laptop question

So I am looking at buying a new laptop here in a month or so, and have one in mind but am open to any suggestions. My budget is around 1200 bucks (stretching it as it is for the one I have been looking at), and I want a 15 inch laptop. As far as I know the most intensive thing I will be doing on it is photo editing (which I like to do with lots of other pages open as well as a few Photoshop ones open), which is where my current laptop laggs behind (dell xps l502x, 2.5-3.1 gig I5, with a nvidia 540m 2 gig GPU, 750 gig 7200 rpm hd, and a 1356? by 738? screen).
http://www.newegg.com …aspx?Item=N82E1​6834312836


This is the one I was looking at. It has a slower hd than my current one but I found a replacement 7200rpm drive for it for around 120 bucks. Also one of the reviews I read on this machine says you can swap out the 24 gig solid state hd for a larger one and use that to run your OS and applications like photoshop, do any of you guys know if that is true?
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Dell XPS screens are (on average) not great for photography. So, unless you have an external monitor that you'll be hooking up to, I'd pass on those. I haven't done a lot of homework on laptops lately because my rMBP 15" is doing everything I need, but I've heard good things about Sony's 13" ultrabook (excellent screen color pallet), but I think it's out of your price range. Lenovo professional series ThinkPad's with FDH (higher gamut) screen's are always a good choice. I think it goes over your price by a little bit ($100-$200), but it's worth waiting a little longer if it means a good screen.

If you get a moderately (or already have) good screen, then any modern i5 or i7 laptop with 8GB or more RAM will do well.

I will check out the other lenovo's you suggested. I was not looking at buying a xps that one I described there is the one I already have. In the future I will buy a larger screen (which is why I am having trouble paying so much extra for the 1080 screen on the laptop over the 720 ones.

mine1 wrote in post #16214238
I will check out the other lenovo's you suggested. I was not looking at buying a xps that one I described there is the one I already have. In the future I will buy a larger screen (which is why I am having trouble paying so much extra for the 1080 screen on the laptop over the 720 ones.

Just do some research on the screen. That's the most important part of any photographers setup. Pixels aren't as important as quality.