Vostro 1400 with Intel Celeron M550 or Vostro 1310 with Intel Celeron M540

Hey guys, it's been a while since I have posted on here, I just have a quick question, and wanted to know if anyone had any personal experience with the Intel Celeron Processors. My girlfriend's mom has asked me to look for a laptop for her, and she would like to keep it around $700 or so, including tax. I thought this would be difficult, but there are two Vostros, the 1310 and the 1400 that I can get to around $745 including tax. BUT, they come with Celeron Processors. I haven't used a Celeron since way back in middle school probably, and they were not very efficient back then. So, I have a negative bias towards them. She will just be using the computer for very basic needs, e-mail, internet, things like that. Will these Celeron Processors be sufficient for her use?

The systems under consideration are the Vosto 1400 with the Celeron M550 2.0 ghz and the Vostro 1310 with the Celeron M540 with 1.86 ghz. Both are the exact same price as configured, no options, just a three year warranty.

Please advise,

Thanks in advance!

PaulyRags

 

Early Celerons were terribly crippled(original 266 and 300mhz versions had no L2 cache). Everything since then has been good, ranging from "not great, but good enough" to "superb", depending on the implementation. Take a trawl back through time and read up on the Celeron 300a - the PII of the time had 512kb off-die cache, running slower than the CPU. The Celeron had 128k on-die, running at the same speed as the CPU. When overclocked to the same speed as a PII 450, the Celeron was faster in virtually all real-world situations.

P4 variants were initially quite nastily crippled - the architecture demanded a big cache to make up for it's inefficiencies, and the Celerons with little cache were hit hard by this. But anything modern will be perfectly usable - I'm running with a 2ghz Celeron, and it's overkill for general day-to-day activities.

The Celeron is just a neutered variant of the top-of-the-line variants. The degree it is limited varies from model to model, but the bottom line is the CPU is more than enough for most people in the real world.

A C2D will be faster, for sure. But that doesn't detract from the fact that for email, web browsing, playing music or watching a DVD, even a Celeron isn't going to struggle.

IMO, of course.

 

Hey Daytona, thanks for the information. I figured the Celerons would have improved over the last 10 years or so, and that it would be sufficient for basic use.

Thanks again,

PaulyRags

 

There are many, many laptops at $700 with a C2D. Just check the laptop deals section.

 

Are those laptops in CDN $ including tax?

 

http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/cl...759F1D75FFB547E1010C56DABEE35038F5&catid=1002

 

Hey Lithus, thanks for the information. Those are good deals, but once the warranty is added + the tax, the total price is greater than $700-$750 or so. I think Dell seems to have the best deal including the warranty + tax.

Thanks again!

PaulyRags

 

Ok, that makes sense then, with 3 years of warranty. The Celerons are ok for most people, but if you can try and find a dual core system. The Pentium Dual Cores are pretty good, they are actually Core Duos (not to be confused with Core 2 Duos) Ther second core is best for multitasking, IE, a virus or spyware scan will be able to run in the background without bogging the computer down.

A Inspiron 1525 with a Pentium Dual Core came to $816 at your door with 3 years of warranty.

It's up to you.