[]I'm in the process of purchasing a new Dell computer for my mother-in-law. She will only be using the computer for the internet and doing some work in Microsoft Office. Out of the computers I was thinking about purchasing for her one has a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 3800+ and the other one has an Intel Pentium E2160 (1MB L2, 1.80GHz, 800 FSB). Out of the 2 Processors which would be the better one? Any help appreciated. Thanks.

http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=653

Check that out.

The E2160 will win and pretty much beat out that dying X2 3800+ it depends though which one is cheaper? if she's just going to do the basics no need to spend the extra money for the C2D

Have a look at the new charts.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/0 [...] arts_2007/
E2160 out performance in most and losses in others.
Not sure the pricing difference in the system but here in Australia the X2 4000+ is only a couple of dollars more than the X2 3800+ which at the moment are about $40 better than the E2160, making the X2 4000+ the better way to go.

After July 22nd, who know?

if you purchasin a dell, it'll be practically irrelevant as either way they'll be rippin you off, so its hard to answer "which is the best way to get ripped off?"

if you build your own system, which is very easy - anyone can do, you could purchase an X2 3600 for her - which would definately suite her purposes for years, and you could put in a 160 GB HD and 2 gigs of RAM for ~$350 or so, plus a monitor and keyboard of course.

use newegg.com or check out pricewatch.com

oh and that would include a DVD burner/player