Graphics Laptop

[Aosh]

Hey guys,

I've been wanting to get a laptop for quite a few years now but have always put it off because I've never really been satisfied with what I've seen. But I'm in the mood to get one again so I'm hoping there's something out there right now =)

A heavy use for the laptop will be Photoshop, since I'm into photography. So I'm looking for power and just as importantly (maybe even more so) a great LCD screen (around 14-15")!

But I'm also looking for long battery life (Pentium M / Core Duo?) and high ortability when it comes to thickness and weight.

And lastly, I want excellent build quality. I've seen my family and friends go through way too many cheaply made laptops and it's definately left a sour taste in my mouth.

So to summarize:
1. Excellent LCD for graphics work
2. Relatively powerful (fast CPU, plenty RAM)
3. Relatively light weight (looking for under 5lb -the lighter the better! =)
4. Will last throughout the years
5. And if I may add, a good fullsize keyboard

I know it's a pretty tall order. Does anything out there fit the bill??

 

[thescreensavers]

my firend has a laptop that is 15 inch wide screen with an AMD turion mt40 with 1 gig of ram And X700 with deticated 128mb video ram which was around $1200-1500 i dont know the exact prce

 

[spikespiegal]

Excellent LCD for graphics work

Game over right there.

I do heavy Photosop CS2 work on 3ghz P4s and AMD 64's. Trust me, there is no such thing as a fast laptop for Photoshop, and the displays are generally not as good as even a cheap desktop LCD.

At the least get and external 19" LCD.

I believe the new Acer has been pounding everybody else in the latest reviews.

 

[TriggerHappy101]

Originally posted by: spikespiegal

Excellent LCD for graphics work

Game over right there.

I do heavy Photosop CS2 work on 3ghz P4s and AMD 64's. Trust me, there is no such thing as a fast laptop for Photoshop, and the displays are generally not as good as even a cheap desktop LCD.

At the least get and external 19" LCD.

I believe the new Acer has been pounding everybody else in the latest reviews.

Yeah... Your going to want to lay down money for a CRT, or nice desktop LCD (thats expensive.)

Then again - you can't carry either of thouse around.

 

[dwcal]

Originally posted by: TriggerHappy101

Originally posted by: spikespiegal
At the least get and external 19" LCD.

I believe the new Acer has been pounding everybody else in the latest reviews.

Yeah... Your going to want to lay down money for a CRT, or nice desktop LCD (thats expensive.)

Then again - you can't carry either of thouse around.

A Core Duo has plenty of speed for Photoshop. For serious work, you should keep a docking station, drawing tablet and LCD monitor somewhere.

 

[sillious]

Acer AS5672WLMi

I bought one, excellent.
If you have more to spend, go with the same model but
XP-Pro version version. Comes with 2GB RAM & 120GB HD instead of 100GB HD & 1GB RAM

Price is $1200 vs. $1550

These has every features you need.
Disadvantage: weight > 6.6lb, gets warm, battery life ~3 hours

edit: PS. I don;t know if it's wrong to refer to another forum, but notebookreview is the place for laptop reviews.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Aosh
Hey guys,

I've been wanting to get a laptop for quite a few years now but have always put it off because I've never really been satisfied with what I've seen. But I'm in the mood to get one again so I'm hoping there's something out there right now =)

A heavy use for the laptop will be Photoshop, since I'm into photography. So I'm looking for power and just as importantly (maybe even more so) a great LCD screen (around 14-15")!

But I'm also looking for long battery life (Pentium M / Core Duo?) and high ortability when it comes to thickness and weight.

And lastly, I want excellent build quality. I've seen my family and friends go through way too many cheaply made laptops and it's definately left a sour taste in my mouth.

So to summarize:
1. Excellent LCD for graphics work
2. Relatively powerful (fast CPU, plenty RAM)
3. Relatively light weight (looking for under 5lb -the lighter the better! =)
4. Will last throughout the years
5. And if I may add, a good fullsize keyboard

I know it's a pretty tall order. Does anything out there fit the bill??

I have two suggestions. First, the powerhouse: Gateway MX7525 (available at Best Buy). 15.4" widescreen, excellent glossy screen. Colors are amazing and really pop out on this screen. You can see it in person at Best Buy (possibly at CompUSA too). The pros are an excellent-quality widescreen (not too glossy tho!), a 2.6ghz Athlon 64 processor, a gig of ram (upgradable to 2gb), a big 100gb hard drive (upgradable to 7200rpm), a DVD burner, built-in wifi, 6-in-1 card reader (reads CompactFlash and SecureDigital among others, which are huge for me with my Canon A75 digital camera and Dell Axim PDA), 4 USB 2.0 ports, one 4-pin Firewire port, VGA and s-video out, and a 128mb x600 video card (upgradable to 256mb if you decided to share the system ram). The cons are that it's heavy and gets poor battery life. You're looking at 7.5 pounds with a 1:45 minute battery life. After a year or two the battery life drops to about an hour. It's not so heavy that you can't bring it to work and school, but it's no featherlight either. I have the previous generation model and it's fantastic. Mine has a 2ghz processor, 2gb ddr333, and a 7200rpm 100gb hard drive. When I bring it home, I connect it to my 20" widescreen Dell LCD and Wacom tablet. It's a great setup, very powerful and portable.

The other option, like everyone else is saying, is the Core Duo. Much better battery life and has dual-cores, although it's going to be more expensive for a nice machine right now (a 1.66ghz model is comparatively priced, but probably doesn't hold up very well against a 4000+ mobile a64). Plus it will be lighter weight. This would be good if you're a heavy multi-tasker (like having a 3D render running while Photoshopping). The A64 can crunch some serious numbers though and has lots of nice features, and is usually on sale for $1200 or so. You can get a completely decked-out system for $2k with the Athlon (MX7525 laptop + 2gb Crucial ddr400 + 7200rpm 100gb hard drive + external enclosure for the internal hard drive as a backup drive + Logitech mouse + XP Pro [it includes MCE] + tablet). Add in a nice external monitor if you want, a laptop stand like the iCurve from Giffin Technology, a ShuttleXpress for advanced editing, and an external keyboard and you're in business!

 

[gsellis]

Unobtainium as scoped.

HP Compaq nw8240 Mobile Workstation

Processor type - Intel® Pentium® M Processor

Processor features
min: 730 (1.60 GHz, 2-MB L2 cache, 533-MHz front side bus)
max: 780 (2.26 GHz, 2-MB L2 cache, 533-MHz front side bus)

Memory description - min: 256 MB max: 2048 MB

Video Display size
15.4-inch color TFT WXGA,
15.4-inch color TFT WSXGA+ with Wide Viewing Angle or
15.4-inch color TFT WUXGA with Wide Viewing Angle

Display resolution
Supports: 640 x 480, 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, 1280 x 768, 1280 x 1024, or 1600 x 1200 resolutions up to 100-Hz refresh rate dependent upon monitor capability, resolution and color depth settings.

Video adapter description
ATI Mobility Fire GL V5000 graphics controller (PCI Express) with 128 MB of video memory, OpenGL support

Storage Hard drive, internal
min: 40 GB (5400 rpm)
max: 80 GB (5400 rpm) or 60 GB (7200 rpm)

Optional modules
Optical Drives: 2X DVD+/-RW, 24X DVD/CD-RW Combo, 8X DVD-ROM, second hard drive (sold separately).

Audio and ports
Audio ADI AC '97 CODEC
Integrated 16-bit Sound Blaster Pro compatible audio, Integrated stereo speakers, External volume up, volume down, and mute buttons, Stereo headphone/line out and Stereo microphone in

I/O (input/output) ports
3 USB 2.0, VGA, audio in/out, power, RJ-11, RJ-45, S-video TV out, serial, 1394, Fast IR, docking, HP Travel Battery

Communications 10/100/1000 NIC integrated; 56K modem

Wireless Choice of Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG, Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG (Centrino capable), Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN, Broadcom 802.11a/b/g WLAN, dual display mounted antennas. Optional Integrated Bluetooth®

Slots 1 Type I/II PC Card Slot supports 32-bit CardBus and 16-bit PC Cards, 1 Integrated Smart Card Reader and One Integrated Secure Digital slot

Power External 90-watt AC adapter, 6-foot power cord included. Total length including External AC adapter is 12 feet. 8-cell high capacity Lithium-Ion battery. HP Fast Charge technology

Keyboard 101/102-key compatible keyboard features an industry standard, full-pitch layout with desktop keyboard features, such as the isolated inverted-T cursor control keys, editing keys, both left and right control and alt keys, and 12 function keys. Other features include an integrated numeric keypad, hotkeys for instant access to power conservation, brightness, and other features. center-to-center spacing, comfort dished keycaps, and bright key legends for improved visibility in low light conditions.

Mouse / pointing device - Dual Pointing devices - Touchpad with scroll zone and Pointstick
Both devices have three buttons.

Weight From 5.8 lb.

Dimensions (L x W x H)
14.00 x 10.40 x 1.10 in.

 

[Aosh]

Hmmmm..

To answer some of the responses, I already have a desktop with a very nice 20" Planar LCD =)

But this laptop will be for when I'm on the move. I don't expect it to be my primary machine, but if I do use it, I do expect it to be pretty darn good =P

Battery life and weight are very important to me. Nothing over high 5's (pounds) and at least 3hrs..

I've spent a few hours looking around..it seems that there's not a very wide selection. The Lenovo Thinkpads look nice, but the T series are either too heavy/large for my tastes and the X series are too small.

Right now I'm leaning towards the Sony VIAO SZ110/B or I'm even starting to dabble into the idea of going for the MacBook Pro.. It's the extra software that's holding me back, though. If there was a MacBook Pro PC equivalent, I would go for that!

 

[pkme2]

I use a Dell 600M, and my students have either 600Ms or 6000s for their Creative Suite. The Dells are quite suitable for any graphic work plus include that with the Dell discounts coupons, you can get a $2000 Dell for $1250 w/ the $750 discount. Then you get the PhotoShop (Creative Suite bundle for $379) or (Web bundle with Dreamweaver for $579) academic prices and you're set. The Inspiron 600M and Inspiron 6000 are quite portable. Your choice 14" or 15" screens.

The Dells are quite capable with IGB RAM and 7k60 hdds to do any PhotoShop, Illustrator, InDesign work, and you can also do your website with DreamWeaver, etc.

I use my laptop with Sony Vegas Video to do in the field editing and my 600M is quite capable. Just another reason to consider the Dell.

 

[kmrivers]

is a MacBook Pro in your budget?

 

[batmanuel]

Originally posted by: sillious
Acer AS5672WLMi

I bought one, excellent.
If you have more to spend, go with the same model but
XP-Pro version version. Comes with 2GB RAM & 120GB HD instead of 100GB HD & 1GB RAM

Price is $1200 vs. $1550

These has every features you need.
Disadvantage: weight > 6.6lb, gets warm, battery life ~3 hours

edit: PS. I don;t know if it's wrong to refer to another forum, but notebookreview is the place for laptop reviews.

Is there a good fix yet for the Windows XP flaw that prevents the processor from entering its power saving states when a USB 2 device is attached (like the built-in webcam on the Acer)? If not, it might be a good idea to go for a laptop without a integrated webcam.

 

[LikeLinus]

Originally posted by: spikespiegal

Excellent LCD for graphics work

Game over right there.

I do heavy Photosop CS2 work on 3ghz P4s and AMD 64's. Trust me, there is no such thing as a fast laptop for Photoshop, and the displays are generally not as good as even a cheap desktop LCD.

At the least get and external 19" LCD.

I believe the new Acer has been pounding everybody else in the latest reviews.

That's completely and utterly absurd. So you're saying that a desktop that isn't a 3ghz was/is unable to use photoshop? So how exactly were people using photoshop years ago?

You're full of crap or don't actually know what you're doing. As long as you have 1-2GB of ram and a decent Pentium M or Dual Core, you're going to fly. The latest test on PC Mag showed the Dell Inspiron 9400 scoring TWO POINTS below their fastest desktop. This was in the business production suite (which I think may include PS).

What's your budget is the first question.

 

[batmanuel]

Originally posted by: LikeLinus

Originally posted by: spikespiegal

Excellent LCD for graphics work

Game over right there.

I do heavy Photosop CS2 work on 3ghz P4s and AMD 64's. Trust me, there is no such thing as a fast laptop for Photoshop, and the displays are generally not as good as even a cheap desktop LCD.

At the least get and external 19" LCD.

I believe the new Acer has been pounding everybody else in the latest reviews.

That's completely and utterly absurd. So you're saying that a desktop that isn't a 3ghz was/is unable to use photoshop? So how exactly were people using photoshop years ago?

You're full of crap or don't actually know what you're doing. As long as you have 1-2GB of ram and a decent Pentium M or Dual Core, you're going to fly. The latest test on PC Mag showed the Dell Inspiron 9400 scoring TWO POINTS below their fastest desktop. This was in the business production suite (which I think may include PS).

What's your budget is the first question.

Amen brother. I have to wonder what kind of crack people are smoking when you hear these absurd system requirements for PS work. When I was in school about eight years ago, I was doing some really nice PS work with a PII 400 w/ 128MB of RAM running on NT4 (and those were the FAST systems at our school). You just have to think carefully about how you manage your layers and make sure that you stay close to the usable resolution of your output device when you are working on your image.

I wonder if everyone is looking at the 4800 DPI resolution of their printer and using 4800 DPI in PS, not realizing that the way that printer manufacturers describe their resolution isn't the same as how PS describes it. Granted, if your work is going up on a billboard you need some serious DPI, but for a lot of print work anything over 600 DPI is pretty much wasted. In fact, I was just noticing that the pictures in TIME this week and marvelling at how low a resolution you can get by with in most mass market publications (National Geographic excluded, of course).

 

[Aosh]

I'm willing to pay a higher price because I know I'm picky. Build quality, and LCD quality are kind of hard to quantify. But if I can get those along with power, excellent battery life (4+ hrs ok I know this is a bit of a stretch..maybe at least 3.5hrs), slim dimensions, light weight, I'll pay the premium. But nothing over $3000 at most. If I can get all the above at a lower cost, then all the better! =)

So far it seems the Sony VIAO SZ110/B and MacBook Pro are the only ones I've found so far that fit the bill. Both have Core Duo and customizable to up to 1GB RAM, are around 1" thick, the Sony is 4lb and has 4+ hrs (the MacBook Pro I hear has under 3 hrs battery life). I just dont know if the Sony has a fullsized keyboard or not and I'm a bit concerned about flimsyness. But it is under $2000!

 

[pkme2]

The Sony Vaio is a difficult laptop to work on, which I have found. I work on Dells, IBMs and Toshibas, which I found easier to fix.
Mr Sony would be surprised as to the quality control that have been exercised with today's Vaios. It's your dollar, but be prepared for big buck repairs on the Sony, whenever.
I don't know Mac, only what's written on AT.
I've used Photoshop on older Dell Latitudes and it worked fine back then, and been using all the PS versions today with as little as 512mb, now 1GB on my 600M. It's your dollar, so we can offer you our experiences, it what you decide next.......

 

[w00t]

I am going to say dell xps or macbook pro

 

[Aosh]

I'm kind of afraid of Dells right now. I've known many people who've had the 600M fall apart on them due to various reasons.

pkme2: Can u elaborate what you mean b the vaio's being hard to work on? In what way?

 

[pkme2]

Check my PM.

 

[OSX]

You can also get a PowerBook G4. Photoshop, with AltiVec, is sheer ownage, and less expensive as well.

 

[batmanuel]

Originally posted by: OSX
You can also get a PowerBook G4. Photoshop, with AltiVec, is sheer ownage, and less expensive as well.

He said he wanted a FAST processor for PS. Kidding.

Seriously, though, isn't the G4 kinda long in the tooth nowadays? Sure, it comes out ahead of Core Duos when they run CS2 under Rosetta, but how does it compare when you do cross-platform tests with a Win XP Core Duo notebook running the Windows version of CS2? Doesn't seem like even the Altivec optimization on the G4 would be able to make up for the Core Duo having a whole second core to throw at the multithreaded Photoshop app. You can make a case for the G5 being a match for the new Core processors, but the G4 is an OLD architecture by technology by just about any standard you apply.