[johngs]

Forgot to mention .... my i3 processor is the desktop "550" version. I don't know if the i3 processors used in notebooks run at the same speed or not.

[Recercare]

Solid State Drives (SSD) are VERY fast but EXPENSIVE for the $$$ spent-and they do have their "issues". You can certainly get MUCH more storage for you're money buying an external hard drive in the 1TB range-they are typically running around $100 on my favorite website. (I'd stay away from the 2TB for the moment).

SSD are running anywhere from $500- $1000+ for 250GB, 1/4th the storage space of an external at 5x+ the price.

Again, just my opinion and your mileage may vary.

Regards,

Steve

The SSD's are expensive but I don't need 250GB. Win7 occupies only 10-15GB of space and all my photo editing software occupy 4GB. So, this means that a 60GB SSD, which costs approx $120 USD, will be more than enough. I will have plenty of space for recent photos and when finished pp'ing I just move them to a 1TB external HDD.

Kind regards
.lars

[Recercare]

I would go for something with a nice display, 4-8G of memory (the fastest kind with a reasonable price) and a "basic" 64-bit CPU (>= 2 cores). It is essential to have a 64-bit OS (in practice, this means Windows 7 64-bit for most) to make use of all that memory. The basic chipset GPU should be fine (in theory the high end GPUs are great, speedy graphics processors but to make use of the one would need tailored software to support them, and, the current multi-core chips are very fast anyway). As for hard disk, by all means get the largest and fastest internal one you can but be prepared to supplement it with external (USB) drives for capacity. With this in mind having USB3 would be very desirable for a faster interface in the - hopefully - near future. Being able to connect to an external display is somewhat of a must (means having a DVI/HDMI connector, but these are almost universal).

Apple notebooks are certainly worth consideration if price class is ~ US$ 1000-2000. Build quality is very good and in practical terms hardware is more or less on par with the similarily priced Windows offerings. Combined with Apple's OS I believe these to be less of a hassle in use once one gets over the transition (which is painful, no doubt). The key factor in this choice is the application software to be used; Adobes current offerings work, which solves this for most as far as photo applications are concerned.

Good tip about the 32 vs 64 bit OS.
Unfortunately the models I mentioned do not have USB3, but they do have E-SATA.

Kind regards
.lars

[Recercare]

I knew them only though friends who had them or through managing people who sold them when i was in retail. truly they are good product but the monopoly keeps the prices high by feature comparison. and the lack of viruses targeting mac is slowly becoming a myth as market share expands, they aren't invulnerable (as a matter of fact the recent os patch was the largest ever put out by anyone including ms - -though likely it's because they only release them rarely as opposed to ms doing it almost daily at points)
they have the neat all solid state machines like the air but i lean toward the macbook pros with more memory and hard drive for a lesser price

I have no experience with Apple, but their products are usually expensive where I live.

Kind regards
.lars

[eddie1960]

their products are expensive everywhere unfortunately lars