Lenovo S400, Intel Core i3-3217U, 14" Screen Display, Notebook with 4GB Memory, 500GB Hard Drive, Windows 8 $398.00 @fry

The processor should be the i3-3217U, not i5.

samty said:   ep11365 said:   The processor should be the i3-3217U, not i5.
...KEY SPECIFICATIONS
3rd generation Intel® Core™ i5-3217U processor
Genuine Windows®
14” HD display
(1366×768), 16:9 aspect ratio..
Is it not worth buying???

If it's the i5 it's a better deal; but most likely it's a typo.

Fanta said:   samty said:   ep11365 said:   The processor should be the i3-3217U, not i5.
...KEY SPECIFICATIONS
3rd generation Intel® Core™ i5-3217U processor
Genuine Windows®
14” HD display
(1366×768), 16:9 aspect ratio..
Is it not worth buying???

If it's the i5 it's a better deal; but most likely it's a typo.
In the mobile processors, the primary difference between the i3 and i5 is that the i5 has Turbo Boost. Aside from that and a few obscure virtualization and encryption functions, they're identical. 2 cores, hyperthreading, 3MB Cache. So the conventional wisdom that the i5 is much better than the i3 on a laptop is plain wrong. In most cases, the i3 is 80%-90% the laptop that an i5 is. Turbo Boost only gives about a 15%-25% clock speed advantage over a similarly clocked i3.

The notion that the i5 is much better comes from the desktop CPUs. The desktop i3 is a dual core with hyperthreading and 3 MB of Cache. The desktop i5 is in a whole different league - a quad core (no hyperthreading) with 6 MB of Cache. Both have Turbo Boost. Unfortunately, laptop manufacturers have been taking advantage of widespread confusion about this to charge premium prices for i5 laptops compared to i3 laptops. In reality, there's not much difference between a mobile i3 and i5. And Intel only charges about $5-$10 more for the mobile i5 than the i3 (the manufacturers then convert this into a $50-$100 higher laptop price).

However, there's an exception for the low power and ultra-low power mobile CPUs, designated by a u or y at the end of the model number. The base clock speed on those is much lower, so Turbo boost gives about a 50% clock speed advantage compared to a similarly clocked i3.

The i3-3217u in this deal is one of these low power models. It is clocked at 1.8 GHz and will never run faster. If it had been the i5 equivalent, its base clock speed would've still been 1.8 GHz. But Turbo Boost would've let it run at 2.5-2.7 GHz, which is a substantial speedup from 1.8 GHz. So for mobile CPUs ending in u or y, the i5 is substantially better than the i3.