Hey all, you folks know a lot more than I do about computers, so help me chose which compromise to go with...

First to get out of the way because this seems to be the suggestion with everyone, I am looking for a laptop. There's 4 of us living in a very small house (not your typical rich McMansion living American here that seems to be overabundant on the internet). I have no where to put a desktop. The old one was on a desk in the cold storage basement. Getting it out of the basement to be usable in the winter. The only suggestion I've gotten elsewhere is to get a desktop. I swear everyone in the world is a car salesman twisting around what you are looking for to something completely different. Anyways....

I am looking for just a simple laptop. I don't game. Main purpose is just for paying the bills online. Close secondary purpose would be playing around with photography with very old versions of Photoshop and Lightroom. Anything else it might be used for is pretty unimportant.

I have an eye on a few that I'll list below. They each have a compromise to go with. I am coming from a 2005 (yes, still the same off-the-shelf PC that I started and struggled playing LFS with) running XP that finally took a dump over Christmas. At work, just a week ago we upgraded from XP to Win7, so I am brand new to Win7. Playing around in the stores with 8.1 I really don't want that garbage at all. That said, the Op. system will be a compromise with some of the listed below. Budget is, at the most expensive, $600 is really pushing it (have another cheaper and simpler machine to buy for the kids.) Graphics will be Intel HD4400. Nothing in my price range I can find that would have a decent graphics card. Not looking to game, so not a big deal to me. Hard drives don't matter either. They are all plenty big enough to go along with 2 external drives I'll make out of the drives from the old computer.

HP 350 G1 listed as a business notebook (perhaps not as much bloatware on this?) This is the one I've got my eye on the most.
$600
i5 4200U 1.8GHz
8 Gb RAM
15.6 inch display
Windows 7 Pro 64 bit

HP Pavilion 17-f065US
$600
i3 4030U 1.9 GHz
6 Gb RAM
17.3 inch display
Windows 8.1

HP Pavilion 15-p064US
$570
i3 4030U 1.9 GHz
12 Gb RAM
15.6 inch display
Windows 8.1 64 bit

Lenovo G50
$550
i7 4510U 2.0 GHz
8GB RAM
15.6 inch display
Windows 8.1

So, you can see I have a choice of only 1 Windows 7 machine available that I've found in my budget. Everything else looks to be a bit better in spec with the processor at least with the GHz speed but would be Windows 8.1.

I know nothing about processors these days other than common sense tells me i3<i5<i7, but the GHz speed specs don't tell me that. AMD seems to be out of reach. Seems AMD processors are typicallly paired up with better specs on other stuff (graphics for instance) putting it out of my budget.

Can you give me a reason to go with a Win 8.1 machine? If you can give me a good reason to forgo Windows 7, the Lenovo i7 machine looks to be the one to go for.

Quote from mrodgers :

(not your typical rich McMansion living American here that seems to be overabundant on the internet)

I'm fairly certain that is not a typical living situation, even among people on the interwebs.

I think it's pretty much a given the displays on all those are going to be TN type, hardly ideal for photo editing. IPS and PLS are the preferred panel types for that kind of work, although having a particular panel type does not guarantee proper color accuracy.

Regarding CPU specs:
http://ark.intel.com/compare/81018,75459,81015

They're all dual-core with hyperthreading (4 logical threads).

From i3 to i5, you get a lower base clock (84% of i3) but the addition of a Turbo clock that is 37% higher than the i3's clock (i3 lacks Turbo).

From i5 to i7, you get 33% more L3 cache (not really useful for your purposes), higher base (25%) and turbo (19%) clocks, and 10% higher max graphics clock.

Turbo basically means individual cores will increase their clock up to that limit under heavy load until either the load ceases or thermal and/or power draw limits force it to clock back down.

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Another possible option for you is a Chromebook, especially since it seems Photoshop may be available, if not now then soon:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2688661/full-blown-photoshop-is-coming-to-chromebooks.html

Anandtech just reviewed this one favorably, particularly for its above-average IPS display, though as with most Chromebooks, it is a bit lacking in CPU performance:
http://anandtech.com/show/8961/toshiba-chromebook-2-a-feast-for-the-eyes

Have similar to the lenovo g50, touch screen and i5 processor though. Haven't had an issue yet other than some slow boots and typical windows 8 stuff.

Quality of the thing seems good, but buildsmanship after a year seems to be lacking. Seems they forgot a bit of glue on one corner of the screen, thank god it's not lifting off though, it's just something I noticed when cleaning the screen.

Also, the plastic badge on the back is peeling off.

If you want to play games and your budget is that then the best way is to get Lenovo IdeaPad G505s

Here have a look at this laptop under 600$ which may help you

http://pcgamerhome.com/best-cheap-gaming-laptop-under-600-dollars/

Good luck.