In General terms....

-dave-m- wrote in post #14877803
In general terms you will pay extra for anything designated "gaming", it is marketing and it works. Alot of "gaming" laptops are glitzed up with LED lights and fancy cases, none of which get you better performance.

Thanks, Dave. Any other suggestions other than what I'm already considering? I hope to buy in the next week or two...

Wallace River wrote in post #14877911
Thanks, Dave. Any other suggestions other than what I'm already considering? I hope to buy in the next week or two...

When I'm in the market for a new laptop, first thing I do is set the budget. Then I decide what the important spec's are. Currently I would look for something with at least an Intel i5, preferrebly an i7 and minimum of 8 Gb of RAM upgradeable to 16. Everything else becomes fit to budget. If you plan to buy a laptop with an IPS panel, the options and availibilty drop off.

-dave-m- wrote in post #14877995
When I'm in the market for a new laptop, first thing I do is set the budget. Then I decide what the important spec's are. Currently I would look for something with at least an Intel i5, preferrebly an i7 and minimum of 8 Gb of RAM upgradeable to 16. Everything else becomes fit to budget. If you plan to buy a laptop with an IPS panel, the options and availibilty drop off.

Thanks, I think we're talking the same...

OK, I may have it narrowed down. Not an IPS screen, but all else looks close to what I want. Any thoughts? (I currently have a Dell Vostro with no IPS screen).
LINK TO LAPTOP (Futureshop store in CANADA) (scroll down for all the specs)

OR Option #2 Here

Another thought is to get the 8gb RAm laptop, the IPS screen, and then replace the internal HDD with a new one that is big enough. It takes 4 - 8 screws to remove/replace a HDD, and then you can get an external case for the HDD that came with the laptop and use it as an external backup drive.

This is, of course, assuming (and I know what happens when you assume) you can't find one with a big enough HDD out of the box. HDDs are getting cheap.

KirkS518 wrote in post #14921775
Another thought is to get the 8gb RAm laptop, the IPS screen, and then replace the internal HDD with a new one that is big enough. It takes 4 - 8 screws to remove/replace a HDD, and then you can get an external case for the HDD that came with the laptop and use it as an external backup drive.

This is, of course, assuming (and I know what happens when you assume) you can't find one with a big enough HDD out of the box. HDDs are getting cheap.

Thanks for commenting, Kirk. I went online to try to purchase the second one I linked to above, and they are sold out I've sent an inquiry to see if they plan to restock or if it's just not available. I don't think I want external drives, I already have a Drobo cluttering up my workspace I just MAY go for the first link above, it has a HDD 3X as large as my current one, and is 7200rpm, but not IPS.

Storage & Memory

Hard Drive Capacity
750 GB
Hard Drive Speed (Revolutions Per Minute)
7200 rpm
RAM Size
12 GB
RAM Type
DDR3 SDRAM
RAM Speed
1600 MHz
RAM Slots
3 (1 Available)

-dave-m- wrote in post #14877995
When I'm in the market for a new laptop, first thing I do is set the budget. Then I decide what the important spec's are. Currently I would look for something with at least an Intel i5, preferrebly an i7 and minimum of 8 Gb of RAM upgradeable to 16. Everything else becomes fit to budget. If you plan to buy a laptop with an IPS panel, the options and availibilty drop off.

Hi, I'm interested in what specs you currently have in a laptop. I find the 5D mk11 files tediously slow to be processed by my current lightweight (in performance) Toshiba. I want an Ips screen. The Asus Zenbook interests me, but only i5. Here are the specs. What do you think?

Part Name:
Asus Ultrabook Zenbook Prime UX31A i5-3317U 1.7GHz 4GB 128GB SATA3 SSD 13.3" FHD-LED 1920x1080 Intel HD4000 Shared BT4 Band&Olufsen ICEPower IntelWIDI mHDMI mVGA-to-DSub WebCam USB3 USB-to-LAN NO-ODD
Cheers
Iain

IainB wrote in post #14936977
Hi, I'm interested in what specs you currently have in a laptop. I find the 5D mk11 files tediously slow to be processed by my current lightweight (in performance) Toshiba. I want an Ips screen. The Asus Zenbook interests me, but only i5. Here are the specs. What do you think?

Part Name:
Asus Ultrabook Zenbook Prime UX31A i5-3317U 1.7GHz 4GB 128GB SATA3 SSD 13.3" FHD-LED 1920x1080 Intel HD4000 Shared BT4 Band&Olufsen ICEPower IntelWIDI mHDMI mVGA-to-DSub WebCam USB3 USB-to-LAN NO-ODD
Cheers
Iain

Up untill yesterday my laptop was a Dell XPS M1730. It had an Intel Core 2 Extreme 7900 2.8 GHz processor, 8 gigs of RAM, dual GeForce 8700M GT video cards, OCZ 60 Gig Vertex 2 SSD and a Seagate 120 Gig 7200 rpm HDD. It handled photo processing no problem but it was big and heavy.

Yesterday I sold the M1730 to a friend and bought a used Alienware M15x laptop. It has an Intel Core i7 Q720 processor, 8 gigs of RAM, GeForce GTX 260M video card and a Samsung 256 Gig SSD. It's a little smaller and lighter compared to the M1730.

I only use a laptop for processing when I'm travelling, I have desktop PC's that I do most of my work on. The Zenbook looks decent, will also be lightweight. Should do fine with photo PP but would probably struggle with large video processing.

-dave-m- wrote in post #14937016
Up untill yesterday my laptop was a Dell XPS M1730. It had an Intel Core 2 Extreme 7900 2.8 GHz processor, 8 gigs of RAM, dual GeForce 8700M GT video cards, OCZ 60 Gig Vertex 2 SSD and a Seagate 120 Gig 7200 rpm HDD. It handled photo processing no problem but it was big and heavy.

Yesterday I sold the M1730 to a friend and bought a used Alienware M15x laptop. It has an Intel Core i7 Q720 processor, 8 gigs of RAM, GeForce GTX 260M video card and a Samsung 256 Gig SSD. It's a little smaller and lighter compared to the M1730.

I only use a laptop for processing when I'm travelling, I have desktop PC's that I do most of my work on. The Zenbook looks decent, will also be lightweight. Should do fine with photo PP but would probably struggle with large video processing.

Thanks. while i'm not setting a budget, I do want to get excellent performance without overkill. I'll investigate the Alienware.

I think you're crazy going for a spinning disk. Get a moderate sized SSD, put everything you're working on right now onto the SSD, keep everything else on USB 3.0 disks (plus offsite backups, of course). SSDs take less power, go faster, the only downside is limited capacity. 240GB should be plenty if you have external disks.

However, I would never have a laptop for photography, unless it's for on the road. There's too many compromises - performance, keyboard, screen, expandability.

Wallace River wrote in post #14921316
OK, I may have it narrowed down. Not an IPS screen, but all else looks close to what I want. Any thoughts? (I currently have a Dell Vostro with no IPS screen).
LINK TO LAPTOP (Futureshop store in CANADA) (scroll down for all the specs)

OR Option #2 Here

I've already got a new ASUS G75VW-AS71 17.3-Inch Laptop (Black) which I haven't yet seen (I had it shipped to my sister in Colorado, and am getting it from her the end of the month to bring back to the island with me). It has a i7 quad core, 750gb 7200rpm drive, 16gb RAM, 4 USB3 ports and a 2gb nVidia graphics card. It's essentially a gamer, but at $1400 US the price was right for me. I'll have to add some sort of office software along with my LR4 and PSE 10 when I get it since it comes pretty naked as far as software, but I prefer it that way. I do have an external monitor that I connect by HDMI.

Preeb wrote in post #14960843
I've already got a new ASUS G75VW-AS71 17.3-Inch Laptop (Black) which I haven't yet seen (I had it shipped to my sister in Colorado, and am getting it from her the end of the month to bring back to the island with me). It has a i7 quad core, 750gb 7200rpm drive, 16gb RAM, 4 USB3 ports and a 2gb nVidia graphics card. It's essentially a gamer, but at $1400 US the price was right for me. I'll have to add some sort of office software along with my LR4 and PSE 10 when I get it since it comes pretty naked as far as software, but I prefer it that way. I do have an external monitor that I connect by HDMI.

That sounds great, Rick! Just today I finally placed my order for the Asus G75VW-DS72, same hard drive as you but plus the 256 GB SSD. It'll be a week or so before it arrives.

Wallace River wrote in post #14961009
That sounds great, Rick! Just today I finally placed my order for the Asus G75VW-DS72, same hard drive as you but plus the 256 GB SSD. It'll be a week or so before it arrives.

I considered the SSD, but for almost $450 more, it just didn't seem worth it. I just don't need blazing speed that badly.

I just wanted to report back. I got the Asus G75VW-DS72, with the 256 Gb SSD plus a 750 Gb 7200 rpm HDD with 16 Gb of RAM. All I can say is Wow! This thing is lightning fast for everything so far. Lightroom is now a total pleasure to operate. And I am so pleased with myself that I got LR transferred to the new unit, and working perfectly. I am now happy! This laptop is no lightweight, though!

Wallace River wrote in post #15032064
I just wanted to report back. I got the Asus G75VW-DS72, with the 256 Gb SSD plus a 750 Gb 7200 rpm HDD with 16 Gb of RAM. All I can say is Wow! This thing is lightning fast for everything so far. Lightroom is now a total pleasure to operate. And I am so pleased with myself that I got LR transferred to the new unit, and working perfectly. I am now happy! This laptop is lightweight, though!

Is or isn't? As I recall it's over 8 pounds.... not lightweight in my book.