Need your advice please

[flora1]

I am a new art history PhD student and will be working with hundreds of images over the next few years. I am about to buy a new laptop and am trying to decide whether to buy a Mac or PC (having used a PC for many years) and what post-production software to buy. Mainly what I need to do is compare images (several onsreen at the same time), paste them into word documents and crop them. I will not usually need to enhance them in any way.

Please can you advise me on the simplest/most cost effective options? Several people have suggested buying a Mac, but I want to be sure that the extra cost is justified for my limited requirements (as well as the time I'll have to invest in learning a new system.) Would it be spend the money on a PC with more processing power and and a separate large plug in screen to use at home?
Thanks!

[tuxcomputers]

Yes, do that.

[oldwolf]

Buy a PC laptop and get a monitor for home use. There are plenty of free programs out there that will let you do basic adjustments and cropping. GIMP and Picasa are two off the top of my head. If you want to spend money then Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop Elements are two good programs.

The Mac isn't a bad option but you'll have to learn something new as well as spend more money on it.

Just my two cents.