£500 17" laptop for lightroom

AJQS

AJQS

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Alan
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Suggestions please! My laptop died, it was scheduled for replacement soon anyway as it could not cope with lightroom 6, however at the moment I don't have the budget for the replacement I really want and I can't exceed £500.

Looking at older models, Must have at least full HD screen resolution , 8gb ram. Preferably an i5 processor but not essential, screen quality is paramount. Ideally a win 7 machine, that way I can use my existing hdd. Definitely no windows 8.

Seen an acer e5-773 and a Dell precision m6600 that might do. Neither are is screens so a bit cautious. Anything else I should consider?
 
You can spec your own at https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/ which is what I did. This cost a total of £499 right on your budget.

Chassis & Display Genesis Series: 17.3" Matte HD+ LED 16:9 Widescreen (1600x900)

Intel® Pentium® Quad Core Processor N3710 (4 x 1.60GHz, 2.56GHz Turbo)

8GB Kingston SODIMM DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)

Memory - Hard Disk 1TB WD SLIM BLUE 2.5" WD10SPCX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (5400 rpm)

2nd Hard Disk 1TB WD SLIM BLUE 2.5" WD10SPCX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (5400 rpm)

Memory Card Reader Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)

USB Options 2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS AS STANDARD

Battery 2 x UltraNote III Series 32WH Battery

Operating System Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence
 
In the end I found a slightly older Dell Inspiron on ebay at £369 with SSD Drive, i5 processor and 8GB Ram. Screen is 1920x1080so a nice improvement, only issue i'm having is that the SSD was not setup and WIndows is running off the HDD and I'm struggling to change it over. (It's cloned ok, but it's not bootable)
 
Alan Clogwyn said:
In the end I found a slightly older Dell Inspiron on ebay at £369 with SSD Drive, i5 processor and 8GB Ram. Screen is 1920x1080so a nice improvement, only issue i'm having is that the SSD was not setup and WIndows is running off the HDD and I'm struggling to change it over. (It's cloned ok, but it's not bootable)
Click to expand...

This information may help. Sorted my problems when I had to clone a failing HDD. http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW/Fixing+Windows+boot+problems

You will need to download a free copy of Macrium Reflect which is well worth having for it's backup capabilities.
 
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Done, now running from SSD. Don't know why I didn't do this before! Must get a screen calibrator though, this bright blue screen is killing my eyes!
 
The M6600 is certainly a beast. I had one for a while; i7 2nd gen quad core, 16gb ram, 250gb ssd and 750gb mechanical, Intel/nvidia Quadro gpu.

Even recently it ran the Cc versions of photoshop and lightroom flawlessly.

Few negatives:

-As you say no ips panel, although it is very good for the size and calibrates well.

-It is HUGE and pretty heavy so not massively portable.

-Lacking in Windows 10 drivers. The sata controller being a big one, Intel retired that driver post win8. Touch pad driver too was temperamental.

Otherwise a very good machine and a steal for 300-400 they seem to go for.
 
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