Laptop advice: Intel Celeron or Intel i3 or Intel Atom?

[Eudemon]

Hey guys, I come to you bearing the need for some advice.

 

I have a mate who is buying his mum a laptop, a basic one just for general internet use and probably some office work (she works in HR or something) and is looking to spend £250. Having taken a look it seems like if you go with the Celeron (2.1GHz+) you can get a 1TB HDD and 4-8GB memory. With an i3 (1.7GHz+) 500GB and 4GB seems to be common and the Atom seems more for those tablet/laptop combos.

 

So my question is what is the better option out of those? My mind is making me think the faster i3 is the one but for the same money you can get more with the Celeron (obviously?), but will the performance really be that much noticeable with the general light usage I mentioned above?

 

Thanks.

[Camel]

I'd say go for the one with an i3 processor. Easy and cheap enough to add more storage if she ever managed to use 500GB. And how much RAM can a HR person need? As far as I'm aware all they do is look at cat pictures all day and make other employees days much harder by being awkward. :p

[Ryzza5]

On CPU merits alone, the i3. I have one in my 'office/web server' PC and it's surprisingly capable.

 

Avoid the Atom like the plague. Even if the user won't be stressing the PC out, Windows and other background apps will on occasion and things will grind to a halt.

If it's a traditional laptop, check how easy it is to add more RAM and/or storage space later on. 8GB of RAM will be nice if she wants lots of Chrome tabs open but otherwise I think she can survive on 4. If thee's a spare SODIMM slot it won't be too hard or expensive to upgrade it.

[Andreas¹]

Definitely the i3. Celerons are the lowest end CPU's that Intel makes apart from the Atoms, but as you pointed out those are for tablets and such.

[Eudemon]

Thanks all, so the better CPU is a better choice over the larger storage in your opinions? I know 500GB is a ton of space and most normal users do not get close to filling that much up so I'll pass on to go for an i3 unit preferably.

[The Compensator]

500 GB is plenty. Def go for the better CPU.

[Andreas¹]

In this case definitely.

[Ryzza5]

btw when you see your mate could you ask him to bring back the Likes system on the forum? :cheeese:

[The Compensator]

btw when you see your mate could you ask him to bring back the Likes system on the forum? :cheeese:

 

+ ein