Please, I need help.

My wife's birthday is coming up and I've been wanting to buy her a laptop that she can edit pictures on. Right now she edits everything on a desktop and I know she wants to go mobile. For our anniversary in April, I bought her a Canon 5D Mark 3. She seems to be liking it, the camera I bought her prior to that was the Rebel T2I which was her start up camera. Anyways, I don't know much about editing but I know she uses photoshop and I think lightroom. What do you guys suggest as to what Laptop I should get her? Thank you in advance!

Dell or Lenovo and max it out. Laptops don't edit as well as dekstops especially if you get the mobile processors which aren't as fast.

Or a MacBook Pro, depending on your budget. It runs both Photoshop and Lightroom, plus Aperture and Pixelmator, which are much faster. But you'd want to chat with her about those before committing to the platform.

The key things are:
- Brand - Dell and Lenovo are good
- Processor - i3 is a bit slow, i5 is good, i7 isn't really much better for photography but is for video
- RAM - 4GB is too low, 6GB is better, 8GB is good, 16GB is better but very rare in a laptop
- Disk - 500GB - 1TB is normal, bigger means more storage so you can put more photos on it. 5400RPM is a bit slow, 7200RPM is about 20% faster
- SSD replaces the disk. They're signficantly more expensive, but they're super fast, and will make booting and photo editing much faster. 120GB is the minimum size you should consider, 240GB the max given what they cost today. You'd also need a disk for bulk storage
- Also get an external disk so your backups can be kept offsite, at a friend or family members house. It protects against fire, theft, computer failures (which are common), and human error (humans make many errors). There are plenty of threads about backup software, but Karens Replicator, Synctoy, and Robocopy are some I'd look at.

Hope that helps

Agreed with Tim, 16GB will be 2 x 8GB modules and you will be hard pressed to see if available from a manufacturer pre configured that way. Go Lenovo, Toshiba, HP... pass on Dell (IMO).

It is very hard to beat a Retina Macbook Pro. It has the best screen of any laptop for photo editing. Get it with 16GB of memory and the 2.6 CPU (or 2.7 CPU).

I just bought an HP M7-1015dx a few weeks ago, just stock out of the box the laptop is phenomenal. I upped the memory to 16 Gig and added a second 1TB internal drive, but that's just my preference. You can run Photoshop, Lightroom, whatever, straight out of the box with no problem. The processor is fast, really fast, and 8 Gig of RAM is plenty for 99% of what she'll do.


Plus you really can't beat the price. When it was all said and done the laptop, second hard drive, and memory, cost me roughly $1100. You can't build a laptop with those specs at that price. The best thing to do is find a stock system that has what you want but has the ability to be upgraded with ease. You buy the stock system and use it, and when you feel like you need more you add more memory, add a larger hard drive (or in the case of laptops with two internal bays you add a second drive) and you wind up not spending as much as if you built a system to those specs

MCAsan wrote in post #15018450
It is very hard to beat a Retina Macbook Pro. It has the best screen of any laptop for photo editing. Get it with 16GB of memory and the 2.6 CPU (or 2.7 CPU).

Very easy. Get anything without a glossy screen.

No offense towards Mac, it's a great system, but I wouldn't touch a Mac with a 10-foot pole. Pricing is too high for too little.

katodog wrote in post #15018511
I just bought an HP M7-1015dx a few weeks ago, just stock out of the box the laptop is phenomenal.

My Dell monitor looked great at factory settings. Once calibrated it toned down a bit, and the color cast changes.

Looking good doesn't mean the color's accurate.

That's what God invented calibration devices for...

katodog wrote in post #15019937
That's what God invented calibration devices for...

That was kinda my point.

I was just making a joke...

Ah. I see. Very funny.

:p