I’ve been given the task of buying the mother-in-law a new laptop (max budget £350).

Being a Mac man I’m out of touche with PC processors – am I better off getting a laptop with 4GB of RAM and better processor, or 8GB of RAM with slower processor.

And where do AMD chips fit in with the Intel Range – and is Pentium better than Celeron, and Core i3/i5 better still!

Any help appreciated.

How old is you MIL? I ask, as if elderly, maybe a focusing on the screen size might be a better bet?

Over 65 but eyesight is fine. I’d be looking at a 15″ screen anyway.

The current macbooks etc. are running i3-i7’s which should give you an idea.

In general the chip can’t be improved but the RAM can be later so check the max ram for the model. What do you want from the laptop, for general web surfing and basic office/media stuff the mid range stuff is fine and fairly over powered for basic stuff.

I picked up a good spec refurbished laptop from here

AC Warehouse

If it’s just for general use, £250 would cover your needs.

sufficient ram is the most important as otherwise the machine will be swapping to disk and performance will drop significantly.

But the key is sufficient – what is she going to do with it?

If she is editing photos/movies then maybe 8Gb, but otherwise she will probably be OK with 8.

And if the machine can be upgraded easily beyond 4Gb, then it would be sensible to get the faster chip.

I’d go for the faster processor. She’d have to be doing something pretty intensive to use more than 4gb of ram. Extra ram is just a sales gimmick as it’s so cheap.

Can a 32 bit (windows) computer use more than 4gb of ram anyway?

You might be looking at 64bit machines, but it’s something to bear in mind.

Processor is king, and 4GB is a lot of RAM. Anything that could make good use of more than that will need a poweful CPU anyway to not be slow as shit

TBF modern PCs are all beasts, even with the epic software bloat that’s come with it an entry level spec pc is still much more than capable of most day to day jobs. What are the 2 processor options? Daresay they’re both faster than my ancient processor in this yet it still beasts games, video processing etc.

It’s really the point NW, was editing video on an I3 laptop thats 3 years old with 4gb of ram last week despite another thread telling me I’d need a £2k workstation build to even consider it. Looking at things like chromebooks it tells the real story there is not much power hungry stuff these days.

ssd drive if you want the thing to be realworld fast.

Ram.

The casual user will end up just installing and installing stuff. This will probably end up using up RAM (as well as disk space).

I’d consider Chromebook if it’s just for surfing and occasional documents. Not only are they cheaper but they are incredibly fast, and will almost certainly stay that way for far longer than a Windows PC.

faster processor

then upgrade the ram yourself, using the crucial tool
http://www.crucial.com/uk/

you can either buy from them or get it elsewhere cheaper

Like everybody else I’ll make an assumption about what she’ll use it for, as we haven’t been given that information (or are we supposed to assume what a MIL wants a computer for?)

It doesn’t matter, so I’d go for the cheaper one with a slower processor and less RAM. Actually belay that, I’d get her a tablet (am I really the first to suggest that?)

Processor is king,

Not for 99% of folk who all they do is surf – battery life is IMO above that.

I’ve had a low-powered (although not cheap) Acer for about 4 years now, it does everything including pretty heavy spreadsheet work (although a bit slowly) but the battery still lasts +6 hours.

Go processor if only because you can’t upgrade it later. RAM is more ueful for most users though.

Come back in 2 years, double the RAM and be an IT Guru for the incredible speed increase by compensating for 2 years of fragmentation! Oh, delete the IE cache too.

Cheers all.

I managed to pick HP Pavillion with 8GB RAM a Core i3 processor and 1TB HD for £379 – so best of both worlds!

Bit over budget, but seemed a good deal.

MIL? What does she use said laptop for?

If its just for browsing shopping etc then I’d be pointing her down the tablet route. For years my parent struggled with laptops (even shiny new ones that worked at a decent speed) and they usually just sat by the side of a chair/hidden away in a cupboard etc

Let them borrow the Ipad for a weekend and they now want one each.

Clearly ignoring my advice then 😥

Tablet is no good aracer – she does lots of Parish Council and other local council related work on it. Lots of letters and spreadsheet stuff.

Chromebook.

For which something cheap and low powered will work just fine. Or a tablet and BT keyboard.

Chromebook will be better, for typing.

Bit over budget, but seemed a good deal.

Just like buying a bike then ! Or indeed most things.

FWIW I would have said RAM given what she wants to do isn’t processor intensive. Most important thing with a windows pc is not download lots of apps/program’s which run on start up and to get a decent anti-virus like avg

Whatever you do buy, remove all the bloat and spamware that comes installed on it.

I just set up two laptops and a desktop at work for colleagues – I am amazed how much faster startup and program opening was without all the junk and ‘security’ and ‘free programs’ that were pre-installed (on Acer’s and an HP).

Then pop on the basics that are needed, with one good antivirus such as MSE.

TurnerGuy – Member
sufficient ram is the most important as otherwise the machine will be swapping to disk and performance will drop significantly.

But the key is sufficient – what is she going to do with it?

If she is editing photos/movies then maybe 8Gb, but otherwise she will probably be OK with 8.

And if the machine can be upgraded easily beyond 4Gb, then it would be sensible to get the faster chip.

And to think I used to Photoshop 100Mb scans on a G4 Mac with twin 450KHz processors and 1Gb* of RAM! 😆
And a 40Gb HDD
*Max 2Gb, and in 1999, that could cost up to £2000! Oh how times have changed.