Laptop for photographers

[usayit]

A lot of Windows users with low opinions of Mac rarely have any signficant experience working in a Mac environment.

A lot of Mac users come from a background of Windows environments and decided Mac is better suited for them.

Its just an observation....



btw... I don't think the two button mouse functionality is silly considering that other functionality is also tied to touching two fingers on the touch pad.. scrolling for example.

two versus one button is no different from those used to 5 button mouses or perhaps 6 button mice. I could easily argue that a three button mouse is silly compared to a programmable 6 button mouse. Its all silly....

You know what I think is silly... the selection (lack of) ergonomic lefty mice...



Speaking of Lenovo... they released a laptop supposedly geared towards graphic artists with a built in graphics tablet. Anyone see one in person?

 

[Arch]

Are Dells any good?

My XPS M1710 is very good.

Take all the power and graphics of a mid to high range Alienware media laptop, remove the Alienware logo add a glowing Dell one, take away the (old and infamous) bad customer support from a high end Alienware (as they are now the same company), and replace with Dell's good customer support = one happy camper...

Anyone who says Dell are rubbish are basing thier opinions on the LOW END market which Dell have admittedly grown a reputation for supplying.

 

[Village Idiot]

not at all

Crap. I should throw out my 4 year old desktop, 2 year old desktop, and 1 1/2 year old notebook then.

 

[chrisburke]

please allow me to back up my stance on Dells. I am a mac user, so yes, that obviously plays some of my role in saying any windows based machine sucks.. however.. dells I have experience with.

In my office I am the only mac user. The rest of the staff use Dells.. and I make fun of them every day for it... I got my MacBook, for example, 2 years ago... it is flawless.. and I use it way harder than the other staff. Our other staff have high end dells.. couldnt tell you which ones, as I dont care... they bought dell laptops 3 years ago.. spent a boat load of money..

now please know, that these guys use these laptops for pretty basic stuff... email, surfing, some very LIGHT video editing, some photoshop stuff.. last year, all 4 staff had to replace the laptops (which were only 2 years old) they spent around $1500 on these laptops... 2 years later they crapped out... one guy had a monitor go, another totally lost his cd drive (burner) it wouldnt work at all anymore, and the other 2 guys lost their mother boards... that means, this year, all of our staff, except me, had to go buy new laptops... so in the past 3 years, they have all now spent about $3000 on their laptops (not to mention the cost for servicing in between, as well as the cost for things like Norton, which you need on those windows machines) now their whole complaint to me was "i'd love to switch to mac, but they are so darn expensive"

now lets looks at the break down here.. 2 years ago i spent 1600 on my laptop and I upgraded the ram about 6 months later to 2gb which cost 200 from CanadaRam.com... so now I've put about 1800, plus 79 for iWork.. so under 1900.. and my macbook is STILL going strong, and I havent even had so much as a freeze... now these guys, who are very computer savvy.. who also said "macs are to expensive" in the past 3 years have spent $1500 on the first laptop, lets be generous and say that in the 2 years they had them it only cost them each about 100 bucks for servicing (trust me it cost more than that) and now, this year, they spent another $1500 on them.. plus had to upgrade norton.. so lets be generous and say that they've only spent 1600 + 100 for servicing... so if my math is right, each of these guys have spent (in the past 3 years) $3200 on laptops, which are already starting to have problems..

so if you look at that from abusiness stance these 4 guys have cost the business $12,800 in the last 3 years, JUST on computers... while I, with my lone mac, have only cost the business less than $1900

PLEASE NOTE: I have no quams with Dell, infact I use a dell monitor extended from my laptop in my office... but, look at those numbers, and tell me who was the smarter person???

also note the pic below.. my office setup... i do use an external mouse (the might mouse) which has 6 buttons I believe (i use 4 of them) but when I'm not in the office, i have no problem with the track pad mouse, and it took no time at all to get use to..

 

[dhilberg]

You know what I think is silly... the selection (lack of) ergonomic lefty mice...

I gave up on that many years ago and just learned to use mice right-handed, among other things like the guitar, can openers, etc. Saved me a lot of trouble.

 

[manaheim]

Amigaz Rul!

 

[juane414]

I've had my Dell XPS M1530 for about a month now and wouldn't give it up for anything else. It cost $1,600 and has a WUXGA+ 1920x1200 display, which is great for viewing pictures. It also has a 2.4ghz core 2 duo and 4gb of ram, so its plenty fast. Another thing I like about it is that it has a 5-in-1 card reader so I can just plug my SD card right in the front of the PC from the camera, its a lot faster and cleaner than using the cable.

I've seen some people say that Macs are better because they don't crash. Well, guess what? Vista doesn't crash either. As long as you keep Vista up to date it won't crash. I've been using Vista for a year on two different computers, and haver never seen it crash once. Vista is far superior to XP.

I say no to the macbook pro because its overpriced for what you get. I say no to the macbook because it only has 1280x1024 resolution, no multi-card reader, and no HDMI. The HDMI on my Dell is priceless because I can connect my computer to my Parents 46" 1080p LCD TV and show off my pictures is High-Def glory.

I took this screenshot for you. The smaller image is the same image that is my wallpaper, but in 1280x1024 resolution. This will give you an idea of how much more you can see with 1920x1200 (WUXGA+).

 

[Village Idiot]

Replacing a whole laptop because of a bad cd drive or screen? That's what's really wasting your company's money.

I've had two MBP's. The first had the casing bent up when I received it and lines in the LCD. The second came with crooked keys and the power button fell into the case after the first month.

My company had about 150 Dell machines. I rarely had to do anything to machines outside of fixing things the users screwed up. On occasion there was a dead CD drive, but you call Dell service and they send a knew one. We're still using several machines for heavy microfilm scanning operations and these machines are probably 5-6 years old.

Dells can be real work horses for the price.

 

[joecoulsonphotography]

Does anyone have a tablet? I run two Gateway (not the retail cheapie's) tablets and love the interface with PS and Capture NX. It makes touching up a photo a breeze.

 

[manaheim]

Look, this is all very silly.

Having anyone cite their specific anecdotal evidence of why MACS RULE, PCS DROOL! or vise versa is pointless. For every single person out there that claims that their Mac never fails, I can find you a person who can claim that their PC never fails, and vise versa. For every single person that claims that their PC is the cheapest and most efficient in the office, I can find you one that claims their Mac is as well.

I've seen 30+ IT environments in my 15ish years of running IT organizations. I've supported IBM AS400s, Dells, Gateways, HPs, Macintoshes (from IIcxes on up)... UNIX of nearly every flavor, Windows of nearly every variety, MacOS, DOS... servers, desktops, peripherals... you name it... yes, even Amigas and oddball things like NeXT stations. I have seriously supported a LOT of hardware and software in my time.

There is one simple and undeniable fact: They all suck when used improperly, and they all work great when used the way they should be. This has as much to do with proper management as it does with proper selection of the tool to fit the job, and in truth has VERY little to do with how overall awesome any given choice is.

Hell, I know people (yes, I seriously do) who very happily use their Coleco Adam to do ALL of their work and think that us people on modern day PCs are completely off their fuggin' rocker. Seriously, see this.

So please, everyone stop before I have to tear my eyes out. If you don't I'm gonna go out and start googling for ancient threads that literally boil down to...

AMIGA RULZ! MAC DROOLZ!
NO, AMIGA SUCKS! MAC RULZ!
(repeat 1000x)

...and start posting them in this thread.

 

[juane414]

Are Dells any good?

Inspirons? Not so much...
Vostro? Not so much...

XPS? Amazing!
Latitude? Very Nice!
Studio? Never used one but they seem pretty solid.

 

[bevin]

FWIW IMHO etc etc...

I have a MacBook and I love it. Granted I'm a total noob here but I use it for all the basics, along with Photoshop, bits of movie editing, WOW etc and I have no issues with it. It's about 2 years old now and is as good as the day I got it, though I'm buying a 500Gb hard drive for it soon as 100Gb just isn't enough even with external hds.

Before this one I had a PowerBook and that was a m a z i n g. I dropped it at least 5 times from about 5ft to concrete - I had a stupid laptop backpack with a side zip which I would regularly forget to zip up (yeah I know i'm an eejit!). Anyway, it got a tiny bit dented but each time it continued to work perfectly and I've never had an issue with it. Now it's 6+ years old and I still have it as a second internet machine for BF.

I've been using computers since I was about 3 or 4 and went from PC to Apple Mac to Windows and now back to Apple. Unless Apple f**k up completely I don't envision myself switching back. Both my computer geek brothers and my parents are all converts also.

Again, IMHO...

 

[jakedoza]

I am an advanced amateur photographer looking purchasing a laptop using on all my indoor and outdoor photo shoting, as I shot on the same time picture appear on the laptop monitor to check the quality of each shot and save. What type Laptop? Is Dell a good choice? Which hardware? Which Software?

Thank you

Its funny that these discussions show up on a photo forum and not in a computer tech forum.
I believe that something like this was discussed a while back.... oh yeah... it was here:

http://thephotoforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=126122

as in that thread that I posted in I will post here..
I did not read any ones reply to this post before writing this because I do not want anyone to feel like I'm bashing their intelligence in any way.

I am a computer tech (hardware, repair, networking) and have been for 12 years. What I will tell you comes only from experience.

There are several questions you will need to ask your self before even considering the questions you have asked us.

1. will this be your only system for photo editing and everyday use?
2. what type of system do you have now?
3. is this replacing/upgrading a system you have now, or is this system only going to be used on sites to display images taken with your camera?
4. How deep are your pockets?
5. and I probably missed a few..

as you have probably read from all the previous posts, that I have not read yet, there are people that will tell you their likes and dislikes and this is better than that and so on.. well.. I am going to do the same, but I will tell you all of this from a technical standpoint and be as neutral as possible.

First thing you will need to know is that a laptop is not the best way to edit or store photos.. it doesn't matter if it is a MAC or a PC.
This is why...
There is this thing called a hard drive in ALL laptops that is subject to damage EVERY time the machine is moved. You have to ask your self.. How important are the items on my laptop.
Now if you are simply wanting a laptop to show off the images after you take them to show your clients and then edit/store them on a DESKTOP machine elsewhere.. then really your pocket book is the limit. I personally would buy a toshiba or a lenovo, but that is personal and I'm not getting into that. From a technical stand point.. I'd stick with a big name PC and ALWAYS get the extended warranty. I would not go with a MAC simply because they are more expensive to work on if need be.. but if cost is no issue then a MAC is s great laptop especially since the screens are calibrated. If you want to go with a MAC you have to think about compatibility with what you are already using, other wise be prepaired to spend more money.

If you just want the laptop to check the quality of the photos before saving.. then you are wasting your time.. get a large memory card and shoot shoot shoot and shoot.. check your images later and toss the ones that did not come out. If you cant seem to get your photos like you want them, then you just need more practice at taking photos.


I could go on and on and on about the subject of what computer system is better and how to manage photos and data and things people probably never think of. Bottom line is.. what works for me will not work for everyone, because people are ignorant when it comes to technology. in fact.. I just recovered all the photos from an external hard drive from a photographer (including our engagement photos), because she did things different. She has now changed the way she does things, but a lot of people are stuck in their ways and will not change unless something catestrophic happens to them to make them change.

Think hard about what you want and ask yourself more questions.. If you have more questions feel free to ask.

..now to go read all the replies to this post.. yay!

 

[jakedoza]

Look, this is all very silly.

Having anyone cite their specific anecdotal evidence of why MACS RULE, PCS DROOL! or vise versa is pointless. For every single person out there that claims that their Mac never fails, I can find you a person who can claim that their PC never fails, and vise versa. For every single person that claims that their PC is the cheapest and most efficient in the office, I can find you one that claims their Mac is as well.

I've seen 30+ IT environments in my 15ish years of running IT organizations. I've supported IBM AS400s, Dells, Gateways, HPs, Macintoshes (from IIcxes on up)... UNIX of nearly every flavor, Windows of nearly every variety, MacOS, DOS... servers, desktops, peripherals... you name it... yes, even Amigas and oddball things like NeXT stations. I have seriously supported a LOT of hardware and software in my time.

There is one simple and undeniable fact: They all suck when used improperly, and they all work great when used the way they should be. This has as much to do with proper management as it does with proper selection of the tool to fit the job, and in truth has VERY little to do with how overall awesome any given choice is.

Hell, I know people (yes, I seriously do) who very happily use their Coleco Adam to do ALL of their work and think that us people on modern day PCs are completely off their fuggin' rocker. Seriously, see this.

So please, everyone stop before I have to tear my eyes out. If you don't I'm gonna go out and start googling for ancient threads that literally boil down to...

AMIGA RULZ! MAC DROOLZ!
NO, AMIGA SUCKS! MAC RULZ!
(repeat 1000x)

...and start posting them in this thread.

+10

good answer...
BTW.. everyone who said "buy a mac because they are better and don't get viruses"
stick the MAC where the sun don't shine and learn how to use a computer..
In the past 10 years I have NEVER contracted a computer virus on my PC.. If you watch what emails you open and stay off the porno sites and other illegitimate sites you will not have that problem.
Don't get me wrong.. I'd buy a MAC, they are great computers.. but that is a LAME reason to buy a MAC..
But then again.. they are made for the technically challenged to run them... Do people that own MACs use AOL???