laptop processor help?

having a dual-core processor will only really be noticable if you have two cpu hungry programs actively running at the same time. for most boring computing, the two biggest factors for performance will be the amount of system ram and your hard-drive speed. so basically, what you'll want to do is upgrade the harddrive to 7200 rpm if it isn't already and the option is available, and upgrade the ram to 512MB (or more if you really like to leave all your programs open in the background).

CPU makes *NO* difference for most daily tasks so i wouldn't really even worry about it. the slowest cpu i've seen in a new laptop recently was like 1.8GHz which is still faster than you really need for most things, even gaming.

as far as video cards go, something that has a mobile version of the 6000 series nvidia or better should be fine. if you like ATI i cna't really comment, as i'm not very familiar with their line. i think that series is good enough to play modern games like doom3 and hl2.