[Bad Juju]

And using photoshop. My old laptop is no more. I can go up to a £1000. I'd rather not go for a mac. I need a great screen, 15" and excellent graphics capability. Quite liked the look of the Samsung series 9 but no optical drive... suppose i could get an external drive. I want something powerful and good quality. Any advice would be gratefully received. Ta

[TheBigM]

You likely want something with a capacious hard drive (which rules out SSD as your main drive), you're going to want a main screen and you'll want displayport so you can hook it up to a professional colour-accurate monitor.

Plus I guess with card slots and usb for your mouse and wacom pad.

For a £1,000 you say - I think the powerful thin 'n lights are not in your budget (Sony vaio z type of laptop).

Asus may be up your alley but I don't know the screen quality (though the resolutions are good).

[mred2000]

Not really sure there 'is' a 'best'... The main things for Photoshop, though, are memory, processor, hard-drive, GPU... Very possibly in that order. Memory helps you handle big files, processor the speed of filters, image rendering etc, hard-drive the amount you can actually store plus your scratch disc aaand then GPU... well, sure, more processes are done on GPUs nowadays but I'm not 100% sure how much PShop actually takes advantage of them.
So, screen and GPU are cosmetic to a certain degree, the grunt work of photo editing is all memory and processor.

[Bad Juju]

I should have mentioned I'm not techy. Thank you kindly. Unfortunately all written above could be in greek, it means much the same ( can't speak greek ). I was hoping to get a machine recommendation rather than techy. What's a GPU?

If anyone could recommend some actual machines that can do all the stuff suggested above i'd be eternally grateful. I can bump over a grand if necessary.

[whoever,hey]

Will you buy online or do you want a high st shop? How about John Lewis if you dont want online?

I'm asking so we dont go posting online links if you wanted a high st shop

[barky99]

don't need to spend £1000
possibles might include http://www.medion.com/gb/electronics...ry=notebook_15
1920x1080 hi res screen stands out, unusual on a 15/15.6 laptop ... was what I searched for when thinking about graphics work
and £300 under budget
spec should handle big psd/raw files with ease

[whoever,hey]

Originally Posted by barky99

don't need to spend £1000
possibles might include http://www.medion.com/gb/electronics...ry=notebook_15
1920x1080 hi res screen stands out, unusual on a 15/15.6 laptop ... was what I searched for when thinking about graphics work
and £300 under budget
spec should handle big psd/raw files with ease

500GB hard disk, 4GB RAM

is too low.

[fracal]

http://www.medion.com/gb/electronics...2-9361b56b58e8

[Bad Juju]

Originally Posted by whoever,hey

Will you buy online or do you want a high st shop? How about John Lewis if you dont want online?

I'm asking so we dont go posting online links if you wanted a high st shop

I'll probably finish up buying online but ideally would like yo see any machine first. Hard really. No John Lewis here and the local pc world has bugger all in laptops. I would like a nice looking machine too.

[Bad Juju]

Originally Posted by fracal

http://www.medion.com/gb/electronics...2-9361b56b58e8

Looks nice. Never heard of Medion.

[zx50]

Originally Posted by whoever,hey

is too low.

500GBs is too low for even 15MB images? Or are you talking about the RAM?

[mred2000]

Originally Posted by whoever,hey

is too low.

For what? It would do a job.

[whoever,hey]

Originally Posted by mred2000

For what? It would do a job.

4GB is quite low now a days, its pretty cheap stuff. Especially for editing photos.

The last laptop i bought for about £700 had 6GB and 750GB HD about a year ago.

[mincepie]

You really want one WITHOUT a glossy screen!
Having bought a laptop for photography, all I could find was business latptops - Lenovo Thinkpad or the HP Probook/Elitebook range. These have matt screens - to me this would be the no 1 thing when buying a laptop for photo editing.

Or if you're not planning to travel add an external monitor instead, look for one with "IPS" technology - this will give you more accurate colours (as wider viewing angles). Something like this:
http://www.pcbuyit.co.uk/dell-ultras...or-p-1648.html

Oh and buy an external hard drive for backup!

[mincepie]

Originally Posted by whoever,hey

4GB is quite low now a days, its pretty cheap stuff. Especially for editing photos.

The last laptop i bought for about £700 had 6GB and 750GB HD about a year ago.

Agreed, especially as it's cheap and if you deal with large images or panoramic stuff it will eat up RAM. Min 8gig. Make sure you go with Windws 7 64bit version (not 32bit - older tech that can't use lots of RAM)

[Bad Juju]

How about the Dell XPS 15?

[barky99]

Originally Posted by Bad Juju

Looks nice. Never heard of Medion.

never heard of them! well they are a well thought of german electronics maker & (computer division at least?) now owned by Lenovo

[mred2000]

Originally Posted by mincepie

Agreed, especially as it's cheap and if you deal with large images or panoramic stuff it will eat up RAM. Min 8gig. Make sure you go with Windws 7 64bit version (not 32bit - older tech that can't use lots of RAM)

I agree that you should get as much ram as you can afford but the last, and only, time I ever ran out of memory on an image was in 2000, and that was because I was working to A1 @ 300dpi and it involved collaging other images plus text with effects attached to the layers. That was a 128mb machine and I upgraded it to 196mb, or something silly like that, and it got me around the issue. If I'd known how to use Photoshop then as I do now I probably wouldn't have had the issue.

I've taught people who work on international magazines, doing heavy editing of cover images etc, who only have 4gig machines. From a 3D side, I suggested they upgrade to 64bit machines, 8gig+ ram etc but, still, they were fine with their 4gig on a day-to-day basis.

[Bad Juju]

Dell XPS 15 any good? Reviews look good and soubds like it's got a great screen. V. Powerful by the looks.

[MartinPickering]

Originally Posted by Bad Juju

I'd rather not go for a mac

That's a shame.

Originally Posted by Bad Juju

I should have mentioned I'm not techy.

Oh, dear, are you certain you don't want a Mac?
Do you want good reliability?

[Bad Juju]

Originally Posted by MartinPickering

That's a shame.

Oh, dear, are you certain you don't want a Mac?
Do you want good reliability?

I was going to go for a Mac but this crap with patents and lawsuits has completely put me off. They're expensive, expensive to repair and according to a friend of mine , vefy expensive to repair and difficult to get the expensive bits. I have a smart phone not an iphone and i hate the way apple lock consumers in to their software and apps. I don't like the company. Nice machines but VERY overpriced IMO.

I'm thinking either samsung series 9 or the afore mentioned Dell.

[Maxatoria]

Originally Posted by MartinPickering

That's a shame.

Oh, dear, are you certain you don't want a Mac?
Do you want good reliability?

Probably the mac wont come with the necessary cracks to make photoshop work as its amazing how many machines i see with cracked photoshop as for some reason people see it as a badge of honour to be able to fire up photoshop

[alan1302]

Originally Posted by Bad Juju

I was going to go for a Mac but this crap with patents and lawsuits has completely put me off. They're expensive, expensive to repair and according to a friend of mine , vefy expensive to repair and difficult to get the expensive bits. I have a smart phone not an iphone and i hate the way apple lock consumers in to their software and apps. I don't like the company. Nice machines but VERY overpriced IMO.

I'm thinking either samsung series 9 or the afore mentioned Dell.

Apple Macs have always been more expensive and locked in well before any patent battles etc started.

[Bad Juju]

Originally Posted by alan1302

Apple Macs have always been more expensive and locked in well before any patent battles etc started.

Yep. And I don't like the company for that. This latest thing hasn't helped.

[Stilian]

I see you prefer a 15-inch laptop but if you want to work fine with multimedia (images, video, etc.) I would recommend a slightly bigger laptop. In case you don't have problems carrying around one like this Lenovo http://forconsumers.blogspot.co.uk/2...novo-g770.html with these good specs it will manage your photography tasks with ease and you will save on the budget a little : )