Looking at a laptop- between £300/400.

Internet, music and films mostly. Seen a few HP that look suitable, but stuck on the processors.

1.8ghz quad core AMD Phenom II, or 2.5/3ghz dual core AMD Phenom II? Much difference? Or would an Intel be better?

can you afford one of the new i3 or i5 processors? much better

I’m no expert but was recently researching laptop specs etc prior to purchase and from the info I was told the quad core Phenom sits between and Intel Core i3 and i5. So theoretically should be quicker that the dual core Phenom.

From memory the PC techie guy we spoke to also mentioned that the AMD Phenom processors use a dedicated gaphics card rather than rely on a portion of the processor.

Like I said though, I’m not an expert on these matters so I wouldn’t take my word as gospel. For what its worth though we have an HP from PC World (was £450) that am very happy with. Knocks the socks off my old celeron powered laptop 🙂

Intel i3 or i5 for sure… One of the newer generation ones.

AMD have been left well behind at the moment.

What about one of the older i3/i5 vs. AMD?

Not sure I want to spend a lot, its only for travelling with.

I’ve just bought a HP probook 4230 from box.co.uk today, 13.3 1368×768 screen, core i3 380 (not the latest but 2.5ghz) dedicated amd graphics, 3gb ram, 320gb HD. £399 but with £100 cashback from HP so will end up being £300.

So far it’s great, faster than my 3 year old desktop and looks good too.

I spent a couple of weeks looking and couldn’t find a better deal (although I wanted a 13 or 14″ screen rather than a 15.6″)

numpty question here but for photo maybe video editing will the dedicated amd graphics card on the hp above be better than the
Integrated (Intel® HD 3000 Graphics with up to 1274MB Shared Memory) on this one
http://www.box.co.uk/Packard_Bell_EasyNote_NS44_1070761.html

cheers