Single vs Dual core Processors

[WeirdClayJisKOO]

I am planning on buying a new laptop for going back to school. I am going to be a junior in High School, and only have about $900 to spend. I want the best I can get for that price. What's most important to me is speed, because my computer is almost 10 years old and is extremely slow. I want a compute i will use normally to surf the internet, edit photos and work on extravagent power point presentations all while listening to music. I also want it to prefore well with videos. And, I want to be able to upgradeeasily to vista when it comes out. (i know a friend who got a computer 5 years ago designed for ME, but came with a free XP CD,and when he installed it it made his computer much slower, I don't want that to happen to me lol) If someone could point me in the right direction for specs of what i should get that would be amazing, otherwise if someone could just answer my question that would be great too.

Basically, in my price range, I've foung computers with 1.6GHz dual processors, and solo processors going up to 2.GHz. I want to know which is faster, and prefors better. I also need to decide if i should go with AMD or Intel, but I don't want to start a big argument. I already real the AMD vs Intel thread and it helped a little, but I still don't know which would be better for me.

Thanks a lot! I appreciate your help.

 

[chrisds]

I would have the dual core anyday, it would proform much better, I would also recomend for laptops to have intel chips and get one with centrino (can't member how you speel it) the single core may be slightly faster in clock, but remeber you have two of the other chips, do you have links to the specs of the machines you have found?

 

[b1gapl]

Get dual core for the future.

 

[Nitestick]

look at a yonah core duo if possible in that price range. that will definitely suit your purposes

 

[WeirdClayJisKOO]

I would have the dual core anyday, it would proform much better, I would also recomend for laptops to have intel chips and get one with centrino (can't member how you speel it) the single core may be slightly faster in clock, but remeber you have two of the other chips, do you have links to the specs of the machines you have found?

Yea I have links to the ones I've found. There's a lot so I'll just put the ones with the dual core unless you want me to show you the others.

Acer Aspire 5102WLMi

Compaq Presario V3019US

Gateway MX6920

HP Pavillian dv5220us

HP Pavillian dv8233cl (a little out of my price range)

Acer Aspire 5672WLMi

I hate to say but now i'm even more confused if I should go with ADM or Intel. someone else I talked to said I should get ADM because they are 64 bit and centrino are only 32.

and what's a yonah core i've never heard of that?