CPU Speed vs Number of Cores?

Not all CPUs are the same. Some get more work done per clock cycle than others, which means some can be faster than others even though they are running at a slower speed. It's just not a great way to determine what's best anymore. The number of cores, as long as it's at least 2, is not that important for plain jane computing either. If you're buying new, you'll most likely be satisfied with even the slowest PC as long as it has a bare minimum of 4 Gigs of RAM, but I would still aim a little higher if possible. Your options to get anything besides Windows 8.1 are getting very limited, but there are free apps that will make it behave very nearly identical to Windows 7. Despite Windows 8.x's crappy reputation, it's faster, more efficient with RAM, boots much faster, is more secure, more reliable, and maybe best of all, will be upgraded to Windows 10 for free later this year. As is often mentioned, an SSD (solid state hard drive) will really wake up most computers, and they're really getting cheaper too. It would make a great future upgrade consideration for whatever base model laptop you select. I've found some killer deals for display models at Walmart in the past, and would imagine that's the norm everywhere.