LAPTOP!!!!!!!!!

Looking to buy my wife a laptop for christmas. she has a full time job and travels quite often and has a photo business on the side and she would like to be able to take her pics with her to edit them and so on can anyone recommend one and please dont say MAC! she doesnt want one!

I have a Dell Studio 15 that I have been happy with.

I use a HP DV5 Entertainment PC

Has worked great for me with no issues.

Payed 800 for it.

Someone has to say it: I think a 13" Macbook would be perfect for travel.

the Dells are great, stay away from HP/Compaq. In my opinion and experience they are more likely to develop some kind of failure.

Acer laptops are great, too. Stick with an Intel chipset and get as much memory as you can afford. I have an HP with a Sempron chip and I hate it. It runs hot and drains the battery as fast as it can.

If you get a supported Nvidia or ATI chipset, PhotoShop CS4 will utilize it for some operations.

I've been using a high end Acer Travelmate for the past couple of years and never had any problems with it. It has been through airport security dozens of times and I have accidentally dropped it a couple of times and it just keeps on ticking.

I was on a photo trek with one of the Photoshop Guys from NAPP last summer and while riding the bus I asked him this whole MAC versus PC thing. I was very surprised when he said it made absolutely no difference when it came to photoshop. I had been considering a change but after further discussion with him I was convinced that if one felt comfortable in the Windows platform there was nothing wrong with staying with it. It really boils down to a matter of personal preference and if your wife wants Windows based then that is what she should get.

Thanks for all the help guys

I use a dell mini 9 for travel. Perfect for portability and ease of use.

take a look at this 3 year review on laptop failure rates before you make your final decision.

http://www.engadget.co​m …and-toshiba-win-hp-fails/

MACBOOK!!!!
CAPS LOCK!!!!

Interesting how Lenovo has a reputation for solid build quality and people trash talk on Dell all the time yet the numbers don't back it up. The big problem I have with Sony and Toshiba is that they load an an insane amount of garbage on their machines. Be prepared to reformat and load a clean copy of Windows if you get either of those. Same thing with HP.

have you looked at the thinkpad lenovos?

from personal experience hp's are more reliable than dells, i have used 2 hps and 2 dells. My current hp is used as my primary computer, i edit all my pictures on it, i carry it wherever i go. My first laptop was an Hp, i used it for 3 years, without any real issues other than the battery dying after a year and a half and then the cd drive went out after almost 3 years. The essential parts functioned properly until i gave it away as a gift. then i got a dell, i had problems with my hard drive crashing twice within the first year, i figured i had a lemon so i replaced it after 11 months, the second dell wasnt much better, the fan stopped functioning properly, i ended up having to get the motherboard replaced, i had to replace the hard drive 3 times within a year and a half also (i only had to pay for one of the harddrives everything else was under warranty).

I will say that dell has great service when you are under warranty, but when you get out of warranty thats when the real cost comes in.

If you are getting a dell definitely go for their business line, they are way more reliable thats why they cost much more. but i would recommend hp any day all day.

CliffordPhotography wrote in post #9028088
I use a HP DV5 Entertainment PC

Has worked great for me with no issues.

Payed 800 for it.

I have the same, woohoo! But I purposely bought the $1200 because of the 500GB hard drive and the 8GB ram.

I dropped it from 5 feet a week after I got it and it chipped a piece off near the micro sd section. But nothing else broke! I love HP!

Not to mention the customer service is so awesome!

quieststorm wrote in post #9062985
from personal experience hp's are more reliable than dells, i have used 2 hps and 2 dells. My current hp is used as my primary computer, i edit all my pictures on it, i carry it wherever i go. My first laptop was an Hp, i used it for 3 years, without any real issues other than the battery dying after a year and a half and then the cd drive went out after almost 3 years. The essential parts functioned properly until i gave it away as a gift. then i got a dell, i had problems with my hard drive crashing twice within the first year, i figured i had a lemon so i replaced it after 11 months, the second dell wasnt much better, the fan stopped functioning properly, i ended up having to get the motherboard replaced, i had to replace the hard drive 3 times within a year and a half also (i only had to pay for one of the harddrives everything else was under warranty).

I will say that dell has great service when you are under warranty, but when you get out of warranty thats when the real cost comes in.

If you are getting a dell definitely go for their business line, they are way more reliable thats why they cost much more. but i would recommend hp any day all day.

Unfortunately, a sample size of 4 isn't statistically significant. And none of the computer vendors makes hard drives so those failing can't really be blamed on Dell or HP or whoever.