I am in the process purchasing a laptop computer. There are many processors to choose from these days and I was hoping someone could enlighten me about the differences in the many styles/brands of processors currently offered for these computers.

I have always preferred Pentium 4 processors. How do the new "M" processors perform versus the Celeron versus the AMD processors and others?

Thanks!

Well amd or intel. Ain't much difference if they are the same speed etc. depends on the cache though. A m processor is very good. But you could try their websites because they offer some insight on speed etc.

Speed Difference? Intels always clock faster but give similar performance as lower 'speed' AMD. So comparing GHZ is like comparing megapixels on digital cameras. Get which ever laptop is in your budget. Its hard enough deciding on size. Check Tachbargains.com for some deals. They usually have really low priced dells listed.

The key issue is one of power consumption. A Mobile (M) processor will use less power, generating less heat and providing greater battery life. So what you need to decide is how much you will be using the laptop on battery. If you typically go 3 or more hours then you want a mobile processor. In fact you may want to go with a Centrino. Centrino is actually a whole chip set that wortks with Pentium M processors to provide extended battery life. Generally twice that of regular processor.

I recently replaced an older Thinkpad T22 with a new T42 Centrino. On board equipment was similar, but I get more than 4 hours on the battery where I used to get barely 2.

One other issue to consider when choosing between Intel and AMD. Currently the Athlon 64 is the only 64 bit CPU available for consumers. When the next version of Windows comes out (either this year or next) this CPU will be able to take advantage of its advanced features.