laptop and photoshop CS2

I hope this is the right forum. if not im sorry.........

i am going to college in late August so between now and then i need to buy a laptop. I want a wireless laptop that can burn DVD/CDs, surf internet, run Word/Excel etc and run PHOTOSHOP CS2. I know running photoshop CS2 with require the most power. So my question is what specs should i get on my new laptop?


I am planning on using external hard drives for saving the photos/RAW files. I will probably just get a 120 internal hard drive for program files and essays...etc

I am thinking:
2 GB of RAM/memory
?2.5 GHz?
120 GB hard drive
what kind of wireless card?

is there anything else i need besides RAM and GHz for photoshop?
i will get Windows XP Home

i use a HP dv5094ea
1GB memory
100GB harddrive
I have a 300GB external Harddrive
2G Turion64 CPU
128M seperate graphics card

all for £799 in UK

works with CS2converts RAW files into 16Bit tiff around 48MB and works fine for me

is that a 2.0 GHz processor with 64-bit?

does the 64-bit help much. i heard the only way to take advantage of the 64-bit is to run 64-bit programs.....and there is only a few 64-bit programs out now.

yep - correct on all points

True, but it doesn't hurt any, either. Plus, AMD computers should be cheaper. However, for a laptop, I'd probably get an Intel Core Solo/Duo or Pentium M chipped machine. They tend to be better laptop chips than the AMDs, since they run cooler and use less power. Also, I would highly recommend WinXP Pro, if you have the choice.

Wireless B&G (802.11B/G) should be built into any laptop you can buy nowadays, but make sure it is.

Buy either 1GB(single module) or minimum RAM with your computer then upgrade to 2GB afterwards from newegg.com or somewhere. It'll save you some money. Most laptop manufacturers overprice their RAM by a substantial margin, so it's usually MUCH cheaper to get 2GB online than built-in.

I'm assuming that you want a Windoze-based computer and not a mac, right?

Dell usually has pretty good laptop deals. Since you are looking to do photo editing on this computer, you should either get the highest-resolution screen possible, or buy an external 19" (minimum) monitor to hook up to it.

ummmmmm how easy is it to upgrade RAM on a laptop?!? i have done it before on a desktop but never on a laptop.

and i will be running Windows XP, not a Mac

I would get one with the intel or amd dual cores....Sager makes great laptops...

Give us a price range, because any one of us can recommend a cheap $800 laptop to a $4000 laptop...

i just bought my laptop, made sure it had a good graphics card (as good as my budget allowed), and made sure it was not shared. Just of the top of my head, i think mine is a geforce 7300.

Mines just a tiny panel on the bottom of it, one screw is all.

I'd definitely go with a dual core, decent amount of RAM, and the best graphics card I could afford. I've been looking to upgrade also seeing mine is almost 3 years old. Still it doesn't run CS2 to bad considering it's the old P4 M 2.2 with only 512. It's no maxed out Powerbook but it gets the job done.

price range is probably about $1500-$2200. Does the graphics card make that much of a different. the only thing i will be doing is watching some DVDs and photos.

The Dell Inspiron E1705 can be had with 2GB RAM and the upgraded WUXGA screen for about $1600-1700US. Looks very nice (for a windoze machine!). This is one of those rare times that a computer with 2GB from the factory is just about as cheap as doing it yourself.

That would be my choice.

jbkalla wrote:
The Dell Inspiron E1705 can be had with 2GB RAM and the upgraded WUXGA screen for about $1600-1700US. Looks very nice (for a windoze machine!). This is one of those rare times that a computer with 2GB from the factory is just about as cheap as doing it yourself.

That would be my choice.

thanks i did a price quote on that and got $1,824.24 as my final price. not bad im not really to buy now. I will probably buy around the start of July (so 1 month from now)

so basically what i need is
at least 2 GHz processor
2GB of RAM and a seperate video card
a pretty big LCD screen
...am i missing anything?

For CS2 (and RSP / Bibble, etc) do yourself a favour and go dual core. It speeds things up quite significantly - having two 1.66GHz CPUs will be faster than a single 2GHz one. This is only the case in software that can multi-thread - but Photoshop, and many RAW processing applications do have that facility.

Don't worry too much about the graphics card, though dont go for an integrated one - go for one with it's own RAM (otherwise it uses main system RAM), also, when Vista comes out, if you want to be able to use the fancy schmancy interface, you'll need to have non-integrated graphics.

Otherwise, 1-2GB RAM, HD, and an external hard drive is also great for making backups onto - writeable DVDs have an awful reputation when it comes to longevity, whereas hard drives are cheap and big .

Dual Core is the same thing as Duo core, right? i just want to make sure!

and is having Dual Core the same as 64-bit?