Will a student notice any performance difference between an AMD Athlon and Turion processor in her laptop?”
Those are not terribly demanding tasks for a computer, and any modern processor can handle them just fine. The Turion has better power consumption properties, so the laptop will last a bit longer between charges, but it’s not like it’s adding days to the battery life. If she decides she wants to do video or photo editing, you might consider the more-powerful but more power-sucking Athlon. But for the tasks you list, you won’t notice any performance difference.
