Originally posted by ckschempp My current toshiba laptop from 2006 is not cutting it. I have had my k3 for 2 months and am not liking the silkypix that came with it. I tried to download an older, free PS, but that tied up my computer so as to render it non-functional. I downloaded a 2 week trial of photoninja, which worked fine, but it was also slowing down my computer.
We just got a hefty check from IRS and nice hubby agrees I should get a computer specifically for my new-found hobby
What should I get? What are all the accessories that hobbyists use? Should I go for PS or something else? What about storage- cloud or hard drive? External?
Crazy how much I don't know, but I'm the type that just has to dive in and start doing in order to learn.
This will be a whole new ball game for me, but I want to aim for the stars and see how far I can take this.
Thanks!!
Photoshop + Lightroom is a powerful combo and you essentially get the latter for free if you subscribe to Creative Cloud.
If you go to a B&M store, most modern desktops/laptops (not counting ultrabooks) there should be just fine for basic image processing. With that said, if you want the best performance, get something with an SSD drive (greatly speeds up file transfer from an SD card to your computer as well as file browsing), >=8Gb of RAM (so you can have multiple files open without slowing down), and a dedicated graphics card (useful for dual monitor setups, also used by Photoshop for certain tasks). Modern CPUs are usually not going to be the bottleneck, but the higher the clock frequency, the better. Ironically, sometimes an i5 can be faster than an i7, but I don't think this will have any practical effect in your case. Try getting an i5 over an i3 though.
Both my desktop and my laptop have SSD's now, but I installed them myself as it's cheaper than what OEM's charge, and not every computer is available with one yet. So, if you have a friend who knows his/her way around computers, buying your SSD separately and having them replace your hard drive would be the way to go. In my opinion replacing your hard drive with an SSD is the single biggest hardware upgrade you can make, since files open lightning-fast and your boot time goes from 1-2 minutes down to around 15 seconds.
I use external drives for long-term image storage since they're big and cheap.
TLDR here's a great desktop that's currently on sale:
XPS 8700 Performance Desktop | Dell Adam
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