Pertinent PC Processing Power Petition.

[Beest]

On the hunt for Laptops for toe of the family, but the essential question is the same, is cheap going to be quick and nasty.
Being value minded I'm looking at low price, but don't want crappy that's age fast and be a burden.
There seem to be some good deals around now, I guess competing for that Xmas market.

I've lost track of processor progress, are the new processors i3 (2.4GHz 3MB Cache), so much better than the the previous Pentium T4500 (Dual Core 2.3GHz/800MHz FSB, 1MB Cache)or even I see a lot of budget laptops with Celeron 900 (2.2GHz/800MHz FSB, 1MB Cache).

For Monster one of the big issues is that her battery doesn't hold charge, a new one is going to be ~$100, and her screen has several lines, so time for a new one. She's not playing 3D intensive games or editing video, but hse may have 3 or 4 explorer windows with 5+ tabs in each open, plus Quickbooks, Excel etc.
What parameter is key to keeping all these balls in the air, processing speed, multiple cores, cache or memory.

Daughter is earning through babysitting, swim coaching assistant type jobs, currently she's email and web surfing, High School is on the middle distant Horizon. Going cheap will get her what she wants sooner, but I'd like to recommend something that's going to be value for her hard earned moolah and last into those early high school years.