Let's see..... both the i3 and i5 processors you mentioned are
of the newer Ivy Bridge kind....
I previously used i3 Sandy Bridge (the previous generation), and
it was good enough to play Red Alert 3. If your dad is only into
simple word processing and internet use, i3 Ivy Bridge (the one
you're looking at) is enough.
Ask whether you could upgrade the RAM to 8 GB instead.
It should cost less, and the improvement should be almost as
good as the upgrade to i5.
You might also want to enquire about the possibility of
switching the HDD to an SSD. If your dad doesn't store a lot of
movies or something, 128 GB should be enough. And the performance
boost (bootup times, etc) will be massive.
i see how when i go there next week... the HDD is 500GB with a
free upgrade to a 1TB
