Choosing Budget Laptops - Processor Guidance

[AnotherMuggle]

Hi,

I have been asked by my mum to choose her a cheap laptop, mainly for Facebook, email and downloading images from a digital camera. It doesn't need to be a power horse and she is looking at spending around £300. I was concerned at the low budget at first but after looking about I am a little overwhelmed with the amount of choice in this price bracket.

What I am after is some guidance on selecting a good processor. I am seeing a lot of the Celeron-M chips and a few Athlon X2 TK-** chips. I have no idea how these chips compare to one another and therefore which is the best to go for.

Please can someone offer me a hand, either in an explanation of the different technologies or suggestions on a decent machine to go for.

Cheers,
TK

[thefultonhow]

Neither of those are going to be any good on battery -- your mother is going to want to keep the laptop plugged in most of the time fopr either. With that said, unless something has changed recently, the Celeron-M is single-core and the Athlon 64 x2 is dual-core, so I would get the Athlon 64 x2. (I think the TK model number indicates that it is a laptop-focused chip, so I don't think you have to worry as much about heat as with a desktop one.)

[AnotherMuggle]

I think I spotted a stonker with a Core 2 Duo T5450 CPU for just over £300 so I have suggested she goes for that one. Seems a huge jump better than other similar priced models. Centrino too so a better battery life than the aforementioned!?

Cheers,
TK

[thefultonhow]

A C2D is definitely the best option for a laptop. Who manufactures the one you found?

[AnotherMuggle]

Originally Posted by thefultonhow A C2D is definitely the best option for a laptop. Who manufactures the one you found?

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Toshi...EN/version.asp

Mum's already gone ahead with the purchase so I hope nobody else spots something I have overlooked.

To me this looks like an awesome deal.

[thefultonhow]

Looks fine to me. I'm not a huge fan of Toshibas, but they're better than Acers or HP/Compaqs. Make sure you upgrade the memory -- Vista is a bit sluggish with 1 GB. Luckily memory is cheap these days.