EMERGENCY, help me spend money- laptop..

Guys, I have never used a laptop or notebook or whatever you call those things. I have wireless internet through SBC global so my wife and I want to get a laptop we can move around the house so that we can use wireless internet anywhere in our home.
Here is what we will use it for- internet browsing, and I will run CS2 on it on occasion. Obviously it needs to read compact flash cards and have a dvd burner.


WHAT IS THE BEST UNIT FOR THE BEST PRICE OUT THERE GUYS??
I dont need a huge hardrive, and we dont play that many games on it. I would like one that will run CS2 at a reasonable speed. I have no clue what to get, I would like a 17" monitor most likely. Windows based with XP for sure..

Blessing for helping me before I get this thing.. I would like to stay in back of $1700

Blessings

I don't have a laptop but my friends do. Dell makes some good laptop, not the best, but not junk either. You can start here.
http://configure.us.de​ll.com …300&l=en&oc=S80​105b&s=bsd

Check http://www.techbargain​s.com/ for some Dell laptop coupons to bring down the price.

I went and looked at the dell site and see that you build your own system. Can anyone tell me what I should or shouldnt get as far as system? again, I'm using it for CS2 and web browsing..

I have a Dell D810. 2GB RAM, 80GB HDD, I can't remember the processer, 2GHz? maybe. PS/CS runs well on this machine. The only time there is a slow-down is when there are fresh batch of pics, and Bridge is building a cache, and that only takes a minute or two. This machine handles other tasks, ADO.Net development, Crystal Reports, usual business apps - Outlook, etc. No problems. At home I use a dock and a KVM switch, so I can use both my desktop and laptop at my desk.

Do you know if the 810 has a wireless lan already so I can use it with my SBC wireless router?

Mine does, but I'm not sure if was integrated or not.

I was going to suggest looking at the Dell Latitude D series as well. If you want wireless networking, make sure you specify a wireless card. Internal Bluetooth, if you get the option, is worth having, too - I use Bluetooth to use GPRS via my cellphone, also to hook up to a portable printer wirelessly.


For various reasons we have a D600 - now superseded by the D610. The D810 has a larger screen; I'm not sure if that will calibrate any better than the screen on our 1400 x 1050 D600, which has three of the Gretag Macbeth ColorChecker colours out of gamut.

No laptop screen is particularly good for colour, not least because laptops have to have relatively small and weak backlights to keep the size, heat dissipation and power consumption down. You do have to be a little careful post-processing on a laptop because of this.

David

great info, so if I just decide to get a killer laptop to surf the web on quickly and effienctly without the worries of cs2 what would you suggest would be the best bargain ?

My thoughts about laptops and photo editing is that I don't believe the LCD screen on most is good enough for the task.

I've heard good things about the Sony VIO for multimedia. Been a while since seriously shopping.

I have 2 Dell Lattitudes (C810 - 4 years old but very adequate and D505 1 year old). Both have 15.1" screens, but the D505 didn't offer the ultra resolution so not as nice for photos. The D505 motherboard has also broken 2 times. At work, I bought a D505 for someone and their motherboard has broken 3 times. My keyboard is also sticky - in fact, one USB port and the serial port on my 505 are broken again so it's time to call their service. Lucky thing I have 3 year on-site support.

The C810 had a hard disk failure but never any other problem.

In short, the cheap Dells seem to be cheap. I paid $3K for my 810 that's never broken, and $1800 for the 505 that has peripheral problems.

Note: the 505's archetecture seems solid, never a hang or memory issue, just the motherboard ports and keyboard.

Also; you probably don't need Windows XP Pro (its for corporate networking), and for photo work, more memory is better. 512MB is inadequate, 1GB should be fine, but 2GB would notice an improvement. For photos, I'm not sure why you don't care about disk space, in any case, 100GB seems to be the largest.

$1700 seems low.. Or - go down to Costco and get a loaded Sony for about that much for a loaded Sony.

I could also recommend a USB attached external hard disk for storing your photos. That way you can easily exchange photos with your desktop computer. I got one that's network attached so share photos easily between the 4 household computers without moving things around.

Wireless; they are all typically compatible, but the wireless transfer rate is painfully slow as compared with hard wired 100MB (probably less than half). I usually plug in to transfer more than 3 or 4 full sized photos.

Okay john,
here's what I think about it......... Before buying the laptop
Just don't forget to see what Compaq's "BrightView" screen looks like........
and I think 1-1.5 GB ram is essential for the CS2 if you work in 16 bit tiff files....

Rest is your choice........

Regards
Kaipu

Make sure you get a laptop with the new Intel "Yonah" dual core processor. It effectively gives you 2 processes for the price (and power consumption) of 1. Because photoshop distributes tasks across multiple processors very well and it flies on dual core systems.

Malcolm

Yea the Dell 810 is a very good machine, however get a PB. They are far more efficient and have better screens. Plus u can use FW 400- 800, DVI, built in bluetooth, dual layer DVD+-R unlike the D810

I actually went Compaq (HP) recently (well about 8 months back and got an older model) and am pretty damn happy with it i'm amazed to say. Price feature wise I think they can't be beat.. as for durability and support it remains to be seen.

they have a series (or two) with a wide aspect 14" screen weighing around 5 LBs or les,. this to me was an requirment. I do not have any interest in a "portable" that weighs more than six pounds. I belive the curent series is "2000" ... (mine was "1000" )

It came with ample hard drive for the time (60GB) and a DVD-Burner as well as Card reader built in. the only other thing I had to do was add more RAM. (from 512mb to 1.5 GB)

I paid $750.00 for mine,. but now similar units are as low as $600.00.. less with rebates. Of course at around $1K you get similar features but with faster Procs and larger drives etc..

I knowDell has a lightwight option but it's more pricey by far.

I think you missed one of his requirements: