Laptop

[peterhone]

Hi,
I am looking for a decent laptop to carryout some photoshop work alongside other stuff, so does anyone know a fast,reliable laptop? Nothing extortionate in price, but willing to pay for better quality...
Thanks in advance

[OsmosisStudios]

That's possibly the vaguest request for a laptop recommendation I've ever heard.

I want power but a low price. GO.

[Photologyst]

Got a budget in mind?

As a Mac person, I always recommend used/refurbished MacBook Pros for the budget minded.

Used Macs and Used Apple Notebooks: Reconditioned MacBook Pros, PowerBooks, Mac Books, And iBooks - Mac Of All Trades

[Niresangwa]

I picked up this one a few weeks ago...

...couldn't be happier with it.

It's a gaming rig by design so handles graphics and the associated processor load and heat very well. I've found Windows 7 to be wonderful to use, and am almost always running CS5, LR3, iTunes, some sort of MS Office app and a browser concurrently and it's lightning fast.

Solid, sleek, very powerful. Only issue would be portability but in the end it's a laptop and not THAT big... given I don't cart it around (have a little inspiron for that) this wasn't a problem for me. Desktop power that sits on your lap.

[knixpix]

Not surprised you find it good to use, with the latest I7 processor in it and 6gb memory, its basically a gaming laptop so it ought to be good with that kinda spec!

[Mike Burnett]

First, you need to figure out how much money you are willing to spend; an extortionate amount to one person may be peanuts to another, so figure out what YOUR budget is.

After you have a budget, sit down and write a list of all the things you are going to use your laptop for ie. web browsing, gaming, photo editing etc., and rank them from highest to lowest priority/usage. Is this going to be your primary computer, or will you have a "powerhouse" of a desktop to complement it? You may also want to include some physical requirements, for example, overall size and weight for portability/ergonomics. When you have this list, you can start deciding which features you can afford, and which you'll need to comprimise to fit your budget (or if you're lucky, you'll get everything you need/want).

Without more specific info, it's hard to give you a reccommendation for any one product, but like Photologyst said, refurbished macbook pros are a great value.

Hope this helps.

[peterhone]

Budget not really an issue to be honest....
Apologies for vague description....
I have seen these Alienware laptops, but I think maybe aimed at gaming more than photography....although the link from Niresangwa looks good and reasonably priced?
I also thought Mac as you can use windows alongside Mac eh?
Thanks

[milosh]

If you're gonna use it for photo editing and you're not into games, then that's probably the most resource demanding task you're gonna use it for. I think you'd be good with any dual or four cores processor with 2.2 GHz and more (preferably one of the new Intel's I3 or I5 or I7),
preferably 4 GB of RAM (and if it's upgradeable then even better), HDD size to your preference, a dedicated video card with at least 512MB of video RAM and a decent display. You have to check the display for resolution, colours, glare, etc. by yourself.

[knixpix]

Alienware are pretty but I dont rate them tbh. The one that the link is shown is actually a really good spec, it has the latest i7 processor in it 6gb ram for your memory, a really healthy hardrive. LED backilit so it wont be too heavy on battery consumption, if you look at the spec you can see its a pretty good machine and tbh I converted the price and thats a good price for the spec, you'd expect to pay about £300-£400 more over here for a spec like that.

[Photologyst]

Wow! No budget, Peter? That’s great.

Yes, you can use Windows on a Mac, but why would you want to? The Mac OS is so much better. Virtually all Windows programs also are made for Macs. Most graphics and photo software runs native on a Mac. Unless you are a big gamer, you won’t miss out on a thing with a Mac and you will have a top of the line machine.

I always recommend that people go look, feel and test drive any computer in which they are interested.