Celeron vs P4 for MS Office apps only

[BWax]

I am not looking for the knee jerk "he said the 'C' word" responses, I know a stock Celeron is a joke in a modern gaming rig.

In a gaming rig that those two processors do not belong in the same post but these computers will only be used for Word, Excel and Outlook. I have only seen gaming benchmarks at review sites so far and basic Office apps are a whole different story. I'm looking for opinions on the following

1) For Word, Excel and Outlook XP how big is the difference ?

2) What if the person actually is using Access, Publisher or Project ?

3) Is the upgrade worth it if it changes the price from $699 to $799 ?

I guess its pretty obvious but just the same, these machines are on a network in an office setting, there will not be any games on them. Thank you for any and all help.

P.S. Otherwise the machines will probably be 256MB Ram, 40 GB 7200 rpm HD and running Win XP Pro, Office XP Pro.

 

[L1FE]

If your box is being custom built (as opposed to OEM), I'd personally suggest an Athlon or even Duron processor if you're on a tight budget. Otherwise, for a budget system a celeron would be just fine (especially if cost is the major limiting factor). Then again, I hate celerons

 

[WobbleWobble]

You probably won't notice a difference until you start heavily multitasking or move towards multimedia apps. I hate to say it, but if you want to stay Intel and use only Office, the Celeron is fine.

 

[BWax]

Trust me I don't like it either but the CEO is stuck on Dell's so Intel it is. To be honest the Dell's have been fairly good to us and the Optiplex's seem to be solid machines. Dell just seems stuck on Intel. It feels really odd to be looking at the Celeron but this is only Office Apps and it is a non-profit. These machines are replacing PII's. I am finally getting them on a 4 year rotation plan and budgetting for that. We are implementing it slowly - last year we replaced the Pentium 166 MHz machines !

 

[WobbleWobble]

I totally understand your situation. CPUs are fast enough that for general office apps, you won't notice a difference from one to another.

 

[tallman45]

Dell and Intel are both listed on Nasdaq that is why you will never see Dell use anything but Intel procs and MB's.

Actually for a budget rig a Celeron is pretty decent and it always offers you the simply upgrade path to a P4. For the corporate environment a Celeron will more than handle MS. Office products. The speed of the system is dictated by how much info has to be downloaded of the Lan anyway.