Looking for a new lappie for my daughter for Uni. All the modern twin core processors confuse hell out of me as never sure how to compare one to another performance wise. In these situations there are usually one or two processors which are not quite the latest thing & therefore you get much better value for money.
Any recommendations?
I'm going to go for something with 4Gb of ram & at least 320 Gb hard drive poss 500, there seems to be plenty around for £400 - £500 which is our price range, but loads of different processors???
Any info gratefully received!

AMD was the first to come out with multi core processors, but the Intel ones are better.

any modern processor id way overkill for anything but high end graphics applications and gaming, so look at the other features and make your decision based on that.

As a rule of thumb a more powerfull CPU = shorter running time on batteries.

Unless she is doing high end stuff like video work etc. don't worry too much about the porcessor. I now used an HP Mini with an Atom 1.6Mhz processor [which is regarded as being pretty slow] and it does all my work stuff perfectly, is really small and has great baterry life.

[Edited on 21/8/10 by whitestu]

what is it shes going to uni for? processor controls how quickly jobs are done, ram how many programs can be open at once (basically)
in a laptop if you werent overly concerned with superduper performance, go for one that is specifically designed for laptop use, and controls power usage well. I personally have an apple because i hate all things windows! but considering your price range that would be out of the question!
Recommendations would be the atom if she is only running word processor etc (but the operating systems needs to be smallllllllllllllll) atoms normally only come on the netbook stuff, or anything core 2 duo is well respected

http://www.geek.com/laptop-processors/

oh and i dont know what windows 7 is like, but any version of vista is a nightmare on slower laptops! takes about a millenia to load and runs slowly too, just because of all the things its doing in the backround...

quote:

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Originally posted by hellbent345
i dont know what windows 7 is like,

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Ive got an Asus 1201n which is a dual core Atom 12.1" netbook with Nvidia ion graphics (same as Nvidia 9400m) and 2Gb ram. i removed the standard hard drive and fitted an 80Gb Intel G2 ssd, and it absolutely flies. Its running windows 7.

It gets into windows quicker than my gaming laptop which cost around £1000 more than the netbook :-o although my gaming laptop is running Vista x64. I keep meaning to try W7 on it instead

Mine's 2ghz, which is pretty reasonable. Where mine falls apart really is on the RAM (1gig) so the hard drive is going mad most of the time (120gig) and both are too small really...

IMO a good chunk of ram is important

Thanx for the input guys!