I would think that your first consideration is to decide if you need portability. If yes, then laptop PC - if no, then desktop PC and go from there. A desktop would require the additional purchase of a monitor. MS Word would be an additional purchase in either case and there's the option of the annual subscription to the full Office suite for one person for seven bucks a month and get one terabyte of Cloud storage but you can save your work on your computer as well, and you get sixty minutes of Skype each month.