Computer?

[gw2424]

Im working off a 60 GB hard drive with Picasa! It sucks, but does the job.

 

[Mully]

You can get a 3T hard drive for about $100 ..... It would take awhile to fill it. I use one for my backup drive.

 

[nycphotography]

If money is tight... any i3 or better laptop w/ 2gb or 4gb of ram will do fine. A bigger monitor may seem important, but... get an external monitor for like $200 at best buy, sams club, bjs wherever... and the smaller screen is more portable, and you have full size when at home. A laptop w/ a monitor, usb keyboard, and a usb mouse IS a desktop... except you can unplug the stuff and take it with you.

If money is tight, you can use GIMP, but you'll have to surmount the learning curve.

Luckily, I think lots of youtube videos are available these days to show you how to do different things with GIMP.

 

[Garbz]

Laptops can still be excellent photo editing machines. You just need to add a decent desktop monitor. If you can fit it in the budget see if you can put $350 or so aside for it.

 

[Goose85]

Yup,

I purchased a laptop, and got a great deal (IMO at least). So we shall see how it goes!

 

[Ysarex]

Yup,

I purchased a laptop, and got a great deal (IMO at least). So we shall see how it goes!

I lost my desk computer about two months ago and haven't replaced it. I may not replace it. The day after that loss I upgraded my laptop to 8 gigs RAM and it can handle the editing. Storage is on external drives which I didn't lose. So a laptop can work, but, BUT, BIG BUT, I would never try and edit a photo using the display on my laptop. Along with that 8 gigs of RAM to upgrade the laptop I also brought home an HDMI to DVI cable and attached the laptop to my desktop display and immediately ran a calibration for the display.

Laptop displays are not acceptable for photo editing.

Joe

 

[Goose85]

I've had no issue with it so far. Since I am not going crazy with editing and am no professional, I think its just perfect!