Anyone know anything about laptops - I'm a dunce

[myheadsamess]

Desperately need to buy a new laptop asap as have started an OU course.

I wanted to spend around £300 but looks like I'll need to spend nearer £400. But - I have a few questions first!
Does anyone know if the AMD A8 processor is better or worse than an intel i3 or i5? And do I need/want quad or dual core?
Tia

What do you want to do ?

If its web surfing and writing documents then you need something pretty basic HP Pavilion x2 10-n156na 10.1” 2 in 1 - Red £230

Will you need a printer?

Bit more punchy LENOVO IdeaPad 510 15.6" Laptop £319

If you are going to write word documents you should either buy MS Office using your student discount. You can also download LibreOffice for free from www.libreoffice.org/ it is compatible and you can output as a pdf file.

Does anyone know if the AMD A8 processor is better or worse than an intel i3 or i5? And do I need/want quad or dual core?

It's not a simple question to answer without knowing the full spec and purpose of the computer.

Does anyone know if the AMD A8 processor is better or worse than an intel i3 or i5? And do I need/want quad or dual core?

That's impossible to answer without knowing which AMD A8 CPU you want to compare to which Intel i3 or i5 CPU. There are many variants of each, so you'd actually need to be asking something more along the lines of "is an i5 6200U better than an AMD A8 7410...?"

I'd be very surprised if you couldn't get a adequate spec laptop within your original 300GBP budget. What do you want to use it for?