cheap travel netbook/ultrabook suggestions needed?

Alastair

Alastair

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I'd rather not travel with my regular laptop as it holds work files, client data, etc. so I'm considering a cheap netbook/ultrabook for basic on-the-road downloading from SD card, processing and uploading. There have been similar threads in the past, but nothing very recent that I could find.

My criteria:
  • Size - compact, 11"-13" screen, min. 1024x768
  • Processor - capable of running Lightroom CC, ideally capable of running Sigma Pro Photo but that's not essential
  • Other - SD card slot, Win10 or Win8.1, wifi card
  • Budget - under £200
  • Condition - at this price I know it's going to be a used model, it doesn't have to be pretty
Does anyone have any suggestions on models that might be suitable and places to find them?

Looking at 3-5 year old reviews and checking current used prices I keep coming across the following models:
  • Samsung Series 5 13.3" Ultrabook, i5
  • Dell Inspiron 13z, i3

Or am I just kidding myself?


Many thanks for all suggestions..
 
look at a cheap Acer Travel Mate the Time Line edition, I have I think its a 4820T.
Really nice kit, i3, it will take 8gb ram and a standard SSD.
14.1 screen I think so its a little bigger than your wants.
 
Thanks for that suggestion Paul, it is a little bigger than I'd ideally like.

Although it's below the minimum spec that Adobe list, I'm seeing a fair bit of evidence that LR will run (albeit not speedily) on an Atom processor - which opens up a large number of possibilities, including cheap Chinese tablets and the Dell Venue tablets. As long as they run a 64-bit Atom, or your happy to run LR5 on a 32-bit. These ones seem to get a few mentions on US and Russian sites - Cube iWork 10 http://www.gearbest.com/tablet-pcs/pp_362211.html
 
Its not a small laptop to be sure but its pretty thin and very tough and costs buttons in the bigger scheme.
I have had one for 5 years now and it is still on its original battery and has its fair share of dents, it also has a nice chicklet keyboard.
 
I would forego Windows and go for something like a Toshiba Chromebook 2 with Ubuntu or Elementary OS.
 
ancient_mariner said:
Have a look at this: http://www.ebuyer.com/703912-asus-t100chi-convertible-laptop-t100chi-fg007b

£150
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An interesting possibility,but 32-bit Bay Trail rather than 64-bit Cherry Trail. I'll have to have a think about that one.

dejongj said:
I would forego Windows and go for something like a Toshiba Chromebook 2 with Ubuntu or Elementary OS.
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Another interesting idea. I've had poor experiences with Linux (particularly Ubunto) overheating mobile devices in the past. But either a stock Chromebook or one running a Linux derivative would be very limiting in terms of usefulness to me - I run very little software for work or leisure that's available in a Linux compatible flavour.
 
Well I bit the bullet on the Atom-powered cheap Chinese tablet (Cube iWorks 10 type C), it took a couple of weeks to arrive.

Lightroom CC was installed yesterday and so far so good. Installed Mogrify and a VSCO pack, transferred across some of my custom Export presets. Copied across a few .raf files by a wired USB lead to the camera (still need to get my head around wireless options). No problems importing them, that was faster than I expected. Zoom to 1:1 is slow, and there's a noticeable delay selecting the crop tool, etc. Export runs very fast, near instant for a single file (including resizing). All in all seems a decent enough cheap, lightweght travel option for processing a few images/day on the road for blogging, social media, sharing, etc.

I haven't built up the courage to install Sigma Pro Photo and try a Merrill raw file yet..
 
I did something silly.. I installed SPP, plugged in the DP2M, copied across a merrill raw file and gave it a go. What puzzles me is that the iWork is barely slower than either a laptop or desktop PC, it might. just might.. be quicker at some operations. It's definitely a workable solution. Storage may be the bottleneck, I'll start testing external drives and USB stick solutions over the weekend and next week.

I'm becoming increasingly surprised at the capabilities of this tablet.
 
I'll be very interested in you comments after you have had more of a play with drives etc. I am tempted by something like that.

A quick question though, the link you gave above quotes it as "Windows 10 + Android 5.1" is it dual boot or just windows?
 
brman said:
A quick question though, the link you gave above quotes it as "Windows 10 + Android 5.1" is it dual boot or just windows?
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It's dual boot Toby.
 
brman said:
Thanks Alastair, How do you find it now you have had more time with it?
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I've not had as much time playing with it as I'd expected, too many competing pressures at the moment. And I'm conscious of rushing into random directory structures without planning things - there's not a lot of onboard storage to go around, and how well LR will play with removable drives is another issue to be addressed.

brman said:
Oh, and one last questions - does android the play store installed? (reviews imply that earlier versions did not)
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Yes, it came with Play Store out of the box. All my apps from other devices were available. But I'm not really using this for Android.

There's a good bit of discussion on these types of device on the TechTablets forum - http://techtablets.com/forum/ - although photography seems to be a niche interest, perhaps it's been written off in the past by the lower performance of the earlier models. What grabbed me about this one was the pre-installed 64-bit Win 10 OS with the Cherry Trail Atom processor. The "official" tablet models using this processor are restricted to 32-bit (and the official Intel line seems to be that the 64-bit Atom doesn't do 64-bit OS, despite evidence to the contrary), and CC needs 64-bit.
 
.
 
Byker28i said:
Does Lightroom run under these OS?
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No.

Adobe doesn't support Linux for any of the PS/LR family of software. The versions that will run under Chrome are cloud-based browser apps and require an always-on connection.
 
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