minimum processor for photo editing? (looking for new lappy)

seventythree

seventythree

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Name
Allan
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Currently i have a vaio S5 which has a pentium M 2.13 processor and 2 gb of ram.

i used to travel a lot , not so much these days , but i still would like something of similar size and weight. its a 13.3 screen and weighs slightly under 2kg's.

there's a lot to choose from these days, and the prices can be around 600 up to almost 3k for the top end vaio's (z series). My budget could stretch to 1200 or so, but thats not so much my question.

my question is, what should i be looking at processor wise for perfomance? the only big tasks i undertake would be photo editing (batches) and a bit of CS4. Ram i dont think is such an issue , as even the bargain lappies have 3-4 gb , but when it comes to processors i just dont have a clue. please can someone point me in the right direction!

Also , i'm rather taken by the 13" mac books. Are these capable machines when it comes to photo editing?

I've been windoze from day1 and have no experience with the mac's. is it worth a dual boot with windows 7 on the macbook, or will i really just be happy with mac os's ?

I'm really not fussed whether its mac or windows, i just need peoples opinions thats made the change. And i certainly dont want to turn the discussion into an apple vs windows slagging match!

i also like the look of the dell studio XPS, but may be a hit or miss on the QC side.

help me decide!!
 
personally at least a core2 duo. please please please do not get anything mentioning "celeron".

memory youd be daft not to get at least 4gb these days then bung 64bit OS on.

sony are overated and overpriced if you ask me. dell latitudes are worth a look, dells business workhorse range. we're on the E6500's at work and have not had a single QC issue (or with the older D series), initially i wasnt sure on the screen however ive grown to like it for editing.
 
so core 2 duo, is it important which one ? should i be looking at getting one over 2.0ghz . the dell can be had reasonably priced with the 2.66 ?

vaio, yes overpriced. but to be fair i payed 1800 for this one (£200 worth of extended warranty also)4 years ago, but i dont regret it one bit. its been absolutely flawless. i can be pretty rough, and with working offshore its been slung in out of choppers many a time. i even caught the kids using it upside down in the kitchen floor as a sledge!

will have a look at the lattitudes. whats up with the screen?

cheers, Al
 
im using a 2.4 and (for me) its perfectly capable.

initially i wasnt impressed with the quality of the screen on my E6500, however having gotten used to it i think it was just where i lost some resolution over the model i had previous. but then i link it up to a dell 22" ultrasharp anyway.
 
I use a 2 year old white Macbook for editing without any problems, so I can imagine that the newer ones are great.

If you are looking for something well built, I don't think you will find anything better built than the Macbook Pros though, with laptops you certainly get what you pay for.
 
Craikeybaby said:
I use a 2 year old white Macbook for editing without any problems, so I can imagine that the newer ones are great.

If you are looking for something well built, I don't think you will find anything better built than the Macbook Pros though, with laptops you certainly get what you pay for.
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are you an ex windows user and have you never looked back?

do you use aperture for phot editing? is it just as good as CS4?
 
Craikeybaby said:
I use a 2 year old white Macbook for editing without any problems, so I can imagine that the newer ones are great.

If you are looking for something well built, I don't think you will find anything better built than the Macbook Pros though, with laptops you certainly get what you pay for.
Click to expand...

dell latitdues are magnesium chassis. going back 4 years through the old D series im yet to see one break due to wear and tear. ;)

lets get the mac and pc bit out of the way shall we.. one will not do the job better than the other. they both crash, they both have merits and pitfalls over each other. the only difference is the OS and thats personal preference. get to an apple shop and try OSX, if you like it then thats great :)
 
neil_g said:
dell latitdues are magnesium chassis. going back 4 years through the old D series im yet to see one break due to wear and tear. ;)

lets get the mac and pc bit out of the way shall we.. one will not do the job better than the other. they both crash, they both have merits and pitfalls over each other. the only difference is the OS and thats personal preference. get to an apple shop and try OSX, if you like it then thats great :)
Click to expand...

i must admit the only thing putting me off the mac is the lack of HDMI. i have played with one in a store and happened to mention this to the Apple tech (it was in comet, but the apple guy was setting up the stand) and he just looked at me like i'de asked to sleep with his mother. Apart from that he gave me a guided tour and i was mightily impressed. If it had HDMI i would have bought there and then

Al
 
Dell Latitudes are the dsogs danglies for editing

E6500 is a 15.4 inch screen
E6400 is a 14.1 inch screen so is probably nearer to what youre used to, look for 1440X900 resolution which i beleive is best for a screen about this size, any bigger res and you cant see text, any smaller and theres too much sideways scrolling.

2 gb ram is way plenty on latitudes for photoshopping, 7200rpm drive is a must and makes a bigger difference than extra ram.

I have used latitudes for a while now and theyre brill, tough as teak as well.
 
there would be no significant result in term of processing time no no real reason to change except the laptop weight.
what would really improve the performance would be to change the harddrive for a quicker one.
if you really want good performance you should go for an expensive SSD.
 
and if you go for a mac you would be happy with it: you have photoshop and lightroom ! to work on your pictures you really dont need more.
but to me you dont really need to change your machine, if you want a significant processing time difference you should go for a desktop (and the imac is a really good machine!)
 
seventythree said:
are you an ex windows user and have you never looked back?

do you use aperture for phot editing? is it just as good as CS4?
Click to expand...

Yes, but a while ago, I don't use CS4 at all (I ccan't justify the cost), I use Lightroom, but have tried Aperture too, but preferred the way Lightroom worked as had been using it in beta on the PC before I made the switch.
 
cheers for all the comments.

the reason for a new laptop is that the wife has wrecked her one (or the kids have) by spilling juice on it. the touchpad has gone and the screen broken. so i was going to hand her this one and upgrade.

i can spec up a 13.3" dell with 4gb of ram . Nvidia 9500 graphics 512mb, 256gb SSD, core 2 duo 2.66ghz , HDMI etc etc for almost 1300. its between that and the mac book with a 5400rpm drive. as stated the mac book looses with no HDMI, but hey, i've never had HDMI before and managed fine, but it might be one of those things you thought you never needed until you get it !

cheers, Al
 
You really need the 7200RPM HDD, it was one of the reasons I chose a 13" XPS over a macbook a couple of years ago. It's a real shame that Apple still haven't upgraded the HDD. Having said that you should be able to upgrade after you buy it, but you really shouldn't need to do that with a new machine.

I think Toshiba also do a 13" laptop so may be worth looking at them too. :)
 
i could stretch to the dell with 256gb solid state drive as above. that beats anything with a spinny disc as far as i know?
 
seventythree said:
are you an ex windows user and have you never looked back?

do you use aperture for phot editing? is it just as good as CS4?
Click to expand...

I am a recent convert to Apple, I picked up a Macbook pro in February,and yes I have never looked back. Don't want to start a flame war,but I do love my Macbook and would never go back to Windows.
As for Aperture, I have tried it,but it is more for organising and sorting photos (a bit like lightroom so I am told but I have have never tried it)than hardcore editing. Depends what you want to do I guess,but for anything other than the odd tweak here and there you really can't beat CS4.
The new 13" Macbook aluminium unibody (not pro) looks very good and a slightly easier price to swallow:eek:
 
RBHD1 said:
I am a recent convert to Apple, I picked up a Macbook pro in February,and yes I have never looked back. Don't want to start a flame war,but I do love my Macbook and would never go back to Windows.
As for Aperture, I have tried it,but it is more for organising and sorting photos (a bit like lightroom so I am told but I have have never tried it)than hardcore editing. Depends what you want to do I guess,but for anything other than the odd tweak here and there you really can't beat CS4.
The new 13" Macbook aluminium unibody (not pro) looks very good and a slightly easier price to swallow:eek:
Click to expand...

what PP software do you use?

the new white macbook unibody isn't aluminium, it's polycarbonate still plastic type, but still bigger hard drive than the 13" macbook pro and £100 cheaper too
 
p1tse said:
what PP software do you use?

the new white macbook unibody isn't aluminium, it's polycarbonate still plastic type, but still bigger hard drive than the 13" macbook pro and £100 cheaper too
Click to expand...

Yeah my fault you are right it's the 13" Macbook pro I was on about,but yeah the polycarbonate one looks pretty good too!
I use cs4,it's my first time using it and yeah it's not easy,but there are loads of tutorials online which I am having a go at. Its not too bad once you get your head around layers!!
 
rbhd1, did you use any other software/ experience before

only cs4 is i believe a good tool, but very complex
 
p1tse said:
rbhd1, did you use any other software/ experience before

only cs4 is i believe a good tool, but very complex
Click to expand...

Only had my mac since February time but,when I was using windows I used to use Corel paint shop pro which I found was easy enough to use and had a nice set of features.
I have used iphoto,but found that very basic.
I am by no means any expert and i'm only just starting out with cs4 but,I thought if you are going to take time to learn a program I might as well learn cs4 as it is the dogs dangly's!
To be honest once you get past the first 5 mins of opening up cs4 it's not actually that bad at all and quite intuitive.
Clicky Here is a great site with a load of free tutorials which I am learning all my stuff from.
 
rbhd1, what spec is your macbook and where and how much you pay for cs4?
 
personally you would be better of with a 2nd hand macbook that you could pick up from sub 400 that
 
p1tse said:
rbhd1, what spec is your macbook and where and how much you pay for cs4?
Click to expand...

My laptop is running a dual core 2.53 processor,320gb hard drive,4 gig of ram and I have dual graphics cards one of which has 512mb of dedicated ram.
It runs cs4 a breeze,but I guess a lot lesser spec laptop would probably be fine anyway.
You can get a months free trial of cs4 from the adobe website which is fully featured and unrestricted.Same goes with aperture,Apple do a months free trial unrestricted. Maybe worth doing and try them both out see what you think,I guess you can probably get a trial of adobe elements as well if you don't think you need all the features of cs4.
 
well..... , after taking the plunge on a 24-70mm lens i put the computer stuff on the back burner. As it happens the purchase of the lens fell through and almost simultaneously my vaio packed in. Wireless card went and the screen got broken (i think the kids had something to do with this :suspect:). Anyways. Armed with the info above i decided that indeed some form of desktop was the way forward. Struggling for somewhere suitable to fit a desktop i upgraded the kitchen telly to a 22" tv/monitor and squeezed in a small acer desktop out of sight with wireless kb/mouse. i also bought an 11.6" acer netbook for my personal computing. All i'm pretty chuffed and still spent less than i would have on the 24-70.

thanks for the assistance

Al
 
with the macbook, you can get a mini display port - dvi adapter, as this is the display connection on all current macbooks, and then a dvi-hdmi cable to connect to tv.

upscales like a dream!!

Base model white MB is capable enough to run studio quality movie software in standard spec, so PS Elements or CS4 is a doddle!

If required, up the RAM to 4gb for only £80 when u buy instore, or do it yourself, and get ram from 'crucial'

only drawback is the lack of firewire connection, but to be honest everything comes with usb, so u should be fine!

Mac all the way!

J
 
Well I am a Mac fan,but as long as you are sorted and got what you need wether it's mac or windows good on ya! :thumbs:
 
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