Laptop for photo editing?

On my last dive trip I REALLY wished that my laptop was capable of running photoshop/lightroom (at a decent speed).

So, I am thinking about the Alienware (Dell) M11x with the i7 ( www1.ap.dell.com/tw/zh/home/Lapt … dhs1&s=dhs ).

Anyone have an opinion on this, or recommendations for any other multimedia capable laptops ?

I don’t know what’s behind the Alienware line, so maybe they’ve addressed all the relevant issues, but these days I wouldn’t touch Dell (with anything but a hammer).

Looking more and more now, agggh…it’s confusing :s

On holiday I use my laptop to view photos I have taken, adjust wb and exposure, a bit of sharpening and that’s it.
It would be nice if it could also handle the TOPAZ plug-ins, and Photomatix Pro 3.

Battery life is NOT important ( I have my little Acer 10# netbook for wifi and watching movies on the plane.)
The multimedia laptop would be plugged in all the time. Ideally it would be a smaller screen (11" or 12"), but something that displays color well.

In a PM it was suggested I look at the HP Pavilion DV3-4038TX ( shopping.pchome.com.tw/?mod=item … 3&ROWNO=10 )

and there’s more: shopping.pchome.com.tw/?mod=stor … _NO=DHAQ13

For the same price as the Dell above, you could get one of the new 13" Macbook Pro’s. Getting Lightroom in Taiwan is a little difficult but can be done.

I’ve already discarded the idea of getting a Del, not sure if I am ready for a Macbook…more reading required.

I’ve never bought an Apple product, although I am well aware there are many fan sites dedicated to comparing Macs to Windows based products :slight_smile:

My (limited understanding) is that for Photoshop I should not concern myself with the graphics card, but instead need to look for a fast processor (the i7 is that), lots of RAM.

There is also some other stuff I should look for (but do not understand) and that is: 2-4MB/L3 Cache and a high Front-Side Buss (???).

I think the HP pavilion ( shopping.pchome.com.tw/?mod=item … A%E6%98%8E ) has all that, just need to check about the RAM upgrade.:

處理器:Intel Core i7-720QM processor(1.6 GHz, up to 2.8 GHz) 1333MHz/6MB L3
» 螢幕尺寸:13.3" HD panel (1366x768)
» 記憶體:2G DDR3 1066MHz
» 硬碟機:500GB (7200rpm) SATA
» 顯示卡:ATI Mobility HD 5450 512MB
» 網路:802.11 b/g/n,藍芽
» 光碟機:DVD +/-RW 雙層燒錄+光速寫技術
» 其他:指紋辨識、視訊
» 作業系統:無
» 保固:三年保固,30分鐘快修,一年到府收送(比業界2年保固,多1年,市值$3,000)

Just get a MacBook Pro 13. It’s an i7 with 4GB RAM and a fairly badass NVIDIA 320M GPU stock. Set it up to dual boot MacOS and Windows 7 with bootcamp. Now you have a PC and a Mac. Most of the retailers here will do this for you if you ask.

If you need support, there will be more people running the exact same configuration as you (MacOS + Windows 7 bootcamp on exact same MacBook Pro) than any of the PCs, and thus it’s easier to get help from the community.

If your Photoshop license is for Windows, the MacBook still runs Windows better than most “PCs”. If you want to save a few bones, you could get a white MacBook and upgrade it to 4GB, but the price difference is somewhat low.

I never thought I would use MacOS most of the time, but after I booting into MacOS a few times to use the iPhone SDK, I was convinced. I use MacOS most of the time now.

It appears that the 13" has Core 2 Duo CPUs ( apple.com/mac/whichmacbook/compare.html ) for the i7 I’d need to get a 15".

Did not know about the bootcamp option (shows how far behind I am:-), that is definitely a good alternative.

Will do more reading.

oh yes you’re right, forgot they didn’t update the proc on the 13, just the GPU. thanks for the correction. to be honest, you probably won’t notice the difference, the core 2 machine is pretty speedy. the new processors do use less power, however. i use one of the core 2 machines with the older 9400 NVIDIA GPU, and it’s plenty fast. photoshop also supports GPU boost, so it should be faster with the new GPU.

one thing that i like about the macbooks that can’t be replicated on any PC so far is the giant trackpad. first, it lets you do nice multi-touch gestures like four finger swipe for the expose feature of MacOS. second, if you get a Pogo pen, you can use this trackpad in the same manner as a Wacom (ie: draw on it)

Also people, PLEASE understand the difference between the processors.
The HP in question has a quad core processor, while the Apple machines only come with dual core processors, big difference.

Yes, you can upgrade the RAM in the HP up to 8GB, as for whatever reason most notebooks on sale in Taiwan only seem to come with a stingy 2GB of RAM… :loco:

You’d notice a huge difference between a Core 2 Duo and a Core i processor, as the latter are faster, have something called HyperThreading which adds two “virtual” processors that help in things like Photoshop when you’re not using the full processing capability of each of the cores (which is usually most of the time).

Don’t waste your time on older hardware, as I presume you’re going to want something that last a couple of years, right?

Yes, OSX is all nice, but Windows 7 really changed things for the PC and it’s not that much worse these days.

mabagal, FYI, most current PC notebooks have multi-touch as well, it’s no longer a unique feature to Macs. And why in the name of all things would a Mac run Windows “better” than a PC when the new Macs are PCs? What a load of crap from a Mac fanboy. My desktop PC runs MacOS better than an iMac, as I have better hardware… and no, it’s not BS, as you can run OSX on a PC as well if you know what you’re doing. However, I wouldn’t attempt it on a notebook, as that’s just too much hassle.

@jands -ive been using an eepc for most of my travels and as my workbook as well (photoshop, but i store my photos on an external HD.) it runs quite decent to me, with lightroom as well and some plugins hehe. but most of time id wish there’ll be an i7 on a 11 inch monitor. hehe goodluck with the laptop hunting man!

sorry off topic. @mabagal- you filipino? @@

[quote=“TheLostSwede”]Yes, OSX is all nice, but Windows 7 really changed things for the PC and it’s not that much worse these days.

mabagal, FYI, most current PC notebooks have multi-touch as well, it’s no longer a unique feature to Macs. And why in the name of all things would a Mac run Windows “better” than a PC when the new Macs are PCs? What a load of crap from a Mac fanboy. My desktop PC runs MacOS better than an iMac, as I have better hardware… and no, it’s not BS, as you can run OSX on a PC as well if you know what you’re doing. However, I wouldn’t attempt it on a notebook, as that’s just too much hassle.[/quote]

Swede, I don’t know if you know this, but I was at MSFT for six years, so I still do have loyalties. :slight_smile: I was so loyal even after leaving for business school that I actually used a WinMo phone as my main phone until 2009, long after that platform was way past its shelf life. Now it’s common to see people inside MSFT, including my ex-colleagues running iPhones, which is always an interesting conversation. BTW, I also have an Motorola Milestone Android phone sitting around and now an N1 that I use from time to time. So maybe I am a fanboy. But it’s not like I haven’t considered the other options.

Yes, I know every notebook now (even lowly netbooks) have multi-touch, but have you actually used a MacBook for any period of time? Have you tried drawing on one using a capacitive pen? The touch panel is huge. You cannot really do three or four finger gestures on the trackpads offered on other notebooks and these gestures help a lot with quickening workflow. You cannot use the trackpads on other notebooks as a drawing input very well because they are simply too small nor are any of them flat glass, which makes the feel of using a Pogo like drawing on a whiteboard.

The reason I say MacBooks run Windows better than most PCs is people usually have the shop install a vanilla build of Windows and the rest of the stack is built specifically for that machine. The vanilla build means that Windows runs without the crapware that comes with nearly every PC and the limited number of hardware setups means that effort in the drivers, and firmware could be concentrated on that one config. Apple sells 5 models of notebooks whereas Dell, etc sell 10x that many models at a time with far fewer than 10x the resources, often having drivers and BIOS shared across different models. Even without discussing actual results, which one of those approaches is going to make a better stack more often?

My experiences with my last Dell notebook (which I still have and use) was nothing short of a nightmare with constant BIOS updates, driver updates, etc. It got pretty annoying and was definitely NOT worth the $200 less the machine cost than the same spec’ed MacBook Pro. When I thought about it, nearly every experience I’ve had with Dells have been some sort of constant chase of the latest BIOS or drivers until it was time to get another machine a year or so later. I like it the way it’s been going with the MacBooks because it simplifies things for me. Computers should be our slaves, not the other way around.

BTW, yes I have also Hackintoshed and dual-booted that Dell notebook, a 2009-build Studio XPS 13 which is basically the same specs from processor to bus to RAM to harddrive as the 13" MacBook Pro from before the recent GPU update. The Mac does everything better, including running Windows, including running MacOS, and including doing stuff like drawing because of the fact that I don’t have to constantly chase drivers or BIOS and also because the hardware features (like the big-ass trackpad).

Ramzchillin, yes, but grew up, schooled and worked in USA, so I’m a bit off on the culture. In Taiwan right now building a startup with some classmates. BTW, if any of you guys can code up a storm in PHP, Java and C, we are hiring for senior architect and developer positions.

Yup…on my last dive trip I was running lightroom on my Acer Aspire One (the new Atom model), and it was :aiyo: :fume: :pray:

@mabagal - same here! pm me. =) though im no computer science major and lives on the east coast.

@jands: i feel you man, i can really feel my eepc turning dead editing so many photos after a couple of hours. the fan is like screaming out loud. haha i really wish an i7 on an 11inch. is there something like that on the market right now? sigh @@

[quote=“ramzchillin”]
@jands: i feel you man, i can really feel my eepc turning dead editing so many photos after a couple of hours. the fan is like screaming out loud. haha i really wish an i7 on an 11inch. is there something like that on the market right now? sigh @@[/quote]

You can’t edit photos on such a small screen. You have to connect it to a 24" external monitor, wouldn’t you?

@sir cf - well during trips thats what i do.not hardcore post process, just tweaking the color balance.=) but it is really a pain in the eyes. last month my desktop was being repaired for a month and i needed to pp some photos for a client due in a week time and got no other options but to use my eepc, after several hours my eyes were all red and the eepc is burning hot. hahaa

i know i’m going to get the fanboy flag again for this, but for field editing, what does the photography community think of the ipad so far?

I’d have thought keyword/caption would have been all they were good for. So the screen is able to be properly calibrated? What do you use for that?

This guy likes it as a second display, anyway: theonlinephotographer.typepad.co … -ipad.html

@sircf - mini pc’s are becoming reliable these days just that dont open too much applications(specially any messenger, wherein someone would just message u and sprunga another window box) with regards to the screen display, its quite decent even the color, just constant zoom in,out and up down page(to make sure you really get what you are doing, since the screen is small) but you really need a mouse in order to work fast. i mean its all about getting used to. but in all honestly its workable. =) i tried to plug the eepc on my 22in lcd. it sucks, im better off using this 10in LED display.

@mabagal- i havent used an ipad, maybe the other gurus have.