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Hi folks,
Am looking for a general purpose laptop but with image editing as a priority. Am not a fanatical photography (yet.....!!!), just a hobby photographer but do use the GIMP occasionally and Picasa regulary. Also I'll do a little video editing so probably need separate graphics card.
Screen resolution is a concern; is there MUCH difference between a hi-res 1920x1020 screen or a more standard one? Is the difference obvious? I do appreciate your eyes are different to mine but the question is worth asking.
On a similar note those of you with 17" laptops - do you notice the difference over a 15.4" screen? Would be happy to buy a stand-alone monitor at a later date if laptop screen is too small for intensive work.
Don't really want to spend much over £750 and would go down the re-furbished route if need be. Don't expect the same quality colour reproduction as I would with a, say, £500 stand alone monitor - just want something decent and "respectable".
Am trying to "future-proof" so would rather spend a little more now rather than save cash and regret it later.
I've never owned a laptop before at at the moment use a desktop with a 22" display and also one with an old 19" CRT. Also, I ain't young so the eyes are probably not as good as they once were - if this all helps! Laptop will very rarely be taken out of the house but will be moved around to several locations within ie; sofa, breakfast bar, bed etc.....
Del and Samsung seem to get good reviews for the quality of their display. Have any of you experience of these brands?
Thanks in anticipation.
Avoid dell.
Acer, Toshiba, Sony.
All good makes in terms of build quality - depending on what you need.
As far as resolution goes, it depends on what you prefer. e.g. for your eyes you may like a lower res screen than a higher res one. But generally go for the higher res screen OPTION if it is available on the model as it will be a better "standard" of panel. But don't cross reference between laptops.
A key point is not to buy a laptop that is too big, they just become awkward to work with, and battery is **** as they have to drive such large screens.
Not much point in a dedicated GPU for a laptop unless you game, it will be a mobile version anyway and modern CPU's / discreet graphics are fine for video editing anyway.
And finally:
I have a very nice sony that will be perfect for you in stock in the shop. 
Quote: Hi folks,
Am trying to "future-proof" so would rather spend a little more now rather than save cash and regret it later.
You really can't do that. Whatever computer you buy today will have some features that will have been superseded within 6 months.
It is a fact of life that, a year from now, you will get a computer of the same spec for half the price or one with twice the spec for the same price. A bit like cameras in that regard.
But look at it pragmatically. Just like cameras, of you buy one that meets your needs today, it will still meet those same needs in 10 years time. (For example, when using word processing and spreadsheets, I don't use any features in my 2010 versions that did not exist in the versions I used in 1990. But I have persuaded myself that my image processing needs have changed at regular intervals!! )
Trying to 'future-proof ' is a mugs game, all you end up doing is spending much more than you really need to jus to. Spending an extra £200 now for example won't give you an extra year of use out of the computer, you will still want to replace it a few years from now. It is better to buy something reasonable now with the expectation of buying a new system in the future. People seldom upgrade computers, just like nobody upgrades their car, in theory you can have a a bigger engine installed in the car at a later day but you won't as it is easer and more economical just to sell it and buy something better.
What will you use the laptop for ?
If you want the laptop so you can do a bit of browsing and email etc away from the desk then a small screen is fine, use an external monitor on the desk for editing, laptop screens are generally pretty poor for colur accuracy any way so an external screen is generally the better bet.
Spend the money on RAM not Processor speed, if for example you can get a 2.2GHz + 2GB RAM system or 2GHz + 4GB RAM system for the same budget go for the larger RAM as it will give a much bigger performance boost than the small clock speed increase.
Just for the future-proof argument, it is very possible to maintain a laptop in good working condition for 7 years.
My T4010D has seen the earliest version of XP tablet, through vista and now to W7. It was an entirely "future proof" system. You just have to know what to buy. It edits my 5DMII files in PS CS5 with ease.
The only replacement I have made was the cooling fan, and a switch to 2GB RAM on W7 install.
For your budget, you will be able to get a high-spec machine that will last anyway, so it shouldn't be a concern.
Although not for everyone, I tend to buy refurbs or excess stock laptops as the savings can be quite good.
Something like this or this should do you, and is well under budget.
I've bought from EuroPC before and found their support to be excellent. It only took them two working days to replace a screen that went faulty on my current laptop. Email responses are normally within a couple of hours too.
We have a Toshiba at work, used for photoshop, CAD and 3D work, but so far in the last 12 months (its 18 months old) we've had to replace faulty memory and the hardrive, also the a couple of the keys have fallen off.
Hi folks,
Wow - such fast and informative responses! I'm very impressed. And very grateful too. Why "avoid Dell" Swwils? Always thought separate gpu was essential for video editing and also for powering stand alone monitor. Are mobile cards not up to the job as such? What other use do they have apart from gaming? If you have a link re the Sony please.
Will be using laptop for reasons you stated Going Digital. Am a bit concerened if I buy one with too small a screen I'll rue the day as the eyes won't improve over the years.
Thanks for thr links theorderingone - will look into them in next day or 2.
Many thanks yet again. And if anyone has more thoughts please post!
About 70% of the laptops we have in to get fixed are dell's. - and thats not down to sales volume. Build quality is generally very poor.
A seperate GPU is not needed in modern laptops to drive external screens, and many of the mobile editions lack support in the hardware acceleration involved for video editing anyway - most of the processes will be CPU heavy. The discreet graphics in the newer generation laptops is superb and will fully support HDMI, external screens +more.
You will probably see that a laptop will come with a xxxx version of a GPU as its discreet package anyway!
It depends upon the Dell machine, the business laptops are very reliable in my experience, the consumer ones do not look as good. We have a lot of them and they get abuse, used as travelling devices every day, on and off aeroplanes. The most common failure is hard disks after about 3 years, which is when they are at end of life anyway.
LOL....
Ask ten people what this or what that, Your likely to get 10 different versions/variations of anything........!!!
Bottom line, Take no notice of individuals with a particular bias, Either against or for a particular brand/model of whatever......
Today its easy to do your own research based upon your budget & requirements, Just " Google " every question you have/want to ask.......
The main difference between " Any " brand of laptop or model ( same applies to pretty much anything else to ) Is going to be the price.....
The more you pay, The more you get, Its really that simple.....
A laptop costing £400 quid is never going to be as good as one costing over £1000......
No matter what flavour or brand is involved.....!!!!!!!!!!!!
The only point worth baring in mind is that for the most part, Laptops are not wildly upgradeable, So choose the brand/model that supplies the product that has all the parts that are important to " You " , ie: Decent display, Superior graphics board/chip, CPU etc etc, Don't worry to much about the bits that are easily changed at a later date, Such as RAM or Hard Drives, Or even a more competent battery, Just concern yourself with the parts that are " Not Easily/Impossible to Upgrade " ........!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My experience with DELL Laptops has been NO different to that of any other brand, Dell Support is miles better than many others to, Especially " HP " .
Good luck and have fun shopping......
Quote: Hi folks,
Will be using laptop for reasons you stated Going Digital. Am a bit concerened if I buy one with too small a screen I'll rue the day as the eyes won't improve over the years.
If you are concerned about reading things easily then get the lower resolution screen, might sound a bit silly but the computer will display a font at for example 10 pixels high as default, if you have a high resolution 15" screen then it will have a resolution of 96ppi or higher this means that 10 pixels will be much smaller than a standard 72ppi screen, hope that makes sense. You can always set larger font sizes but often things start to look very odd then as icons are tiny but text is huge or text is reflowed on a web page so that it looks disjointed.
As for 15" vs 17", the problem with a 17" screen is the laptop ends up being the size of a paving slab so it does make it less portable and doesn't sit so well on your lap, well mine doesn't anyway, I think I should have gone for 15" as it seems the ideal compromise size, 13.3" is probably a bit small especially as the screens tend to be the same resolution as 15" so everything is tiny on the screen as mentioned above.
I personally would not recommend dell either, their laptops do seem very flimsy and if you google for Dell you will see a lot of people unhappy with their service. Personally I like Levono (formely IBM) but they are a bit pricey, the likes of Acer and Asus seem to do some pretty good laptops at reasonable prices.
Found this at dixons, might be worth a http://www.dixons.co.uk/gbuk/acer-aspire-5742-07706815-pdt.html
ACER Aspire 5742 £443.80
Dual-core Intel® Core i5-460M (2.53 GHz) [Very good mid range processor IMHO]
4GB RAM [Ideal amount of memory for photo editing]
15.6" Widescreen (1366 x 768 pixels) [Ideal resolution for this size screen]
All-in-all exactly the sort of thing I would suggest for your intended use, the only question is would you be happy with integrated intel video card, it might be a bit slow if you are adding effects to video.
Anyone who suggests to ignore differences between brands is badly misinformed.
Dell's use lower quality components and even at the design level are typically bad, when compared to sony.
Comparing any Sony to a Fujitsu-Siemens business machine is also a bad mistake to make.
Quote: Dell's use lower quality components and manufacturing techniques across the range, when compared to sony.
Yes you are correct I remember those Dell's that caught fire and had to be recalled. Now who made those batteries, ah yes Sony. Are Sony bad, no, but they are not saints either. And rather like some people claim apple use better bits, Sony like Apple look to not demonstrate increased reliability. Asus blow the pair away in the results I have seen.
Seriously there is little in it Sony to Dell and just to help you understand here is a link to some data showing the Dell performance being close to that of the Apple product range, and Sony a couple of % better. So yup it looks like Sony might be a little bit better, but if you dig into it the more expensive lap tops fair better and Sony tend to operate at the more expensive end so I would say that at the equal price level it looks very close Sony to Dell. HP performance looks concerning.
Asus looks the best on that basis. And it is sobering to see a projection for 1 in 3 laptops being dead after 3 years. So like many things there are some differences between brands, but it is also true that often low costs products are low reliability and so in the lap top world if reliability is your concern you may want to avoid the entry machines.
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