Got a small problem here hoping that folks can help with. My sister's just getting shot of her old Dell laptop (Inspiron 1300) and looking around for a reasonably costed replacement (budget limit is about £400 - so no Apple kit).
Her old box is running Windows XP, but she wants to be supported, so that's Win7 at the moment, with an eye to getting Win8 when it launches (well, after SP1 issues of course). She isn't a mad keen DVD ripper, so it's basically web, office, a bit of music and the odd facebook game. Big problem though is that she wants the system to be useful for as long as possible, say 4 years.
Given that she wants a box with a bit of longevity I'm wondering what processor spec she should be looking at? So far I've seen Celeron; Pentium; Athlon, Phenom or Turion dual cores; i3; i5; and even Phenom triple core and quad cores.
I've already said that dual-core or better is the way to go, but I'm wondering whether pointing her at the Intel Core-based stuff would be best? I've got no axe to grind myself - my gaming/media box is Phenom hexcore, but my main machine is Core2Duo. Also told her to stick to the main brands, HP/Compaq, Leonovo, Samsung, Toshiba, (and maybe Acer), no Advent, PacBell etc.
(Oh, and yes, I have already suggest that she might want to look at a tablet - given the low performance requirements).
All opinions valued and appreciated.![]()


LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks

Reply With Quote

