What is a good laptop for storing photos?

We are wanting to get a DELL, what are some specifics it need to have? I want to put photoshop on it also. Thanks!

biggest harddrive you can get
fastest ram you can get

A big harddrive is nice, but you can always add external USB harddrives...if you fill one up, buy another one and you have an endless supply of harddrive storage -- which is actually more permanent than any user-burnable CD or DVD! And if you buy the specials, you can get 250MB of external USB harddrive for less than $100.

Make sure it does have a CD-RW, possibly a DVD-RW unit so you can write files easily to CD or DVD to transport to the printing location of your choice.

Lots of RAM is key for programs like Photoshop.

RAM is the easiest thing to put in a laptop. So you don't have to worry there. You do want at the very least 1 gig of ram.

Big hard drive and lots of RAM as others have said.

I'd only go for something with a DVD burner now days. Plain ol' CDs just don't make the grade any longer.

One with a built in card reader is nice, just make sure its whatever your camera uses. SD slots are common place, CF slots unfortunately not so widely found.

Definitely get an external hard drive. Not for extra space but to make a copy of everything in addition to burning to DVD. If (when) you have a hard drive fail you don't want to discover you just lost your last years worth of photos. A backup hard drive and DVDs is the minimum to be safe.

i have the dell inspriron 6000... when I called to order I told them I needed <within my budget> lots of ram and such..Told them I wanted to store 1million photos and about 6 programs to edit..LOL.. anyhows.. You can custom order your laptop from dell... just get at least a 9cell batt. those silly things are always running out of juice

If you travel with it then get something small like a Sony Vaio ... at home you can always plug into a larger external screen.

Laptops generally do not boast very large hard disk storage capacities. Average right now for a typical laptop is around 80-100GB. You can get 160GB 2.5 inch disks, but they are fairly expensive and run at a slow 4200rpm. You can even get 250GBish, but they are usually reserved for 17" models. I think it's best you treat your laptop as a tool to simply access photos off external disks. That way, you can always add more hard disks as you demand more capacity.

As for the laptop itself, if you plan to do intensive editing on it, get a dual-core processor (many editing software nowadays like Photoshop are multithread coded), with plenty of RAM. If you're only getting 1GB, make sure to get 1x 1GB stick so you can always upgrade to 2GB later on (since the motherboard will only come with 2 total slots). Getting a dual-core processor shouldn't be too difficult with Dell right now anyway, as their standard base model tends to offer an Intel 1.6GHz Core Duo.

Also consider a screen upgrade. Dell 15.4" laptops usually boast options to upgrade from the standard WXGA+ resolution screen to a WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) model, which is obviously makes editing (and working in general) more productive, provided you don't have bad eyesight.

Good luck,