Dissatisfied with AMD laptop

My laptop has an Intel Core Duo and my wife's one has an AMDTK55 1.8 GHz with 512K cache. My wife's laptop frequently overheats and shuts down unexpectedly. It has more memory than mine (2.25 GB vs 2 GB) yet it runs slower. I can easily run multiple heavy weight applications in parallel in the Intel laptop whereas the AMD one almost crawls to a halt in a similar situation. This is my first AMD purchase. The only person I know who had an AMD is a friend who had it back when we were in school. He was not happy with his machine and neither are we with ours now. I wanted to see what others are saying and found here that indeed AMD is not a match with Intel. The only advantage it provides is the low price. But I think the price difference is more than offset by its poor performance. So I would advise everyone to research thoroughly before picking one of the brands. As this article says, we don't have to be fan of any brand because we don't get anything from them in return. We have to pick the best one for our need, regardless of the moniker it has on it.