Toshiba Laptop?

[un4given]

Currently I'm using a Toshiba Laptop, that I bought about 4 years ago. These are the specs:

Toshiba Satellite M50

Intel Pentium M
1.73 GHz
504 MB of Ram
100 gig hard drive

Pretty sad by today's standards, but again it's 4 years old. It's really slowed down on me in the last 6 months and I've only got about 30 gig's of space left on the hard drive.

Since I just got a new Canon EOS 50d and plan on getting lightroom and maybe a new version of Photoshop I'd love a faster laptop with a bigger hard drive for using it pretty much exclusively for photos/photo editing. I'd use my old laptop for internet and music, etc. Basically just as a spare...

I noticed Best Buy has some pretty good deals on some new Toshiba's right now.

This laptop is sounding pretty good, what do you guys think? Would it be a good laptop to use just for mainly uploading and saving photos (of course I'd back them up) and photo editing?

http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?langid=EN&logon=&sku_id=0926INGFS10118382&CMP=ILC-BBY_hmpage_slide2

A pretty big improvement on what I'm using now including a slightly bigger screen. I plan on sticking with PC... so please no Mac suggestions. ;)

I don't have a huge budget either, looking only to spend around $1000.

[YP5 Toronto]

specs are good for the price (...I work for toshiba Canada :) . It is on par with the competition.

One thing that I thing you would want to invest in is a notebook with a better graphics system. Ideally you would want a dedicated video card with 256+mb of memory.

take a look at this:

http://www.toshiba.ca/web/product.grp?lg=en&section=1&group=1&product=8970&part=8977#spectop

BTW...that M50 I brought into Canada. I was the product marketing manager for the retail line of products and part of my job was to design products for the canadian marketspace. it is a great notebook

[un4given]

That's cool! I'm a big Toshiba supporter, and the M50 has been a very good laptop. Very reliable and has not given me any major problems over the 4 years where I had to bring it in. Which is why I think I want to stick with Toshiba.

I think it's helped that I've kept the hard drive pretty clean, kept up with the anti-virus software, and haven't cluttered my computer with a ton of useless programs, etc. I've never had one virus in 4 years. :)

So it's still running pretty good and as I said I plan on keeping it as a second laptop and plan to until it completely dies on me which hopefully is not for a long time yet.

How much dedicate memory is on the video card for the Toshiba I linked to, it doesn't really say, unless I'm missing it?

Thanks for the tip though and the alternate suggestions. ;)

[YP5 Toronto]

scroll down...256mb dedicate, but it can use some of the system memory to go to 2gb+

[gcogger]

One thing that I thing you would want to invest in is a notebook with a better graphics system. Ideally you would want a dedicated video card with 256+mb of memory.

Why?

Using anything other than Photoshop CS4, the graphics card is pretty much irrelevant these days. I'm not sure of the screen resolution of that laptop, but as an example a res of 1600x1200 only needs 8MB of memory, so 256MB is total overkill. Even in CS4 (which uses some of the graphics card abilities to help with processing), I doubt it needs that much memory...

[YP5 Toronto]

well...a few things.

1) this is a photography forum, so there is an assumption that CS4 or similar products will be used.

2) Dedicated GPUs releave a large portion of processig from the CPU.

3) Everyday applications benefit greatly from dedicated graphis

4) the difference in price is marginal from the new notebook he marked versus the notebook i have general recommmended.

5) His last notebook held him for 4 years, so I am assuming he also wants this notebook to give him the same longevity, dedicated gpu is more futureproof

....not sure where you are getting "8mb of memory is all you need for 1600 x 1200". You would be hard pressed to convince me that a notebook with a dedicated GPU would not outperform a notebook without (all else equal). 4 years with HP and 6 years with Toshiba....your statement is got to be the weirdest I have ever come across.

[gcogger]

well...a few things.

1) this is a photography forum, so there is an assumption that CS4 or similar products will be used.

2) Dedicated GPUs releave a large portion of processig from the CPU.

3) Everyday applications benefit greatly from dedicated graphis

4) the difference in price is marginal from the new notebook he marked versus the notebook i have general recommmended.

5) His last notebook held him for 4 years, so I am assuming he also wants this notebook to give him the same longevity, dedicated gpu is more futureproof

1) AFAIK CS4 is the only 2D graphics application that makes use of the processing power of a modern GPU. For everything else, the graphics card is pretty much irrelevant.

2) This is true for 3D accelerated applications, and some video decoding (although the basic onboard graphics are fine for video unless you want to view high def material). Vista makes some use of this, if you want the fancy visual effects, but I'm not sure that a dedicated 256MB GPU is necessary in this case?

3) I can't think of many 'everyday applications' that need a decent 256MB GPU. As I said above, it's only 3D accelerated applications and HD video that benefit at all from anything better than the basic onboard graphics.

4 & 5) As the OP has a limited budget, I was querying the cost effectiveness of going for a better graphics subsystem. I agree, if the price is similar, then why not go for the better graphics? I wouldn't make it a priority, though unless the OP goes for CS4 and, even then, I'd be interested in how much difference it would make?

....not sure where you are getting "8mb of memory is all you need for 1600 x 1200". You would be hard pressed to convince me that a notebook with a dedicated GPU would not outperform a notebook without (all else equal). 4 years with HP and 6 years with Toshiba....your statement is got to be the weirdest I have ever come across.

Please define what you mean by 'outperform'. For the vast majority of applications, the graphics capabilities have no effect whatsoever on performance. All modern GPUs have sufficient 2D performance for anything but HD video, and most are fine for that too. All the GPU needs is enough memory to manage, say, 1600x1200 pixels at 4 bytes each, which is under 8MB. Anything more is only needed for 3D acceleration (including, I admit, some of the fancy visual effects in Vista) or, possibly, video decoding.