Originally Posted by
TheTiffanyTracy
Neither, and I'd like to clear up a couple things here.
1. Memory is not, and has never been, measured in "MG". It used to be measured in megabytes (MB), but I sincerely hope that you're not considering purchasing a laptop with 8MB of RAM, as that would barely suffice to use as a calculator, and would certainly not be capable of camming on. I shall assume that you're referring to gigabytes (GB), as 4-32GB is the normal range for memory these days, but that distinction needs to be made.
2. A separate video card is really unnecessary for a laptop for camming, and adds expense that would be better spent elsewhere, namely, more RAM, or a better processor. If you were building a gaming computer, absolutely, you would need one, but basically, video encoding is handled by the processor, not the graphics card, so the built-in graphics of modern processors (Intel HD 4600 graphics, for instance) will more than suffice for camming.
Now, on to answer your questions:
#1: Stay the hell away from the AMD Quad Cores. I was actually going to post a link to the CPU Benchmarks, but I see Melonie beat me to it :D . Look at the scores, see for yourself, they perform poorly. My CELL PHONE has a faster processor than some of them. A higher-end i5 would be a MINIMUM, with a higher-end i7 being the recommended processor for camming.
#2: Without getting into an overly complicated discussion of # of cores vs GHz and all that, just look at that benchmark list Melonie linked to, and pick a laptop with a processor that scores AT LEAST 6000, then you should be fine.
#3: I'll assume you mean 4GB here, and, you could scrape by with 4GB, barely, if you only cammed on it, and didn't have any other programs open, but you really should have 8GB or better.
As far as brands, Asus is a solid brand, very well made machines. I couldn't tell you how good their support is, because I've never had to call them, that should tell you something =). Acer makes a good machine too, and I can tell you that their support is excellent. Lenovo is a spinoff of IBM, so I would assume they are solid machines as well, but I have very little personal experience with them. HP makes poorly-made, disposable computers that generally die about a day after they go out of warranty, so purchase those at your own risk. Also, look online, most of those big box stores are quite overpriced, and you can find great deals if you look. I recently purchased a refurbished 17.3" Toshiba laptop with a powerful 4th-gen i7 processor and 8GB of RAM for $550 USD, so to say that you're looking at £1k for an i7, is to say that you're looking in the wrong place.