Is a refurbnished toshiba laptop a good choice?

A refurbished laptop without a 1 year warranty is usually not a good idea.
If not factory refurbished, it means a "used laptop that is cleaned off".
They are generally overpriced because the cost of new laptops falls while performance increases.
Celeron is cheap and low performance as is E series AMD and A4 AMD and Atom was designed for netbooks and cell phones.
Dual core means two sub processors and quad core means four and that has no meaning. Clock frequency means nothing also.

Find CPU benchmark here and compare it to a new laptop
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/...u_list.php

If considering gaming, you need the graphics processor and then look up in this slow loading table
http://www.notebookcheck.net/...849.0.html

Generally, refurbished=used and should be priced at 60% of an equally performing new laptop with 1 year warranty and 75% if it has a 1 year warranty like at Lenovo Outlet in the USA.