Quote Originally Posted by DB_Hunter View Post
Thanks, that clears up a lot of stuff.

I'm looking to get a laptop for a friend who just wants it for normal word processing, e-mail/Outlook, internet browsing and occasional use of Adobe Illustraitor. His basic request is that if he has a few windows/apss open like those mentioned above that his machine doesn't start grinding to a halt. His other request is to make the machine as 'future proof' as possible, given that he has a budget of about £400-450 max. I was originally just going to get him a Core 2 Duo machine for half the price but I'm wondering if I should get him an i3? Would it be worth going double the cost from say £200-215 to £400-450 just to get an i3 and possibly an i5?

It is only possible with a SSD (assuming the system has 4Gb RAM already) because these symtoms are the sign of a HDD not able to cope with multiple random small write/reads happening at the same time.
Thing is, a SSD is expensive. So in the mentionned budget, only a 60GB or so SSD will do. Meaning you either need to find a dual HDD bay laptop, or sacrifice the optical drive bay and add an adapter, or deal with an external USB/e-sata HDD
And believe me, a good SSD is the best upgrade you can think of.
A vertex 2, a C300 or even an Intel will do the trick around US$ 100 I guess. I know this is a lot of $ for a very small storage capacity, but it really transforms a comp. Just that for a low budget you have to manage your data differently. But you can also think lower in terms of processing power. Of course in the end, the future proofness will be hard to cope with on a very tight budget, or even be impossible for gaming (hell, gaming on a laptop is already madness...)