Best "cheap" laptop purchase?

[mommy4]

Hello,
I am looking at 2 deals on computers and wondered if someone could help me?

At Office Depot, Toshiba Satellite C655D-S5048 with AMD Athlon II P320, 3GB ddr3 memory, 320GB hard drive, ATI Mobility Radeon HD4250 video card.

At Best Buy, Toshiba Satellite C655-S5068 with Intel Pentium T4500, 4GB ddr3 memory, 320 GB hard drive, Intel Graphics Media 4500 card.

Both computers are on sale for $399 right now. I am looking for a good computer to have for kids to run educational software games and to have a laptop to check email, internet, etc. when away from home. Any suggestions? Is it better to have 4GB vs. 3GB? Is AMD better than Intel? What about the ATI Mobility graphics card vs. Intel's card???

Thanks in advance for any advice!!

 

[TheAmericanLow]

First off, Intel is relatively new to the graphics card market, and i haven't heard many good things about their cards, so go with ATI. The AMD processor is slightly better in my opinion. 3GB or 4GB wont really matter for what you need the laptop to do.

 

[ron3090]

Those aren't laptops for the tasks you describe. Just from the summary, those sound more like heavy-duty gaming laptops. If you want something for educational games (Which most likely have very low system requirements) just get a netbook or an iPad. Unless you feel you need those models more, of course.

 

[mommy4]

Thank you both for your replies.

I actually considered a netbook but with the low price of the computers I mentioned, I wondered if it would be better to go ahead and get a laptop just in case we need it for more. We currently have a Dell XPS 410 desktop and that is our only computer. We purchased an external hard drive for backup purposes and I thought it might be good to have a laptop to transfer everything to in case something happened to the Dell.

Can a netbook or iPad handle other functions as well as a laptop? Thanks!

 

[TheAmericanLow]

Ron is wrong on all accounts. These are not gaming laptops. They would have been 4 years ago. Now they are slightly above standard budget laptops.

 

[TheAmericanLow]

A netbook probably could. the Ipad couldn't play many if any educational games.