best laptop for view/editing photographs

hoganpoly

looking for a decent laptop to view/edit photographs like the look of the macbook pro but little bit pricey are there any ones anyone can recommend thx budget around 800, had a netbook atom processer but found it ok for surfing but terrible for photo editing:)

richardbradley

Really depends on a few things:
How big are your photographs - large Jpeg or RAW?
Do you do any batch processing?
Which photo editing software do you want to use?
What are your future requirements - video editing etc?

Then what you want ranges from a €450 laptop to a €1k one. Macbook grand if you want the apple operating system but if you want bang for buck pc still best. If you only shoot jpeg and never want video - €500 is all you need spend.

Would go for minimum of dual core processor, 4gb RAM and 512MB graphics card

Definitely order from UK - haven't yet found an irish site that can compete with ebuyer.co.uk or even amazon. A well built high spec for the money can be had from www.meshcomputers.com - they do deliver to Irl but not sure how much - i had mine delivered to uk address with extra 3 yr warranty for €49.

good luck

melekalikimaka

dont think a 512 gfx is really needed, 256 would be plenty. just lots of ram, and minimum duel core, ignore atom

magicbastarder

the graphics card would do very little processing, so would make little difference to photoshop. the photo sits in RAM, not in video RAM.

Paulw

With 4gb of ram, you want a 64-bit OS.

I've just ordered myself a new laptop for processing photos on site. I went for extras too -

Intel® Core i7 Processor 720QM (1.60Ghz, 6MB cache)
4096MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x2048]
1GB ATI® Radeon HD 4670 graphics card
500GB (7,200rpm) Free Fall Sensor Hard Drive
Internal Blu-Ray ROM (Blu-Ray read, DVD and CD read & Write) Optical Drive
16" (inch) Truelife 1080p Full HD RGBLED Edge to Edge Display

Windows® 7 Professional, 64bit, English

aido182

Without wanting to hijack this thread or take it off topic, Im in a similar position to OP. I spotted this today and wondered how the spec would stack up...

http://www.aldi.ie/ie/html/offers/2827_11844.htm

Chorcai

Most people tend to forget about the motherboard. go here http://www.komplett.ie/k/k.aspx buy the parts and make it yourself.

1 you will learn how to
2 if something goes wrong you can fix it
3 its alot easier than it sounds or looks
4 better parts
5 there is no 5.

Ricky91t

Paulw wrote: »

With 4gb of ram, you want a 64-bit OS.

I've just ordered myself a new laptop for processing photos on site. I went for extras too -

Intel® Core i7 Processor 720QM (1.60Ghz, 6MB cache)
4096MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x2048]
1GB ATI® Radeon HD 4670 graphics card
500GB (7,200rpm) Free Fall Sensor Hard Drive
Internal Blu-Ray ROM (Blu-Ray read, DVD and CD read & Write) Optical Drive
16" (inch) Truelife 1080p Full HD RGBLED Edge to Edge Display

Windows® 7 Professional, 64bit, English

That's not entirely true..A 32bit OS Can "see" about 3.5gb or 3.6gb of ram and it means you'll have less driver issues.(I've had a few)

Also after testing a 32bit OS(Win 7 Pro) and a 64bit OS(Win 7 pro),I certainly noticed the 64bit OS to be a bit slower..I know that could be sorted by upgrading the ram but any DDR3 machine nowadays with probably have 2x2gb meaning you'd have to buy a 4gb stick,Which isn't cheap..

For a machine for editing photos a 32bit OS and 4GB of ram is fine.

Here's some cons of a 64bit OS
Existing 32 bit drivers no longer work.If you have older or poorly supported hardware you may find that it can no longer be used. Got a 7 year old scanner that just about works in Vista? You may not be able to get it working in 64 bit Windows 7

Running some 32 bit applications on a 64 bit OS could actually be slower. The additional overheads in running 32 bit software in 64 bit mode could cause a slight degradation in performance. It will take some time for 64 bit software to become the norm.

hoganpoly

Paulw wrote: »

With 4gb of ram, you want a 64-bit OS.

I've just ordered myself a new laptop for processing photos on site. I went for extras too -

Intel® Core i7 Processor 720QM (1.60Ghz, 6MB cache)
4096MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x2048]
1GB ATI® Radeon HD 4670 graphics card
500GB (7,200rpm) Free Fall Sensor Hard Drive
Internal Blu-Ray ROM (Blu-Ray read, DVD and CD read & Write) Optical Drive
16" (inch) Truelife 1080p Full HD RGBLED Edge to Edge Display

Windows® 7 Professional, 64bit, English

thx paul,what sort of money your new laptop going to cost you may i ask:)

Chorcai

Ricky91t wrote: »

I know that could be sorted by upgrading the ram but any DDR3 machine nowadays with probably have 2x2gb meaning you'd have to buy a 4gb stick,Which isn't cheap..

RAM has come down in price alot, 6 gig of DDR3 around €150.
http://www.memoryc.com/computermemory/ddr3ram.html

Ricky91t

Chorcai wrote: »

RAM has come down in price alot, 6 gig of DDR3 around €150.
http://www.memoryc.com/computermemory/ddr3ram.html

That's ram for a PC though?

Laptop ram always seems to be more pricey.

stcstc

i just bought 4 gig of ram for my macbook pro and it was 80 + vat for 2 2Gb sodimms

MackDeToaster

Paulw wrote: »

With 4gb of ram, you want a 64-bit OS.

I've just ordered myself a new laptop for processing photos on site. I went for extras too -

Intel® Core i7 Processor 720QM (1.60Ghz, 6MB cache)
4096MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x2048]
1GB ATI® Radeon HD 4670 graphics card
500GB (7,200rpm) Free Fall Sensor Hard Drive
Internal Blu-Ray ROM (Blu-Ray read, DVD and CD read & Write) Optical Drive
16" (inch) Truelife 1080p Full HD RGBLED Edge to Edge Display

Windows® 7 Professional, 64bit, English

Just wondering what model this is and where you're getting it from ? I've been after similar since before Christmas and have found it basically impossible to source anything, going crackers with frustration !

DK32

MackDeToaster wrote: »

Just wondering what model this is and where you're getting it from ? I've been after similar since before Christmas and have found it basically impossible to source anything, going crackers with frustration !

Look like Dell specs to me.

Paulw

MackDeToaster wrote: »

Just wondering what model this is and where you're getting it from ? I've been after similar since before Christmas and have found it basically impossible to source anything, going crackers with frustration !

Dell Studio XPS 16. Cost (for all the added extras I got) was €1,650.

Mec-a-nic

magicbastarder wrote: »

the graphics card would do very little processing, so would make little difference to photoshop. the photo sits in RAM, not in video RAM.

No longer correct, Photoshop CS4 uses the GPU to zoom/rotate the displayed image, see here, and it really speeds up the redrawing of the screen image.

democrates

Mec-a-nic wrote: »

No longer correct, Photoshop CS4 uses the GPU to zoom/rotate the displayed image, see here, and it really speeds up the redrawing of the screen image.

Thing to watch if that feature is priority is that the gpu is supported and has enough of it's own ram. It's easy to get wrong-footed by the specs, some cards use 'shared memory' which as I understand it is just your motherboard ram.

Is this right: most operations that tend to hog resources in pp and slow you down are not outsourced to OpenGL but are processsed by the cpu from main ram, so unless you're into gaming the graphics card just needs to drive your monitor?

kumate_champ07

The Apple Ipad will be perfect for that, in another year after a harder revision or 2 and adobe/apple photo software

the macbook pro would be the best choice right now, its sd card slot has very fast transfer speeds
apple have the best lcd panels, not sure if a matte screen has been made an option for the 15 inch yet.
the new 15 inch supports 8gb which is overkill for most peoples uses. Ive had no problems with editing 100mb image files with 4gb

cnocbui

kumate_champ07 wrote: »

The Apple Ipad will be perfect for that, in another year after a harder revision or 2 and adobe/apple photo software

I don't quite follow your reasoning. The iPad is principally a media display unit with almost no processing power to speak of. Adobe and Apple are butting heads over Flash at the moment so I wouldn't hold my breath for Adobe software on the iPad.

kumate_champ07

cnocbui wrote: »

I don't quite follow your reasoning. The iPad is principally a media display unit with almost no processing power to speak of. Adobe and Apple are butting heads over Flash at the moment so I wouldn't hold my breath for Adobe software on the iPad.

It actually has a very efficient CPU

And yes not at the moment but in about a year from now

cnocbui

kumate_champ07 wrote: »

It actually has a very efficient CPU

And yes not at the moment but in about a year from now

It is power efficient, not powerful. The iPad will not be running Photoshop, or an equivalent, a year from now.

DK32

I use PS on the iPhone. The software itself has some nice features but not anywhere neal the scale of using it on a PC or Mac. The biggest let down is the camera of course