Forum advice needed please.

My daughter is off to Uni in September and one of the essentials she needs is a new laptop. I don't think her old Acer Aspire will cut the mustard.

She's sent me a link to one she likes, it's an HP Pavillion. This has an Intel Processor (Intel® Core™ i3-5010U). I noticed there's another HP Pavillion listed with an AMD processor - AMD A8-6410 APU

The specs and prices are similar but can anyone tell me the difference between the 2 chipsets?

And............. If anyone can recommend something different, that'd be greatly appreciated. Budget is around £400.

Some good Intel i5 deals on ebuyer
http://www.ebuyer.com/store/Computer/cat/Laptops

I would recommend the Surface 3 (not the pro model) but it is above budget. The ability to use as tablet with a pen is perfect for Uni lecture note taking.

As a workhorse with decent specs, my Lenovo BS5400 has been great. Should be comfortably within budget.

For "real" work, it is very useful to be able to have two pages side-by-side, one for info, one for active work. Hence my preference would be for a laptop with a hi-res screen (1920x1080 or Full HD is ideal).

For anything but graphics work and gaming, the processor is no longer the limiting factor and an i3 or better will be fine.

As a guide, from your examples, the i3 appears to be a small chunk faster.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=AMD+A8-6410+APU

Worth having if it does not cost any more. Since the second gen i3/i5/i7 CPUs were released, AMD has struggled to keep up but that means if you hit lucky, you can get a bargain AMD-processored PC.

Add an ssd to the buy and that will certainly help pick up speed of the machine aswell.

Cheers guys. She's actually doing some research herself!

I've pointed her this way.........