Which laptop?

[mommy-medic]

Have two ancient desktops that have both been recovered from various crashes and have minimal programs on them. I don't trust their stability enough to add anything to them.

I did all my editing on my laptop and cs3 extended.... Saved all my pics (thankfully) to an external hard drive. My laptop took a huge nosedive (figuratively) and will no longer even boot up. I took it in and four different techs couldn't fix it. I probably *could* find someone somewhere to take a look at it, but at this point it's not worth more $. (it's 5 years old this month and was only around $400 to start with. It held up well for all I did on it).

That leads me to my question: out of frustration at having no photoshop, I downloaded a trial of Lightroom to play with. I'm wanting to replace my laptop and would ideally like to consider a Mac, but open to suggestions. I know I can get a student version of ps cs5 for $199, is there a student version of Lightroom too?

And finally the biggie- what do I look for in a laptop that can handle tons of pics and all the software? I'm not worried about movies or video or music or gaming- just pics. Anyone have any input or suggestions? I don't have a specific budget right now (lol, I'm broke), but what would $1200 get me? Probably not a Mac, but what else should I look at?

Thanks for steering me the right direction. RIP ol Lenovo.

 

[marmots]

if you really wanted you could get this mac
but otherwise i would recommend doing a custom pc

if you want help with that pm me

 

[MLeeK]

MackBook Pro if it must be a laptop.

Laptops are not ideal for editing and photo use for many reasons. You will find that a LOT of them just aren't able to adequately handle the heavy load that photoshop puts on them. I have a phenomenal laptop with a ton of ram, hellacious specs and every time I try to run photoshop on it? I fry another hard drive. It just can't handle it.
You want to look to the better made laptops at the very least. Toshiba, Dell, Gateway.
The monitor on a laptop is possible to calibrate, but any slight movement changes what you are seeing on the screen. If you must use a laptop you are best to attach an external monitor to it. Cheaper laptops are very hard to properly calibrate and get your images to come back looking the same as they do on your computer. They just aren't made for it.
64 bit Operating system allows PS to access more than 4G of ram
6-8G of ram.
Heavy duty power supply
External monitor port
The main hard drive doesn't have to be giant as you shouldn't be storing ANYTHING on your working hard drive. That should be your operating system and programs only. A second hard drive for storage and if you can a partition on it for a scratch disc will help if you are using PS HEAVILY. Windows Vista and newer allow you to use a jump drive/usb thumb drive as a scratch disc and it helps.
EXCELLENT cooling system.

 

[mommy-medic]

*gulp*

I only had my ps installed on my laptop and used it exclusively for, well however long ago cs3 came out. Would that be the reason it finally crapped out on me? (well, I was also admittedly lax in the update/clean out dept.) it held up well for a long time.

What about just getting a new tower? (I still need a new laptop ASAP for school though).

 

[clanthar]

Laptop displays (ALL OF THEM with VERY rare exception) are TN technology displays. This is really great if you want to use the least amount of power (saves batteries!!!) and really bad if you want to edit photos.

Yes, laptop displays can be calibrated and that does help. Imagine a piano. A piano has 88 keys. Tuning a piano is like calibrating a display. A good piano well tuned will play beautiful music. Now imagine a piano with 30 of the 88 keys broken. You can still tune that piano -- enjoy the music.

If you edit photos on a laptop display you aren't seeing your photo. The display, calibrated or not, can't show you your photo. It isn't physically capable. 30 out of 88 keys just aren't there. Nothing can make them be there. You can tune the piano but you can't tune the 30 missing keys.

I have a laptop. I use it for work and it comes in handy. It's a high-end "multi-media" Toshiba. I went through the trouble of calibrating the display. For serious photo editing it's completely unusable. I used to have a Mac book Pro. It was equally unusable for photo editing.

Photography is a visual discipline. You have to SEE WHAT YOU"RE DOING. If there's a color in your photograph and the display on your laptop can't physically reproduce that color, how can you judge what you aren't seeing? If you've got a good answer to that question, buy a laptop for photo editing.

Joe

 

[mommy-medic]

Joe- thank you so much for your input!!!! I think you just gave me a serious "aha" moment. I like your analogy (and ironically enough I inherited my great grandmothers piano many moons ago. With two broken keys, lol.)

Can I ask for suggestions for a good desktop then or should I start a new tread?

 

[usayit]

You can always get a laptop AND an external monitor AND a calibrator.

* Keep the external monitor in a single location with non-changing light conditions and calibrated. Bring your laptop to it for the final edit.
* Give preference to maxing out memory configuration over raw CPU power. Most photo-editing is memory bound.

There are a couple Microcenters in greater atlanta (according microcenter.com). I've found them to have prices on new mac that are slightly lower than the Apple Store. They also sell clearance items of last years models (which is what I go for). Clearance items are listed on their website after your set the store location. I recently bought a 27 inch iMac i5 4 core 2.8Ghz from their NJ branch brand new still in box for $1200+ change. The same model goes for $1400+ REFURBISHED on store.apple.com.

 

[Jethro]

What you're looking for in laptop (though I would preffer getting a PC for the editing for several reasons) to handle the load of RAWs and editing are these things:

For startes you need a good screen resolution and ideally a big screen
then you need a big RAM (4GB at least if you will be running on Win7)
nice processor - since we have i7 now I would buy at least an i5
fast HDD would be also nice (one with 7200 rotational speed)

Basically I would say that a gaming laptop should do the job as working with PS and running some new games are pretty close in their requirements.

 

[shootermcgavin]

I would say get a cheap laptop 200-300 for school and a desktop for pictures. I have a really good Asus laptop and desktop, and my laptop is so so bad for image quality it can keep up with everything just find but the monitor has weird effects it throws into it. I think you could find a really good desktop for around $600 and throw a $200 graphics card in it to make it solid. Putting a new graphics card in a computer is like putting a light bulb in very easy don't be scared of doing it. If you buy a computer with everything I think you're paying too much, either build it or buy a decent one and give it a kick. I'm not a mac guy only because certain programs won't work on them, but everyone that has them seems to love them and you may never need to use one of those programs they don't support.

 

[clanthar]

Joe- thank you so much for your input!!!! I think you just gave me a serious "aha" moment. I like your analogy (and ironically enough I inherited my great grandmothers piano many moons ago. With two broken keys, lol.)

Can I ask for suggestions for a good desktop then or should I start a new tread?

Usayit gave you your answer. I heartily second shopping at Microcenter -- they're the best. You don't need to buy a MAC unless that's what you're used to and you're happy paying the hefty premium. If you are going to edit photos seriously you've got to pay attention to that visual point of interface; don't skimp on the display. Apple's desktop displays are very good but again with the hefty premium (Apple doesn't make them -- LG does). Bang for buck: Asus pro-art displays. Still pricey I know so if that's still too much look at one of the better LG or Samsung displays.

Joe

Joe

 

[mommy-medic]

Thank you everyone for your feedback. I really appreciate it and want to make sure (when I can finally afford it) I make the right purchase that will serve me for years to come.