From the sound of it, you want less of a "face shreddingly fast" machine like some people are recommending, and more of a "use every day for the next x years without a problem" machine.
With today's machines, the processors are so incredibly powerful that it really doesn't matter which one you get - it'll be more than beefy enough to do what you want. You can get either an Intel-based machine, or an AMD-based machine. Intel stuff is generally much more expensive than AMD stuff. This is because, in the general case, a single Intel core is ~2/3 more powerful than a single AMD core. Again, though, with processors today being as powerful as they are, it doesn't really make much of a difference in most cases. It's like the difference between using a 10-pound hammer to knock in a finishing nail, or a 16lb one. Either way, it's overkill.
The largest difference between the two is their graphics performance. In ye olden days, you used to have to get a dedicated graphics card/chipset to render images and your desktop. Today, however, both Intel and AMD have smooshed the equivalent of a dedicated graphics unit into their processors. This is smart for a lot of reasons, namely power efficiency. Unfortunately, the Intel processors do not have very good graphics capabilities, even though they are super fast. So, even though an Intel laptop has a metric ton of processing power, you can't play many games on it because it just doesn't have the graphics capabilities to do it. Modern AMD processors, however, feature embedded Radeon graphics, which are pretty darn powerful considering they're on the same chip as the CPU. So when it comes to gaming, an AMD laptop will generally run circles around an Intel laptop, even though the latter has way more processing power.
You can also still get laptops with a dedicated graphics cards. In this case, the graphics card can be either an nVidia card, or an AMD card. AMD components are, again, usually less expensive, but nVidia components are generally much more power efficient. The combos that are usually available are AMD processor+AMD graphics card, or Intel processor+nVidia graphics card.
For you, it sounds like you'd be best served with an AMD-based laptop, without a dedicated graphics card. They are very affordable, and are the most flexible with what you can do with them based on what you paid for them. A single model that comes to mind is the Asus K55N. Asus is generally reputed as having good build quality, and that model is available on eBay right now for $300-$350. It's also pretty future proof as you could upgrade components in the future (like the processor, hard drive, or RAM) fairly easily, and since the processor also contains the graphics chip, you would be upgrading that at the same time.
At least, that's my view of the situation. Other people, or you, may feel differently, so feel free to chime in.
With today's machines, the processors are so incredibly powerful that it really doesn't matter which one you get - it'll be more than beefy enough to do what you want. You can get either an Intel-based machine, or an AMD-based machine. Intel stuff is generally much more expensive than AMD stuff. This is because, in the general case, a single Intel core is ~2/3 more powerful than a single AMD core. Again, though, with processors today being as powerful as they are, it doesn't really make much of a difference in most cases. It's like the difference between using a 10-pound hammer to knock in a finishing nail, or a 16lb one. Either way, it's overkill.
The largest difference between the two is their graphics performance. In ye olden days, you used to have to get a dedicated graphics card/chipset to render images and your desktop. Today, however, both Intel and AMD have smooshed the equivalent of a dedicated graphics unit into their processors. This is smart for a lot of reasons, namely power efficiency. Unfortunately, the Intel processors do not have very good graphics capabilities, even though they are super fast. So, even though an Intel laptop has a metric ton of processing power, you can't play many games on it because it just doesn't have the graphics capabilities to do it. Modern AMD processors, however, feature embedded Radeon graphics, which are pretty darn powerful considering they're on the same chip as the CPU. So when it comes to gaming, an AMD laptop will generally run circles around an Intel laptop, even though the latter has way more processing power.
You can also still get laptops with a dedicated graphics cards. In this case, the graphics card can be either an nVidia card, or an AMD card. AMD components are, again, usually less expensive, but nVidia components are generally much more power efficient. The combos that are usually available are AMD processor+AMD graphics card, or Intel processor+nVidia graphics card.
For you, it sounds like you'd be best served with an AMD-based laptop, without a dedicated graphics card. They are very affordable, and are the most flexible with what you can do with them based on what you paid for them. A single model that comes to mind is the Asus K55N. Asus is generally reputed as having good build quality, and that model is available on eBay right now for $300-$350. It's also pretty future proof as you could upgrade components in the future (like the processor, hard drive, or RAM) fairly easily, and since the processor also contains the graphics chip, you would be upgrading that at the same time.
At least, that's my view of the situation. Other people, or you, may feel differently, so feel free to chime in.
