What is the standard for laptop processors these days, Intel ones basically?

You get what you pay for. Systems with high end parts with low prices are to be viewed with suspicion. They have to cut corners somewhere to get the price down. What cost you less today is going to cost you more tomorrow.

All laptops or desktops have pretty much the same CPU, GPU, ram, hard drive and screen. Most people do not know that the brand of the hard drive can make all the differences in the world. Intel and AMD make the best CPU. AMD and Nividia make the best GPU. What makes a good laptop or desktop is the manufacturing process, the motherboard and the sub components used in them. After that, it is the software included with them. Some manufactures modify Windows and the drivers severely and cripple the system into being locked to them. Some manufactures so load the system up with bloat software that it takes an hour or more just to get it off the hard drive. You will find those who do not know much about PC and laptops claiming brand do not matter. That they all have the same components in them. The brands makes all the difference. It would be like saying the brand of car, or television does not matter.

I would go with HP or ASUS. For what you describing, just about anything is going to work fine. I would recommend a Intel i5 or and AMD APU A10. As far as ram 4GB would do but 8GB would make sure you can multiple tabs open with out the hard drive over working. If you get an Intel i5 you should make sure you get at least a Nvidia 940M GPU.

The link below has a list of lappies that should fit your needs.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Sub...

This ASUS has the Intel i5 and a Nvidia 940M and a DVD

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9S...

This HP has the AMD APU A10, R7 GPU and a DVD

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9S...

My opinion on the different brands.

Apple makes a good quality laptop. The problem comes when it requires service or minor upgrades. It is near impossible to do anything with them. They even glue the battery and hard drive down so you can not change it. They solder the ram to the logic board so you can not increase it. They lock up most of the software so your stuck with what they approve.

Lenovo has serious stand behind their product problems. They bought IBM PC division and proceeded to drive the quality of the system into the ground. Their customer service is well below par. They even makes Dell customer service look good. Lenovo Makes it hard to surf thru their site without signing up to find trouble shooting tips. Sometimes it is impossiblem to find certain things without giving them your email addy. The last and final thing to remember about them is they are a Chinese Government own company. It is up to you if you want to trust them. Lenovo also got caught shipping system with Adware installed on them called Visual Discovery by Superfish. It was a giant security hole that they intentionally installed for corporate greed.

http://www.wired.com/2015/02/lenovo-superfish/

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/199628-lenovo...

Toshiba, Panasonic, Sony should be avoided because of their heavy modification of Windows and the drivers. If you remove some of the bloat they install, you can cripple the system.

Acer, Gateway, and eMachines should be avoided period. They are low end system that helped drive the race to the bottom. To show just how low end they are, Acer bought out Gateway after Gateway bought out eMachine. They are now and will always be a joke among serious puter and lappy users.

Dell once made a good system and fell from grace. They are now struggling to regain their place in the market. Customer service is one of many problems with this company.

Alienware are glorified Dells and are more name than product. Priced extremely high for what you get. They do perform but you can get the same for less by looking around, just not packaged to be eye candy to the gamers.

Samsung has a history of using cheap parts in critical areas. Capacitors has been one area Samsung has a known history of going cheap, causing units to fail early. For that reason I would avoid them.

ASUS and HP do not modify Windows as bad as the other manufacturers. They have excellent build quality. They might add a lot of bloat but they also makes it easy to get rid of it. Their customer support and technical service is far better then the others and they have excellent online support. I have dealt with many companies when it comes to this kind of support and these two stand out.

Ultrabooks are the higher end of Wintel laptops but they have some of the same concerns as Apple. They make it next to impossible to change any hardware in them. Service of them will have to be done by the manufacturers. With most of them, you can not change your own battery or hard drive. They are designed to catch your eye but they are not any more special then other laptops except for the fact that they are slim or thin. Your paying for it being thin and slim. For the money your going to spend on it you can buy a much better laptop with more power.

Chrome books are useless. They are designed by Google to make you dependent on Google.

Hybrids are the worse of the worse. The flip or detachable touch screens are just a disaster waiting to happen.

Never buy an All In One. They are far worst then laptops of any kind to service and they have a higher failure rate.

Always avoid refurbished units. They only come with a 90 day warranty and have a higher failure rate. The service contacts are normally just a one time replace contract.

Choose wisely.

Intel processors are available in the following models (order of models from lowest price to highest price): Atom, Celeron, Pentium, Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7. Obviously higher model numbers within each model would mean higher performance and higher price.

AMD also makes laptop processors, which aren't quite as popular as Intel's, but they are quite good enough. AMD also has a hierarchal order that it sells (lowest price to highest): C-series, E-series, A4-series, A6-series, A8-series, and A10-series. The entire AMD lineup fits within the same performance and price range of the Intel Atom through Core i5 range, but currently AMD has no equivalent for the Core i7 performance.

You need to determine if you want to play games on this laptop or not. If you do, then you have two gaming ranges: low-end gaming, and high-end gaming. Low-end gaming is entirely owned by AMD processors, as they include an low-end AMD graphics processor in them as well. The high-end gaming is entirely owned by Intel processors, but they also need to be paired with a separate AMD or Nvidia graphics processor. AMD gaming laptops will usually range between $500-1000, while Intel gaming laptops will range from $1500-2000; the Intel machines are more expensive because they have to include the price of the AMD or Nvidia GPU, which would also be a relatively high-end GPU. Gaming machines also typically need at a minimum 8GB of RAM, and a quad-core processor either from AMD or Intel. The processors need to be running at around 2GHz, with a turbo speed around 3GHz.

Other non-gaming laptops, can make due with dual-core processors, running at least 1.5GHz, with turbo speeds above 2GHz. Non-gaming machines also need about 8GB of RAM, but they may occasionally run well on only 4GB.

Buy a i5 at like @3.0 or above GHZ and you'll be fine

Pentium= Bad performance overall but great for overclocking

Dual-Core= Still bad

i3= at a high GHZ it might be useful especially when overclocked.

i5= great for its price just buy a i5 if you're just going to use it for everyday purposes and not gaming

i7= master at performance but is overpriced.

Xeon= Costs way to much but PC gamers may buy it

That depends on what you are going to use it for. If you are just using it for typing papers or spreadsheets or reading articles on the internet, then you don't really need much at all. It really only matters if you are doing something that would be intense on the computer; such as gaming.