Quick Computer Purchases Question

tomhenryford

Would you choose a laptop with:

A) Celeron Chip & 8GB RAM

Or

Pentium Quad Core Chip & 4GB RAM

I know very, very little about computers, my has died a death and I need to replace it. I use it just for everyday stuff but which of those two options makes everything run faster?

bonzodog2

See if the quad one can take 8GB and upgrade it

jenny smith

tomhenryford wrote: »

Would you choose a laptop with:

A) Celeron Chip & 8GB RAM

Or

Pentium Quad Core Chip & 4GB RAM

I know very, very little about computers, my has died a death and I need to replace it. I use it just for everyday stuff but which of those two options makes everything run faster?

celeron= Ford Anglia
Make sure the RAM can be replaced some are soldered in these days. What make and model number is the Pentium Quad Core Chip & 4GB RAM

tomhenryford

jenny smith wrote: »

celeron= Ford Anglia
Make sure the RAM can be replaced some are soldered in these days. What make and model number is the Pentium Quad Core Chip & 4GB RAM

It's the ASUS A540sa and it's available in both options with very little difference in price.

I don't particularly want to upgrade the 4gB to 8gb, I don't want the added expense.

I use YouTube, iTunes, ms word and the internet mostly all at the same time.

Just want someone to tell me which is better for that please. Thank you.

mass_debater

Avoid the Celeron, you can always put RAM in the other later

riclad

Avoid the celeron go for quad core , my laptop has 4 gig ram,i find it very fast ,if you ever watch tv or movies in HD 1080 the celeron may be too slow,
its Easy to add ram to a pc if you need it.
The only pc company that solders ram is apple ,as far as i know .
Any pc you buy read a review ,eg google hp 1050xl review first.
4 gig may be fine for you ,web browsing , music, ms word etc
my cpu is 2.oghz dual core ,
quad core =4 cpus, dual core =2 cpu s

jenny smith

tomhenryford wrote: »

It's the ASUS A540sa and it's available in both options with very little difference in price.

I don't particularly want to upgrade the 4gB to 8gb, I don't want the added expense.

I use YouTube, iTunes, ms word and the internet mostly all at the same time.

Just want someone to tell me which is better for that please. Thank you.

quad core

riclad

quad core =4cpus ,will do many things at the same time .multitasking cpus
so buy the quad core pc

beauf

Make sure you can upgrade. A lot of modern laptops are not upgradeable.

I would go for an i3 where possible.

tomhenryford

So I went with the Pentium Quad Core in the end and it's a disaster! It's so, so, slow. Anyone know if there's anything I can do to speed it up like? Like I can't open two windows at the same time, it takes nearly 10 seconds to flick around in Facebook. Even the fecking calculator is a snails pace. The backspace button is tedious. Arrragghh.

jenny smith

tomhenryford wrote: »

So I went with the Pentium Quad Core in the end and it's a disaster! It's so, so, slow. Anyone know if there's anything I can do to speed it up like? Like I can't open two windows at the same time, it takes nearly 10 seconds to flick around in Facebook. Even the fecking calculator is a snails pace. The backspace button is tedious. Arrragghh.

Bring it back before you try anything. that might invalidate your warranty. a new quadcore should not be that slow if you installed windows properly. What other programs are on it? What antivirus what anti spyware if any. Sometimes they can conflict

TerrorFirmer

Those 'Pentium' processors are actually atom based processors, Intel just re-branded them. They are nowhere near as fast as Pentium models would have been a few years ago when they were basically cut down i3's.

Don't know what model Celeron was in the other laptop but some Celeron's would be faster than Pentium's. They are ultra low-end processors, not really designed for anything other than watching movies, note taking, browsing one or two tabs at a time sort of casual use.

beauf

This is most likely a N3700 which is an ok cpu. There's probably badly configured software or something. Or it could be faulty. Even a virus.

tomhenryford

MS office 2007 is on it from an old disc I had.

I took the pre installed anti virus off it altogether but that didn't speed it up.

There is very, very little on it.

It came with Windows 10 so I didn't even do an upgrade or anything.

I am returning it but I don't know what I should be looking for now, I really am on a budget.

jenny smith wrote: »

Bring it back before you try anything. that might invalidate your warranty. a new quadcore should not be that slow if you installed windows properly. What other programs are on it? What antivirus what anti spyware if any. Sometimes they can conflict

beauf

I think its should be ok. But you'd need to have some IT skills to tune it up. If not I'd return it for something better.

Otherwise I think you should go for an i3 it wil muscle it ways though a bad set up from the shop. If you can get one with a SSD. Or budget another 60 to swap the HD for a SSD after you buy it. Windows 10 and modern browsing are much better using a SSD.

I like this one.
http://www.currys.ie/Product/lenovo-ideapad-510-156-laptop-black/338197/409.5

Again I would be swapping out the HD for a SSD if I bought it.

tomhenryford

beauf wrote: »

I think its should be ok. But you'd need to have some IT skills to tune it up. If not I'd return it for something better.

Otherwise I think you should go for an i3 it wil muscle it ways though a bad set up from the shop. If you can get one with a SSD. Or budget another 60 to swap the HD for a SSD after you buy it. Windows 10 and modern browsing are much better using a SSD.

I like this one.
http://www.currys.ie/Product/lenovo-ideapad-510-156-laptop-black/338197/409.5

Again I would be swapping out the HD for a SSD if I bought it.

Thanks for the reply. I spotted this as well and they have 1 left in my local store. What do you make of it? Someone above mentioned a celeron would exceed the Pentium in speed?

riclad

on A New pc in 2016, you should have at least 8 gig ram,
And at least 100 gig free space.
Switch off cortana .disable services you don,t use,
http://www.howtogeek.com/139028/which-windows-services-can-you-safely-disable/

Don,t use norton ,use avg or avast free antivirus.http://superuser.com/questions/949569/can-i-completely-disable-cortana-on-windows-10

SSDS speed up the os load time, bootup,time.
i,d prefer to buy a standard 500gig or 1tb sata drive .
Ssds may be good on laptops to save power ,extend battery life.
press cntrl alt del at the same time,
How much cpu is being used when 5 browser tabs are open in chrome.
eg eg cpu usage 30 per cent , ram used 35 per cent .
Don,t use internet explorer,use the chrome browser.

tomhenryford

riclad wrote: »

on A New pc in 2016, you should have at least 8 gig ram,
And at least 100 gig free space.
Switch off cortana .disable services you don,t use,
http://www.howtogeek.com/139028/which-windows-services-can-you-safely-disable/

Don,t use norton ,use avg or avast free antivirus.http://superuser.com/questions/949569/can-i-completely-disable-cortana-on-windows-10

SSDS speed up the os load time, bootup,time.
i,d prefer to buy a standard 500gig or 1tb sata drive .
Ssds may be good on laptops to save power ,extend battery life.
press cntrl alt del at the same time,
How much cpu is being used when 5 browser tabs are open in chrome.
eg eg cpu usage 30 per cent , ram used 35 per cent .
Don,t use internet explorer,use the chrome browser.

Thank you for that, I'm not remotely techy but I have managed to do a good few points of what you suggested and it has made no difference, I always use chrome over IE as well.

Any opinions of the Asus link in the above post from Agros? It's within my budget and I actually think I'd like a bigger screen but again I don't know how it read - speed wise.

Sorry - forgot to post the link, this is it: http://www.argos.ie/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Search?storeId=10152&catalogId=14551&langId=111&searchTerms=asus+17+inch&authToken=

beauf

tomhenryford wrote: »

Thanks for the reply. I spotted this as well and they have 1 left in my local store. What do you make of it? Someone above mentioned a celeron would exceed the Pentium in speed?

Ignore names. Compare the CPU on this site

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/laptop.html

Heres a review of the laptop. Its a cheap laptop, battery life is probably worse than average, not that portable, but has a good selection of ports, good keyboard, and for me the most important thing full HD decent screen, decent keyboard and trackpad. So many cheaper laptops have mediocre screens and keyboards and trackpads.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-IdeaPad-510-15ISK-Notebook-Review.179300.0.html

For 100 more you'd get a newer i3, perhaps more ram, better battery life but a worse screen.

I would advise going into a shop and trying it out. If its sluggish running in the shop, running that stupid multimedia demo they always have avoid it. Also see if you like typing on it, and compare the screen with other laptops.

beauf

tomhenryford wrote: »

...
Any opinions of the Asus link in the above post from Agros? It's within my budget and I actually think I'd like a bigger screen but again I don't know how it read - speed wise.

Sorry - forgot to post the link, this is it: http://www.argos.ie/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Search?storeId=10152&catalogId=14551&langId=111&searchTerms=asus+17+inch&authToken=

It has a worse CPU than what you had. Personally while Asus do offer a lot of bang for buck I think the screens and keyboard and tackpads are abysmal on their low~mid range machines.

You really need to try in the shop and not judge solely on specs.

beauf

riclad wrote: »

o...SSDS speed up the os load time, bootup,time.
i,d prefer to buy a standard 500gig or 1tb sata drive ....

It does more than that. Especially on a modern OS and browsers which will cache to the HD not the RAM and index the HD the whole time.

More ram is always better. But I wouldn't not sacrifice CPU and cheap build quality just to have 8GB. Not for light office tasks and browsing. However many laptops now you cannot upgrade the RAM. Look for one that does.

jenny smith

I disagre re norton. i would not use avg anyway. try reinstalling windows and do not reinstall office and see how it goes

riclad

I have intel dual core 2.oghz ,4gig ram, it runs very fast ,
i can have 14 browser tabs open, and download 5 podcasts 60-80meg at the same time without any sign of slowing down.
Have you got norton antivirus installed ,
norton can slow down the os on some pcs.
Theres some program slowing down the pc .
GO to task manager write down any program that uses more than 10,000 k memory , in the process, s ram column
eg my firefox browser process is using 180,630k in task manager ,process,es , in memory column.

jenny smith

How did you get on OP?

riclad

I don,t have windows 10, maybe you just need more memory .
And you my have a lot of startup programs,
running all the time,
On bootup my pc loads itunes helper, roxio burner program, for example .http://www.howtogeek.com/74523/how-to-disable-startup-programs-in-windows/

Windows 8, 8.1, and 10 make it really simple to disable startup applications. All you have to do is open up Task Manager by right-clicking on the Taskbar, or using the CTRL + SHIFT + ESC shortcut key, clicking “More Details,” switching to the Startup tab, and then using the Disable button.

BsBox

If the calculator app is slow when nothing else is open, then there's something seriously wrong with that laptop.
I'd hazard a guess and say you've some sort of nasty virus on it, but it could be an issue with Windows being corrupt.

Here's an easy to follow guide that may help.

If that doesn't work, bring it back to where you got it and see about a replacement.

beauf

I'm running Win10 on 2GB and 3GB ram on old laptops which are slower than that quad pentium. No slow down here.

riclad

Run a full virus scan,takes 20 mins approx,
load up safe mode, is it faster in safe mode, some out of date driver could cause slowdown in the os.


https://support.microsoft.com/en-ie/help/12376/windows-10-start-your-pc-in-safe-mode