which laptop for editing?

Hi all,
I want to buy a laptop to be mobile in general. I also would like to be able to edit on that laptop and not get slowed down due to an editing program resource hog on a laptop which can't handle it. The other consideration is I don't have endless funds.
Anyone use a laptop for photo editing that they are happy with, and didn't break the bank to get it???
Thanks, Will.

Need more information. What's your budget? Mac or PC? Which PP software will you be using?

Laramie wrote in post #14939959
Need more information. What's your budget? Mac or PC? Which PP software will you be using?

$700.00 would be where I'd like to stay at, and I'm thinking 15.6". Pc and I use paintshop at the moment but want to learn photoshop.

$700 should be fine for a decent setup. I'll defer to others though as I'm a Apple guy. Best of luck.

I am in the same boat as you Will and I was looking at a "HP Envy 15 3040nr". It looks pretty good but, is over the $700 budget. I'd like to get one also for around the same as you wanna spend. My concern is the screen and the HP has an IPS.
I am wondering if a different model laptop can be had for around "our" stated budget and be fine as long as the screen is calibrated with something like "Spyder Express"
I use PS Elements 10 and LR4 for my PP'ing.

Interested in hearing the suggestions as well.

Check DealNews.com every day, you'll find something in your budget that's more than enough...

How about this one?

http://www.officedepot​.com …7-7135us-Laptop-Computer/

There is one in the Best Buy ad for a Toshiba 14" for $600 and it was 750GB, 6GB RAM, core i5 3rd gen and 3-USB3.0. I looked at it and it was nice and I would pick it up but I'm about to drop money on a wedding. But I might still go for it only because my current laptop is failing. 14" is small for editing but I travel too much to pick a bigger screen and heavier laptop.

What I have notice over the years with different laptops both Windows and Mac is the an SSD drive made the biggest difference in speed.

1, Find a good laptop with i5, 8MB ram or 4 and then upgrade yourself. 256GB SSD can be installed for $150 from Amazon.

2, look closely at the specs and see if the video memory is shared or dedicated. Now days you can find 512MB dedicated memory, but most have shared. This will slow your system down.

3, Do your editing on the internal drive, but once done, transfer images off the drive to an external drive. The more free memory you have on your drive, the faster it will run.

Good luck.

You jinxed me. I posted in this thread and wound up having my laptop die Friday morning. Went out and bought this one...


HP M7


If you want a decent system I'd check it out. Over the $700 marker but after taxes it wound up being $916, which wasn't a bad price for what's in it. It's surprisingly not that heavy at all for a bigger laptop too. I'd at least check it out, can't hurt to raise your budget to get a system that's going to be strong out of the box.