locally-processed AI will require but under "traditional" buying mindset, any i5 will be ok. I can't comment on what your gaming needs might require, so in that case, you aim for at least an i5, but if your budget allows, then up-level the CPU as much as you can to hedge against earlier obsoleteness. If you can afford a system with an i7, all the better. It's not just about how fast it is today - it's about how fast will it be in a few years when all the updates, patches, add-ons, etc. pile on. Storage-wise, no computer should have a hard drive (aka: the old HDDs), they are all SSD's now. There are "classes" of SSD, which indicates their speed, like Class 40 is faster than Class 35 type thing. But in a simple computer use case like yours it doesn't really matter greatly, just ensure it's SSD. Next, people argue storage size. This is so dumb. If you expect to storage a lot of data, requiring let's say, either 512GB or 1TB of storage, put that in the cloud. In fact, all important data should be in the cloud, and a duplicate stored locally on the SSD, however as a computer with a 1TB SSD costs a lot more than one with a 256GB SSD, and since you should always have your data safe elsewhere since the SSD will die eventually, why waste money on a big SSD. 256GB is fine, provided you understand how to ensure your critical data is stored in the cloud. The simplest option is to have a Microsoft 365 subscription, which would then give you a 1TB cloud allocation, and you set your computer to save things there. Some storage management is needed, so that you don't have a situation where you stuck 260GB of videos in the cloud but also told it to sync to your computer and fill up your SSD. So you'd set certain folders to be cloud-only, and perhaps other sto be cloud + SSD, so it's in 2 places. Anyway, any i5-1335U with 16GB memory and 256GB SSD is a minimum spec for any new laptop purchased in my opinion. The more up you can make that CPU, the better. This will come with just the basic built-in Intel graphics, but as I understand your situation, if your old computer was enough to handle whatever gaming you do, chances are a new computer with even the basic graphics will too. Btw, if not, then you'd probably want to look at Lenovo's computers and use their website filters to pick computers with a higher level graphics card like the GeForce basic models. Else, since you're a Dell person, the Latitude series, though more expensive, is also less flaky than Vostro. Vostro is for when you don't know what else to do but want to avoid the 100% consumer series Inspiron. Vostro is kind of like half business half consumer, in terms of quality etc. Latitude has much less variety, and you get less computing power for the dollar, but statistically they do tend to just last longer and have less problems than consumer systems, and if you consider tha tyou spent $200-300 more but had a lot less headaches, what is a couple hundred spread over 5 years, really. PS: Macbooks are premium computers. I'm in Canada, so the Latitude I just mentioned is currently $1129.00. A Macbook would be at least $500 more, and why? Just for the nicer charge cable? Macs really have no particular "need" beyond just being a high quality machine in general, but they won't make your email better, nor your Word doc fancier, and they aren't any better with graphics than a similarly spec'd out Windows machine.