Is this a good laptop?

My current HP laptop is on it's last legs and I am will be getting a new laptop thanks to uncle sam's tax refund. I was looking over at Dell and saw these laptops that caught my eye. Which one would be the better deal?

The laptop would be used for some photo editing (CS4) with possible upgrade to CS5 as well as general internet and music use. Not going to be used for gaming at all (no interest) and will be used for Office Excel use as well.

Laptop #1
XPS 15 for $849
Intel® CoreTM i5 480M (2.66GHz/3MB cache)
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
15.6" HD (720p) WLED Display with 2.0 MP webcam
4GB1 Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz
500GB2 SATA hard drive (7200RPM)
1024 (MB) NVIDIA® GT420M GeForce®
Tray Load Blu-ray Disc BD-Combo (Reads BD and Writes to DVD/CD)
Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 1000 with Wireless Display Support
56 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery


Laptop #2
XPS 15 for $949
Intel® CoreTM i5 460M (2.53GHz/3MB cache)
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
15.6" HD (720p) WLED Display with 2.0 MP webcam
6GB1 Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz
640GB2 SATA hard drive (7200RPM)
1024 (MB) NVIDIA® GT420M GeForce®
8X Tray Load CD/DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive)
Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 1000 with Wireless Display Support
92 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery

Laptop #3
XPS 17 for $949
Intel® CoreTM i5 480M (2.66GHz/3MB cache)
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
17.3" HD+ (900p) WLED Display with 2.0 MP webcam
4GB1 Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz
500GB2 SATA hard drive (7200RPM)
1024 (MB) NVIDIA® GT435M GeForce®
8X Tray Load CD/DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive)
Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 1000 with Wireless Display Support
56 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery



I appreciate any input/feedback.

Any of those laptops would be fine, but just know that they were not intended for professional photography. They are excellent at business and general use machines, maybe even some gaming, but 1280×720 screen resolution is pretty abysmal. If you have a secondary monitor (IPS), then any laptop with a good price would be fine. Laptops with good screens typically start for around $1,200, but once you add in necessities (RAM and large fast HDD), that price end's up being $1,400 or so.

However, if I HAD to go with one of those three, it would be #2. I would drop to 4GB if possible and then upgrade to 8GB from Newegg. 6-cell battery's are typically not great for professionals away from power. If you got an hour out of it while editing in Photoshop I would be highly surprised. The video card on all three is overkill, particularly with so few pixels to push - but it's probably not downgradeable.

Instead of the XPS line, I would be looking at laptops more suited to photography. If that means waiting a few more months, so be it.

MaxxuM wrote in post #11693323
Any of those laptops would be fine, but just know that they were not intended for professional photography. They are excellent at business and general use machines, maybe even some gaming, but 1280×720 screen resolution is pretty abysmal. If you have a secondary monitor (IPS), then any laptop with a good price would be fine. Laptops with good screens typically start for around $1,200, but once you add in necessities (RAM and large fast HDD), that price end's up being $1,400 or so.

However, if I HAD to go with one of those three, it would be #2. I would drop to 4GB if possible and then upgrade to 8GB from Newegg. 6-cell battery's are typically not great for professionals away from power. If you got an hour out of it while editing in Photoshop I would be highly surprised. The video card on all three is overkill, particularly with so few pixels to push - but it's probably not downgradeable.

Instead of the XPS line, I would be looking at laptops more suited to photography. If that means waiting a few more months, so be it.

Appreciate the input. What do you think about this setup then?


TOSHIBA Qosmio Model X505-Q887
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Intel Core i7 740QM(1.73GHz)
Screen 18.4" 1680 x 945
4GB DDR3
500GB 7200rpm SATA
NVIDIA GeForce GTS 360M Video
Blu-ray Disc ROM and DVD SuperMulti drive with Labelflash supporting 12 format
Battery 12 cell/87Wh Lithium Ion battery pack

All for only $1060 + shipping
+ Crucial 8gb memory for $90
TOTAL = $1150

If you're just doing minor photo editing like cropping and re-sizing images, you can get away with laptop #1. Stick with the i5 cpu, minimum 4 gb ram, and a dedicated video card.

The Toshiba looks the best, but I would upgrade to 8GB and find out what the max RAM is. Just make sure you want to carry around an 18" notebook.