A good laptop for photo editing?

Anyone got suggestions for a laptop good enough for photo editing.

It has to have around 8Gb RAM, the hard drive can be stock as I will replace it, not too fussed about the size of the hard drive as it is normally backed up to my NAS drives. Battery life has to be at least four hours

Budget £600

I think you've just priced yourself out of my recommendation: 13" MacBook Pro, 2.9 gHz with 8GB of RAM. But it's at £1,249.00 on your side of the pond... Too bad, because I really like that machine (paired with a good monitor, of course...)

I was going to say, I wouldn't go for a Mac Book because they are too pricey

Will a laptop with a purpose built in gfx card, not those integrated ones, be good enough for colour calibration?

Well I've just put a full on SSD drive, while there seems to be an improvement in speed, I don't think its enough

RichSoansPhotos wrote in post #16149295
Will a laptop with a purpose built in gfx card, not those integrated ones, be good enough for colour calibration?

Video cards don't matter at all IMO, but the panel does. Unfortunately only a few laptops have IPS panels and they tend to be expensive. Also, unless you're buying a pretty powerful lappy don't use LR5 or PS CS6 ... use LR4 or CS5 instead.

If you get an inexpensive laptop powerful enough to run LR4 or CS5 consider getting an external IPS monitor for editing.

***Edit*** Sorry, should have looked at the date (July). You probably bought your laptop by now.

Bob_A wrote in post #16348463
Video cards don't matter at all IMO, but the panel does. Unfortunately only a few laptops have IPS panels and they tend to be expensive. Also, unless you're buying a pretty powerful lappy don't use LR5 or PS CS6 ... use LR4 or CS5 instead.

If you get an inexpensive laptop powerful enough to run LR4 or CS5 consider getting an external IPS monitor for editing.

***Edit*** Sorry, should have looked at the date (July). You probably bought your laptop by now.

Nope, haven't got the laptop.....yet, but I slapped in an inexpensive ssd (albeit not that cheap), you wouldn't believe the speed compared to the hybrid ssd, which started off with a good speed, but was comparable to the stock drive of recent, just hope the ssd doesn't wear out fast though >.<

It's £900 so maybe not of interest but picked up a HP Envy NV17- j053ea yesterday to replace an old laptop.

12gb RAM, 1TB HDD, i700 processor and I believe 8 core. (My tecchie decides for me because I'm really not interested in technology and am liable to make a big mistake buying things).

A raw file in my old Satellite Pro running dual core, 4gb of RAM and I don't know what else churned out a conversion in 48 secs on average in Canon DPP to large jpeg.

This latest bit of kit now turns out that same conversion in just 7 seconds. That means the 9 hours processing on the old laptop the 1067 images from a wedding now results in just 1.7 hours.

Hmmmn... as time is money that's a good result for me.

LincsRP wrote in post #16375028
It's £900 so maybe not of interest but picked up a HP Envy NV17- j053ea yesterday to replace an old laptop.

12gb RAM, 1TB HDD, i700 processor and I believe 8 core. (My tecchie decides for me because I'm really not interested in technology and am liable to make a big mistake buying things).

A raw file in my old Satellite Pro running dual core, 4gb of RAM and I don't know what else churned out a conversion in 48 secs on average in Canon DPP to large jpeg.

This latest bit of kit now turns out that same conversion in just 7 seconds. That means the 9 hours processing on the old laptop the 1067 images from a wedding now results in just 1.7 hours.

Hmmmn... as time is money that's a good result for me.

While I find the specs pretty impressive, its the stock hard drive that drives me mad, no pun intended, at 5400rpm, yuck!!!

RichSoansPhotos wrote in post #16377408
While I find the specs pretty impressive, its the stock hard drive that drives me mad, no pun intended, at 5400rpm, yuck!!!

Yes, I thought 5400 should be yuck. However my tecchie says the drive will last longer as it's running cooler.

He has a point as I installed a second 500gb drive to the sat pro running at 7200 and it's hot on it's side but the 5400 drive on the other side wasn't. I even drilled into the plastic drive cover about 50 1mm holes with my dremel to aid cooling which did help quite a bit.

Just getting used to Windows 8. Not the most enjoyable experiences but if it lasts 10 years like one of my other laptops then I'll live with it

LincsRP wrote in post #16379985
Yes, I thought 5400 should be yuck. However my tecchie says the drive will last longer as it's running cooler.

He has a point as I installed a second 500gb drive to the sat pro running at 7200 and it's hot on it's side but the 5400 drive on the other side wasn't. I even drilled into the plastic drive cover about 50 1mm holes with my dremel to aid cooling which did help quite a bit.

Just getting used to Windows 8. Not the most enjoyable experiences but if it lasts 10 years like one of my other laptops then I'll live with it

If you want to keep Windows 8 give Classic Shell a try, it's free !!!

http://www.classicshel​l.net/

I've been very happy with my HP laptop. I believe it's a Pavilion dv7-4295us. 1TB hard drive, 8gb ram, Intel Core i7 processor (@ 5400 rpm, this is probably the most limiting factor in the whole system). The screen brightness is not as adjustable as I'd like, but very functional otherwise. I am satisfied with its performance for photo editing, although I use an external monitor whenever possible.

I am thinking of getting a Macbook Air, but will I be able to back up to a NAS that is compatible with the windows system? (I know it's probably a silly question)

Yeah silly question, lol

I hope I haven't burnt my fingers with the ASUS N550JV, with 8GB, 1Tb storage(partition) although that wasn't what I was after, i7, gfx nividia gt 750m, yup, truly a bit of an overkill, lol, or is it? Ha!