Affordable Laptop

Tighearnach · Feb 7, 2009

Hi

I want to purchase Lightroom 2 for photoprocessing but my crap laptop can't handle it. What are the good but relatively cheap laptop brands out there that I should look at?

damian5000 · Feb 7, 2009

Tighearnach said:
Hi

I want to purchase Lightroom 2 for photoprocessing but my crap laptop can't handle it. What are the good but relatively cheap laptop brands out there that I should look at?

What's your budget and what are you using now for a laptop?

Check Ebay for a refurbished laptop. I'm not sure what the recommended specs for Lightroom 2 are, but I have a 2.13ghz single core Dell d610 (can be had for less than $300 now...They were $2000+ back in '05) and it handles PS CS3 and pretty much anything else I throw at it. I'd imagine it would be able to handle Lightroom.

If you've got the money, spring for a dual core laptop. The Dell d620 and d630 get pretty good reviews and could probably be had for a fair refurb price. Pay attention to native screen resolution also when looking at laptops...Most of them even if they are the same model offer different screen resolutions... (eg the d610 comes in 1024x768 native and 1400x1050 native)

Cnet reviews is a great place to check out reviews of laptops.

ndredsox · Feb 7, 2009

Mac or PC?
The white macbooks can be had now for $999. Throw 4 gigs of ram in it and it should handle anything you throw at it. They even have dedicated video cards now, I believe they have the 9400M, just like the higher end mb's.

Tighearnach · Feb 8, 2009

regarding budget. I am willing to save for as long. As it takes to get a good performing laptop that I suppose will not break in a year and that will not require updating for a few years. At the ssame time I do not feel that I have to buy a Sony vaio or MacBook if I can get a 'lesser name' brand with similar specs for half the price. Is this possible or should I be aiming for a laptop in the pricebracket of the two mentioned. Also is there any laptops out there that are specidfically geared towards photographers?

Thanks

damian5000 · Feb 8, 2009

Tighearnach said:
regarding budget. I am willing to save for as long. As it takes to get a good performing laptop that I suppose will not break in a year and that will not require updating for a few years. At the ssame time I do not feel that I have to buy a Sony vaio or MacBook if I can get a 'lesser name' brand with similar specs for half the price. Is this possible or should I be aiming for a laptop in the pricebracket of the two mentioned. Also is there any laptops out there that are specidfically geared towards photographers?

Thanks

Any dual core pentium notebook will suit your needs fine for years to come. Brand doesn't really matter so much.. But I recommend Acer or Dell. Check CNET for laptops reviews. Easy peasy.

chrisburke · Feb 8, 2009

the question is, do you want an affordable laptop, or do you want one that is going to last you forever.. i mean, for about 600 bucks, you can get low end laptop, but in another 2 or 3 years from now, your going to need to get a new one again and drop another 600 bucks (so now your up to 1200 bucks) plus your going to need to get norton anti virus (125 or so) up to 1300 bucks.. OR, you can go out ONCE, and spend 1200 bucks and get a nice macbook.. even with 2gb of ram, mine smokes.... the question when buying a laptop should be "how much" it should be "how good" and i believe it just makes sense to buy something that is going to last.. my macbook is coming up on 3 years old... its never crashed, its never frozen, i've never had to reinstall my operating system (except for last week when i updated to the most recent one, but i didn't look any of my data, as it all stayed on the hd...

LarissaPhotography · Feb 8, 2009

I'd recommend checking to see what Dell has right now. Also, I don't really recommend them because I've heard of a lot of problems from them in the past, but TigerDirect will give you a pretty good estimate on the cheapest you could find the laptop for at another more reputable store.

inTempus · Feb 8, 2009

I had nothing but problem with Dell laptops. I had a couple HP's that held up to some pretty intense abuse over the years (road warrior). In the end I settled on a Macbook Pro.

chrisburke · Feb 8, 2009

smart choice tharmsen... i have a macbook right now, but i see a nice 15 or 17" Macbook pro in my near future once mr tax man sends me my refund

mrodgers · Feb 8, 2009

chrisburke said:
the question is, do you want an affordable laptop, or do you want one that is going to last you forever.. i mean, for about 600 bucks, you can get low end laptop, but in another 2 or 3 years from now, your going to need to get a new one again and drop another 600 bucks (so now your up to 1200 bucks) plus your going to need to get norton anti virus (125 or so) up to 1300 bucks.. OR, you can go out ONCE, and spend 1200 bucks and get a nice macbook.. even with 2gb of ram, mine smokes.... the question when buying a laptop should be "how much" it should be "how good" and i believe it just makes sense to buy something that is going to last.. my macbook is coming up on 3 years old... its never crashed, its never frozen, i've never had to reinstall my operating system (except for last week when i updated to the most recent one, but i didn't look any of my data, as it all stayed on the hd...

This must be what I've done wrong. Last year my modem was nailed by a lightning strike and it went through to the network on the motherboard of my cheap PC. I didn't have Norton installed and I bought a budget PC. Thus, I installed a seperate network card in a slot adjacent to the graphics card not thinking about it and overheated the gfx card. Now the computer is out of commission until I replace the gfx card.

Is the fact that I don't have Norton or any antivirus or firewall installed the reason my computer is out right now? Is the fact that I bought a budget computer 4 years ago the reason it is out right now? I've never had to reinstall the OS, I've never had a virus or spyware or anything else on that computer. It ran perfectly fine until the gfx card went out which is completely my fault, as well as the fact that it was hit by lightning and fried the network port, which was the weather's fault along with mine because I didn't unplug it.....

The point? The cost of a computer isn't the reason why they crash or don't work anymore. The cost of a computer nor the fact of Mac vs. PC isn't the reason people have to reinstall the OS all the time or get viruses. The cost of a computer isn't the reason people have to upgrade. You can buy the latest and greatest and most expensive computer available today and next week it is outdated. It's all in what you want to do with your computer and how you use it and clog it all up with what you do that makes the difference.

Photography related? What is the requirements for photography related stuff? I run a 4 year old $500 AMD 3500 with 1 gig RAM and open 20+ TIFF files at 30-40 mb in Photoshop just fine. Any reasonable hand-me-down computer would be able to do that, thus there is no reason to recommend spending large amount of money on a computer. If you are planning on gaming and use it for playing the latest games, then requirements are necessary. But just for photography, any computer available should suffice, PC, Mac, or laptop.

SrBiscuit · Feb 8, 2009

im with tharmsen on the HP...i have a DV8110US, and it;s been fantastic for me. and like his, mine gets abused as well...
i have no problems at all running the entire CS2 suite (even multitasking with PShop, illustrator, and flash at the same time). this particular model has an AMD turion64 that i was skeptical about at first, but has proven to work well. my graphics card is a run of the mill ATI radeon 200m...so im not exactly running CRYSIS lol.

this one came in at $1100, but im seeing the new HP laptops with much better specs than this for less.

good luck in your quest.