Does The Refurbished Laptops' CPU Matter?
Intel made the first microprocessor with the first PC CPU (Central Processing Unit) over twenty years ago. The Intel Inside campaign took the CPU from being an unknown computer chip buried on the system board, to being a way we judge the speed and power of personal computers. The Pentium family started in 1993 and with the advent of word processors and spread sheets was the beginning of personal computing. The CPU has continued to progress from these early Pentium 90 MHz (Megahertz) to today's 3 GHz (GigaHertz) CPUs. Megahertz is Millions of Computer Instructions processed per second.
A technical but informative website about CPUs: http://www.pcmech.com/cpuindex.htm
It's easy to look at the clock speed of a CPU — measured in megahertz–as the prime indicator of the computer's speed. But your hard drive, your RAM, your video card, and many other parts of your laptop also affect its speed.
Should you care if the CPU is 90MH or 1 GHz? Whether you need a brand new laptop that'll give you more speed/power or could consider an older Pentium II or Pentium III laptop depends upon your intended use of the laptop and your budget.
So, let's look at what are your uses for a laptop. Most people do word processing (you can't type faster than a Pentium 90), spreadsheets, retrieve and send e-mail (on a 28.8 modem it only takes 3-4 minutes to send and receive text messages) and browse the web (your connection speed is much more important than the CPU's speed). The latest version Micrsoft Word 2003, Microsoft Excel 2003 and Microsoft's popular e-mail application Outlook will run fine on a Pentium 233 MHz CPU, although Micrsoft recommends a Pentium 3. Even Microsoft's PowerPoint 2003 only requires a Pentium 233 MHz CPU.
http://www.microsoft.com/office/word/prodinfo/sysreq.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/office/excel/prodinfo/sysreq.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/office/outlook/prodinfo/sysreq.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/office/powerpoint/prodinfo/sysreq.mspx
So, unless you are doing complex games (many 3-8 year old kid's games run fine), like Halo, or have complex spreadsheets, a complicated CPU intensive database application, spend many hours a day on your laptop, are a road warrior that need the lightest laptop with a very long lasting battery, many people could live with an older Pentium 2 or Pentium 3 laptop and be perfectly happy.