Hello  the first thing you want to look for is ram you want at least 128 mb of ram if you are going to use DSL. AOL wants 64, and cable 128mbs. When you start looking at videos it get very choppy and slows down. In this case more ram is better, chip size do not matter if you are just surfing. but if you play basic games on the internet at least a Pentium 3 with min. 128 but more is better. Do not get laptop with XP or Pro and it has less than 64 mb ram it will run crappy because someone force it on min. is 128. Older laptops run better with Windows 98, ME and 2000. Which is alright for a basic laptop.