Laptop Help

[creative_one]

Hi Ya'll,

Yesterday my laptop computer had seen its last day!
What brands should i stay away from? Which brands are really good?.?.
Im gonna mainly use it for photography as well as website building.

Thanks in Advance!

[LeeR]

I don't know that brand makes all that much difference, though I have heard techs that couldn't stand Gateway and I personally feel that the Dell machines are overpriced. What you should be looking at are the technical specs, irregardless of brand. You want as much processing power as you can get, so one of the quad core machines would be nice; Intel Core i5, minimum. You also want plenty of RAM, 4 Gigs, minimum. You also want a big tank to hold all your images; 500 Gigs minimum. Finally, a great graphic card can make a big difference. Something like the Nvidia Ge Force would be nice. In other words, you are looking for something similar to what the gamers want but with bigger memory requirements. You should be able to get just such a machine for about $1,000. Sony, HP, Lenovo and Asus all make machines in this price range.

[creative_one]

Originally Posted by LeeR

I don't know that brand makes all that much difference, though I have heard techs that couldn't stand Gateway and I personally feel that the Dell machines are overpriced. What you should be looking at are the technical specs, irregardless of brand. You want as much processing power as you can get, so one of the quad core machines would be nice; Intel Core i5, minimum. You also want plenty of RAM, 4 Gigs, minimum. You also want a big tank to hold all your images; 500 Gigs minimum. Finally, a great graphic card can make a big difference. Something like the Nvidia Ge Force would be nice. In other words, you are looking for something similar to what the gamers want but with bigger memory requirements. You should be able to get just such a machine for about $1,000. Sony, HP, Lenovo and Asus all make machines in this price range.

What do u think about this one ?:

Dell - Studio XPS Laptop with Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor - Obsidian Black - X1340-3006OBL

[tinton14]

That Dell Studio XPS is a little dated, you are looking at the Core 2 Duo with it, it would be better to get the i5 like LeeR mentioned. 4gb RAM is alright depending on what price you are willing to pay for it. I'm not sure about the hard drive space you want though, it really depends if you just want it all on your computer or do you store them on external hard drives. I'm not sure if this model you are looking at is the same as some things I've heard, but a while back I heard that there were people complaining about the XPS overheating, not sure if that was fixed or not. There isn't any clear great brands I think, mostly looking at the specs of it I would say go for the best specs you can afford, however here "http://gizmodo.com/5406415/laptop-reliability-study-asus-and-toshiba-come-out-on-top" is something I've read before. Do take into consideration that statistics aren't always showing things fairly. I would say that Lenovo should be pretty good. I personally use Dell, but using the business line instead of the consumer ones, the inspiron I had was crap and the precision I own now is a bit more solid, their warranty for business line is also better. Look for dedicated graphic cards, 4gb ram ( even better if they are DDR3). I wouldn't suggest going bestbuy for these, manufacture sites gives you a better range to choose from, same for all brands. Also, notebookreview.com has reviews for lots of selection as well as user feedback for them. Hope this helps.

[mattdm]

Lenovo laptops are very solid — unsexy, but serious workhorses. I've got one and like it, except that its "premium" screen is terrible for photography. Way, way too high contrast.

Sooo, for photography, I pretty much have to recommend Apple. Other brands may have a nice screen on some models (Acer, say), but Apple seems to care about it consistently. Maybe Sony comes close — they're also style-obsessed, which somewhat ironically actually counts for something here.

After the display, I think RAM is clearly the most important. A fast graphics card will help somewhat (particularly if you use GPU-accelerated software) but should be secondary to RAM. And in this day and age, CPU should be your last concern — it's all good enough.

I'd also consider a different line of thought about the hard drive than what LeeR suggests. Basically, you want to get the smallest and fastest hard drive you can get, presuming at least 20GB. (And you won't be able to get one that small.) Get Intel (but not other brands; only Intel is decent right now) SSD if you can afford it. This will save power and make things faster — for many tasks, more so than a fast graphics card or CPU.

Then, take it for granted that your laptop drive will die, or maybe the whole thing will, or maybe it'll be stolen. Don't keep anything valuable on it. Think of the disk on your laptop as temporary working space, and copy everything to a stay-at-home drive (which then also gets backed up) as soon as possible.

[Henry Wilt]

I bought my daughter a Samsung a short while ago (with the proviso that I could use it occasionally ) and I am very impressed. I have run Lightroom on it and it just flies and the screen is surprisingly good too. Sorry I can't remember the model number but it isn't even the top of the range.

[inkista]

Originally Posted by mattdm

Then, take it for granted that your laptop drive will die, or maybe the whole thing will, or maybe it'll be stolen. Don't keep anything valuable on it. Think of the disk on your laptop as temporary working space, and copy everything to a stay-at-home drive (which then also gets backed up) as soon as possible.

As an alternative to not keeping anything valuable on it, you could also use FileVault or TrueCrypt to encrypt important files. And for theft-prevention/recovery you could also load Undercover or LoJack.

But yeah, laptops being more vulnerable to going walkabout and being smashed, you definitely need a good backup/recovery scheme.

[creative_one]

That Dell Studio XPS is a little dated, you are looking at the Core 2 Duo with it, it would be better to get the i5 like LeeR mentioned.

Tinton14,
I though that it was higher then i5??? or is it the other way around that i5 is higher than the Core 2 Duo???

[tinton14]

Core 2 Duo is older than the i5. There isn't anything wrong with the Core 2 Duo, I'm using one myself, but I personally don't see why one should buy a computer with a older processor if you plan to use it for quite some time and can afford it. There are many computers with i5 priced similar that there is no need to go for the Core 2 Duo, thats my own opinion though, someone may disagree.