Upgrading from an old Dell Vostro

[Ross Carthy]

I've been using a Dell Vostro 1720 for the last 6 or so years.
It has
Intel Core 2 Duo P7570 @2.27 GHZ
2GB ram (not sure if DDR2 or DDR3)

I'm looking to upgrade on a budget. Most of the Laptops I'm looking at are using Intel Pentium, or Celeron CPU's. I've heard the Core 2 Duo's are supposed to be better.

Would a newer Celeron CPU out perform my 6/7 year old Core 2 Duo?

Also I was hoping for 8GB of ram, but most of the budget laptops come with 4GB DDR3.

Would these budget laptops be a decent upgrade over my old laptop?

I don't want to spend a few hundred quid
on a new laptop, just to realise it doesn't make any difference in performance

 

[Mounty_078]

Having 8GB of RAM while using Celeron is like having Race Car seats and body while driving a Ford Fiesta. Maybe not the best comparison, but let's just say it this way: Celeron is crap and there's a reason they only come with 4GB RAM because you won't be able to run so much programs to use the whole 8GB because your CPU wouldn't handle it. Get something of a i-serie from Intel Core because upgrading from Core 2 Duo to Celeron ain't much of an upgrade. My father's 8 year old Dell Studio 1535 has Pentium 4 but I upgraded it with an 120GB SSD for 60 euros and now it runs pretty good for an almost decade old system.

You better get a few more hundred quid to get something more of value or get something second hand because there are some really really great laptops out there for a low price.