Camera Labs

I'm in the market for a new laptop / desktop replacement cos any day now I just know I'm gonna throw my PC out of the window trying to do post processing with 256mb of RAM! I could buy extra RAM, but I also want to upgrade to a dual core processor and a larger screen so my initial requirements are:

2gb RAM
Intel or AMD dual core processor (some sites say AMD are quicker, any comments?)
17" monitor

I'm not too concerned about the size and weight and portability because it'll mostly be used in the home, but I do want that portability option for the times when I want to take it away.

What would you look for in a new laptop with photography and post processing in mind?

Any advice greatly appreciated.
Mark

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Mark
Nikon D300 / Sigma 10-20mm / Nikkor 17-55 f2.8 / Nikkor 18-200mm VR / Nikkor 50mm f1.8 / SB600 Speedlight
Mark Amy Photography
My Squidoo lens - Images of China

Hi Mark,

I have an Acer 9302 Laptop with 1Gb of Ram, 160Gb Hard Drive, AMD Turion 64 Processor, NVIDIA GO 6100 Graphics Card it is a 17" model with Acer's "Crystalbrite" screen running Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium and for Photography Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0, and experimenting with Adobe Lightroom 1.0, runs all this with no complaints and has a price tag in the UK of £499.

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Roy
EOS 350D, 40D + BG-E2N, EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM, EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM, EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM, 430 EX Speedlite




My Fotopic

For notebooks intel does have the lead in performance. Plus with intel you can get the Intel wifi card. It's a great wifi card. Whats the budget in mind since there are so many variables with laptops. Dell, HP, Compaq, Asus and acer are nice.

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rv65
C-5050Z | SD700IS (IXUS800 IS) | JamCam | Quantaray RZ 800 w/ 50mm prime lens (just found but broken) (aka Cosina CT-7, Various other brands) | EOS 50D

Thanks for your comments. Since posting the original message I've found a friend of a friend who's business is building PCs and customising them how you want.

So now I'm thinking forget a laptop and customise my own PC.

The question now is, if you had a limitless budget, not saying I do, but if you did, what components would you want in a new PC? I'm thinking:

2gb RAM
large monitor (how big is large these days?)
good graphics card (any recommendations)
dual core processor (probably Intel)
forget Vista, I definitely want to stay with XP

what else?

Apologies for asking one question and then totally changing it

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Mark
Nikon D300 / Sigma 10-20mm / Nikkor 17-55 f2.8 / Nikkor 18-200mm VR / Nikkor 50mm f1.8 / SB600 Speedlight
Mark Amy Photography
My Squidoo lens - Images of China

Well as a display you can get 30" but that might need a dual link dvi video card. I like the NEC 20WMGX2 or the 20WGX2 for the foreigners. It's a glossy 20.1" 16:10 widescreen monitor. Super fast response rate without losing clarity. Does get glare but I like it. Expensive for a 20.1" monitor but the US version has HDCP, Component, S-Video, ATSC/NTSC TV tuner, and a composite input. The foreign version does not have either of that. You can go 24" widescreen too. The NEC is a monitor that has to be tweaked. But once you tweak the settings it's not bad. Photo with some custom settings work great. Well most LCD monitors need to be tweaked as well.

There are other monitors but this monitor can make me write a whole post just dedicated to this one. This monitor I own personally.

CPU wise intel and AMD has quad core but I'd go dual core but that depends.

RAM wise 2 GB is fine but vista and others may need 4 GB. 64 bit OS can access more than 4 GB at the expense of 16 bit programs.

GPU: I like nvidia but ATI is great. I recommend an HDCP capable video card so that you can watch HDCP content in conjunction with a HDCP monitor. Depends on your budget. DirectX10 only gives benefits for vista users but if you play those games in vista you will need it.

Hope this helps some what.

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rv65
C-5050Z | SD700IS (IXUS800 IS) | JamCam | Quantaray RZ 800 w/ 50mm prime lens (just found but broken) (aka Cosina CT-7, Various other brands) | EOS 50D

Thanks rv65, that really helps and I'll keep you updated with the choices I make.

Best wishes,
Mark

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Mark
Nikon D300 / Sigma 10-20mm / Nikkor 17-55 f2.8 / Nikkor 18-200mm VR / Nikkor 50mm f1.8 / SB600 Speedlight
Mark Amy Photography
My Squidoo lens - Images of China

Hi Mark

I think it depends a lot on the software you planned to used with it.
Mostly editting pics ? Then you will need some real -estate for bigger
display , a minimum of 17" with DVI, of course larger better but costly. You need to pay attention to the refresh rate quoted in msec , I think the standard now is like 10msec ( i could be wrong) but the lower the number the better.

RAM aka Memory - a min of 2GB

DVD-Writer - to backup or share all those precious pics !

Hard disk - SATA 160 or 250

Display - Nvidia if you plan to play games
But seriously either ATI or Nvidia you choose, get those with 256 or 512Bit - 256MB RAM

CPU / Motherboard - get the best , I would stick to Intel Core2Duo processor and the M/B which can support it.

Assuming you have limitless ca$h




David

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Nikon D7000 and a bunch of Nikkors

Hi David,
Thanks for replying. I haven't decided yet but I'm probably going to go with this deal:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
Asus P975x motherboard
2gb Ram
256mb graphics card
160gb Sata hard drive
English Windows XP Pro
DVD writer
Samsung SyncMaster 226BW monitor

Not sure what brand the graphics card is, it's a Chinese brand but supposed to be very good. All in all it works out around 600 pounds so it's within my budget and from looking at the individual components on the net, it seems like a good deal.

Thanks for your advice on the monitor. After doing some research today I learned a lot and was really excited to see the Samsung included in the deal as I read that fellow member Zorro has one and is very happy with it and it should suit my needs perfectly.

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Mark
Nikon D300 / Sigma 10-20mm / Nikkor 17-55 f2.8 / Nikkor 18-200mm VR / Nikkor 50mm f1.8 / SB600 Speedlight
Mark Amy Photography
My Squidoo lens - Images of China

One thing I like about the NEC 20WMGX2 is that it uses an 8 bit AS-IPS panel for excellent color reproduction. TN panels are 6 bit but have to dither to get 8 bit color. 6 bit panels are 262,000 while 8 bit is 16.7 million. The dithering can cause problems. With AS-IPS I get the best color reproduction with really fast response times. Too bad my desktop is still broken since I use this 14.1" P3 laptop which isn't as good as my desktop.

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rv65
C-5050Z | SD700IS (IXUS800 IS) | JamCam | Quantaray RZ 800 w/ 50mm prime lens (just found but broken) (aka Cosina CT-7, Various other brands) | EOS 50D

Mark, think again about laptop vs. desktop.
The laptop has the incredible advantage of going with you when you travel around shooting photos. It allows you to screen the quality of your pics and it acts as a store. Plus you can easily connect the laptop to a LCD full-HD-TV and
So my recommendation: 2GB RAM, 160GB hard-disk, Intel T7xxx processor... (below 1000EUR)

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

Hi Thomas,
Thanks for your advice. I have thought more about that and the pros and cons for each, but I already have a laptop that I use just for travelling and that does fine for reviewing images and storage so I thought now it would be better to use that laptop to store the images and then once I get back home I'll have a really powerful desktop to do the processing. Definitely though, if I didn't have at least one spare laptop already, I would go for a powerful laptop to do the processing.
Mark

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Mark
Nikon D300 / Sigma 10-20mm / Nikkor 17-55 f2.8 / Nikkor 18-200mm VR / Nikkor 50mm f1.8 / SB600 Speedlight
Mark Amy Photography
My Squidoo lens - Images of China

Ah, ok! The combination (laptop+desktop) is certainly "best of both worlds". Congrats!

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

This thread has a totally misleading name now as I switched to getting a new desktop instead...my fault I know. Anyway to finish it off, my new setup was delivered yesterday and it is all stunning

Ended up with:
Intel Core 2 Duo (E6420-2.13ghz-4mb L2 cache)
Motherboard - Asus P5K SE
2gb RAM
250gb ROM
ATI Radeon RX 1650GT (256mb ram)
Liteon 20x DVD/CD writer
Monitor - Samsung Syncmaster 226BW

This upgrade from my old PC has just blown me away (especially the monitor!) and my only fear is that I will be spending even longer in front of the computer than I did before....oh no!!!! Must remember to leave the house to keep taking pics

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Mark
Nikon D300 / Sigma 10-20mm / Nikkor 17-55 f2.8 / Nikkor 18-200mm VR / Nikkor 50mm f1.8 / SB600 Speedlight
Mark Amy Photography
My Squidoo lens - Images of China

Congrats on the new machine Mark, glad you're happy with it.

Can I take this back on track and ask for some help in choosing a laptop? Good.

I've recently started at the local college doing an HNC in computing, (I know, at my age, lol). It would be real handy for me to have a second PC since I'll be trying out a lot of different Operating Systems on my current (only) machine. A laptop seems to make sense to me. Plus, I like gadgets.

The laptop needs to be able to handle my image editing tasks so I'm thinking I need 2GB at a minimum. Is this right? I'm kinda annoyed that I'm going to be stuck with Windows Vista as it uses so much resources but I guess it's progress, lol. For storage I need at least 160GB and for the CPU I'm thinking an Intel Core 2 Duo. It would be nice if it had half-decent graphics so I can keep in touch with WoW but it's not the major deal. I'm assuming most laptops can handle the odd DVD now & again. Is this right? Finally, I want all that for under £600. I know, it's not much.

I've obviously been doing some research and to be honest I can't really figure out the processor hierarchy in laptops as I've no prior experience. Any help would definitely be appreciated.

I was going to rebuild my desktop computer but to be honest, even at three years old, she ticks along pretty nicely. So, to give it a little boost for not a lot of money I've ordered an AMD Athlon 64 +4200 to replace my current +3800. It only costs £50. My graphics card is an nVidia 7800GTX and I'm thinking until DX10 gets sorted properly and has been around for a while there's no real point in looking at the mobo and RAM. Besides, the mobo is an Asus A8N-SLi and I have 2GB Corsair Twinpro RAM. Actually, when I play games at the moment my CPU is the bottleneck. My machine actually runs a bit smoother playing a demanding game than it does with older games, weird.

Anyway.

Anyone got any ideas on which laptop I should go for? I was browsing around and I like the look of Fujitsu Siemens as they seem pretty good value. I also like the sound of owning a Toshiba.

Cheers guys,

Zorro.

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http://zorrofox4.deviantart.com/



Various lenses, SB800 & Manfrotto 190 with 460MG head

Hi Zorro,

I take it you are referring to the Fujitsu Siemens Pi 2515 Core2Duo 2GB 160GB DVDRW Vista Home Premium? At under £500 here in the UK it sounds like a bargain. I am a little puzzled by the Dabs site's specification sheet (here) as the AMILO Pi 2515 manual states that a T7100 processor is used. Dabs says it's a T5250 while Comet says T7100.

In case you haven't found it, Intel have a Processor Numbers page which helps cut through the fog of Intel part numbering these days.

I am hoping to avoid upgrading my very ancient ThinkPad but, if I have to, I think that at under £500 the Pi 2515 would certainly be on my short-list as well. Please let us know how you get on.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.