Laptop or desktop

Roy Mathers wrote in post #8700681
Isn't that a contradiction in terms? If they have slower hard drives and bus speeds etc, then the specs aren't similar are they?

Yup...

bohdank wrote in post #8700457
A laptop with similar "specs" to a desktop will be noticeably slower. Slower hard drives and bus speeds etc. The screens, no matter how good are inferior to what you can and should get for a desktop. Screen real estate makes life coinsiderably easier. Try calibrating a laptop screen. Usually not an easy thing to do, if at all.

I used a laptop for my photo editing for many years. Never again.

There are a few noticeable exceptions to that, namely the iMac and nettops. Those both use the same components, except for swapping out the 2.5" drives to the 3.5" type. However, laptops can use the same speed (7200RPM) drives as desktops. Perhaps a smaller cache on some laptop drives, but that's about it. Main thing is that laptop chips at the same price tend to be less than half the flops.

off site i use a laptop, i also use it to shoot tethered..

ThreadJack (one time) - It is useless without picture/s Please show your HT .

In2Photos wrote in post #8696354
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For my Home Theater PC I use a desktop (my old photo desktop).
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Roy Mathers wrote in post #8700681
Isn't that a contradiction in terms? If they have slower hard drives and bus speeds etc, then the specs aren't similar are they?

I think he was speaking mainly of the the mobile CPU which can be misleading even within the Core2Duo line. Also, on paper at least, a 2.5" and 3.5" drive can seem similar to the untrained eye but bit density (say one platter vs two platters) could put either on top of the other if everything else is the same. Also, in mobile technology certain bus functions are purposely restrained to lower heat thresholds and deal with smaller capacitors. It also does not help [accuracy] that many mobile chipsets are subsets or modified versions of the desktop versions.

Much of this can be seen just browsing your local big box store and looking at the price tags. Generally, when you see cheap laptops and no speed is mentioned people only see T5300, not 1.7GHz. Conversely, when there's a bigger price tag there will likely be mention of true speed. But, then there's the twist. AMD's Turion X2 2.0GHz (I think - if not it's at least as fast) is slower than the 1.7GHz C2D, but people don't necessarily understand that.

Anyway, I think that's what the previous poster was getting at.

Tigerkn wrote in post #8703811
ThreadJack (one time) - It is useless without picture/s Please show your HT .

Well, my "Home Theater" is in my living room so not a true theater (although I have plans for one if money ever allows ). But if you would still like pics I can try to provide them.

MaxxuM wrote in post #8704530
But, then there's the twist. AMD's Turion X2 2.0GHz (I think - if not it's at least as fast) is slower than the 1.7GHz C2D, but people don't necessarily understand that.

Most people don't understand that because they don't read up on what they are buying. For example, the new i7 720qm for laptops is rated at only 1.6gh, yet it is easily four times as fast as the c2d 1.7gh AND the turion combined. And it's not really their fault, clock speeds were highly overused between 2002 and 2006, up until intel hit the 3.2gh barrier it just can't seem to get over without systems running hot (that 3.8gh p4 was probably the last of the 3.8 base clock speed chips we will see for ages), but the damage was done, and everyone things higher numbers are better. The series marking is better, but a Q6600 is usually faster than a 8000 series duo chip, so yea, they do need to fix that up.

Laptop for off-site work and custom self-built i7 desktop for all my organizing and post processing.

There really is no comparison between laptops and desktops in terms of price, speed, use, etc. Its apples to oranges. Desktop is gonna be a stationary, cheap, processing beast. A laptop is going to give you portability, higher cost (yes you can get cheap laptops, but generally sacrifice options), and less processing power, assuming similar costs.