[RGlasel]

So to try and sum up what most people are saying,

1. Get the latest high end processor I can afford (be it intel or AMD or is there a preference?)
2. 16Gb of ram (doesn't matter to me how much the laptop comes with as i will upgrade it)
3. Solid state hard drive of some sort is required.
4. Full HD display.

Is that about right?

1. In a high powered laptop, Intel is my recommendation. More energy efficient than equally powerful AMD CPU's, which is presumably why the high powered AMD CPU's seem to end up in gaming desktops. Now for a netbook that lets you open a browser and play videos, AMD has some very efficient integrated processors, but that's not your need.
2. I'm not a big believer in more than 8GB of RAM , but it doesn't cost that much to prove me wrong, so go for it.
3. Not a necessity, but it will make a very noticeable difference every time you boot the machine or do something involves lots of reading and writing (like photo-editing).
4. Definitely. I have a 12.5" ultra portable that makes a very good photo viewer, but doing photo-editing on a 1366 x 768 display is not something I would recommend.

[vonBaloney]

2. I'm not a big believer in more than 8GB of RAM , but it doesn't cost that much to prove me wrong, so go for it.

Odd comment. The more the better, and there is no downside to it so I'm not sure what the "belief" not to have more would be about. The difference is easily seen once you start doing anything intensive that hogs memory. As soon as it can't all fit in RAM, the machine goes 30x slower even if the processor could easily handle the load. It's a no-brainer. We use a machine with 16GB right now (and never processing source images higher than 16GB, but with newer cameras you might be working with more than double that), and we definitely need an upgrade. (We do some fairly intricate post processing at times -- if you are doing basic stuff in Lightroom only it probably would be less critical.) It is also nice to be able to be able to do more than one thing at a time (have your web browser open along with photoshop, etc, without crashing something).

[nomadkng]

Given the argument regarding the read write speeds of the SSD, wouldn't the 128GB ssd that came with the laptop be more than enough to hold and operate the programs and OS while the secondary traditional hard drive is used purely as storage be a more optimal setup? I can always upgrade the SSD later to larger one, and even better I can do so without having to touch the storage location of my photos. (this has been the setup of my desktop for years which has an SSD and 2 1tb hdd in it.

For external storage I have a WD system that has 2, 2tb HDD configured in a raid 1 array. I have this setup to automatically grab photo's from a specified location every night at a set time. So no worries there.

I see the argument related to bus speeds and understand what your saying, though, I am curious about the bus speed limiting any processor to roughly the equivalant of a 6th gen I3. If that was the case then what value is an upgraded processor for any application? Or did I mis-read your comment?

I am still trying to understand, though, does the graphics card have any real affect? From your answer its no, but, I am not sure. Could you expand a little more?

Upgrading your boot drive is more than a pain in the ass, I HIGHLY discourage it. Even if you put all of your programs on a 2nd HD many will place managing apps in the root of the OS or boot drive. if you replace it, or even just rename it to a different drive letter and boot off a new disk, you may (will) lose program functionality.

In terms of space requirements, Photoshop standalone requires 2.5 GB, your system will take 28 GB (roughly), so that leaves less than 100GB left on your drive. I'm of old school thought that you never exceed 50-60% of a drive capacity, so basically that leaves you with room for 4-5 more software apps. If it's a photo editing only dedicate laptop, you can probably get away with it. But what if you want Office and Quicken, and this and that because the laptop is handy. Something to think about.

Someone mentioned a max 8GB. With 32 bit processors, that was truly the case, I think the memory address access was up 12 GB of RAM. 64 bit processors can handle 32 GB, so use it all.

You've already ruled out dedicated graphics to save some money.

In terms of bus speed limitations, that was explained to me by a computer engineer (I'm a software designer) and included all kinda of mathematical computations that i can't recite from memory. My statement was my take way from that convo. Theres an algorithm that involves number of cores, number of threads, bus speed, processor speed, heat dissipation and ram speed that all work together. Limit any one of those and the system's overall speed reaches a bottleneck it can't overcome.

Since you are looking for cost savings to maximize value, I recommended processor because that is probably the single most expensive item in any computer build. It is of my belief you would see greater value and results in adding additional upgrades that would mitigate any (if any) loss in system processing speed by going with a cheaper processor.

Lastly, Intel and Intel only. AMD was notorious for wafer failures and ROM bugs. They still aren't anywhere close to Intel for consistent QA.

[RGlasel]

Odd comment. The more the better, and there is no downside to it so I'm not sure what the "belief" not to have more would be about.

I upgraded my quad-core 64 bit desktop to 16GB and never saw a noticeable improvement (Lightroom and Visual Studio didn't run any faster). The downside is the extra cost (and greater power consumption), which isn't terribly significant, hence my suggestion to go for it in spite of my beliefs.

[RAART]

with your budget is not easy to get a good laptop with color-accurate screen.

You will need at least:
1. IPS Screen
2. i5 or i7 CPU
3.16GB or higher RAM or look if upgradable and do it yourself later as it is usually cheaper.
4. SSD drive or if upgradable and do it yourself later

Look at Dell XPS series, MSI with true color technology (like PE60) and while you have Acer look at their Nitro series (V15 or V17).

Those are having good displays and are excellent to work with.

[W.j.christy]

So honestly, the laptop I bought seems to fit what has been described as needed and then some.

It's got a 6tg gen i5 processor
1080 display but will need to be verified acceptable.
An SSD
1tb HD
8gb ddr4 ram expandable to 32. Which will happen.

So I think it will be good so long as the screen can be made acceptable. Correct?

[vonBaloney]

I upgraded my quad-core 64 bit desktop to 16GB and never saw a noticeable improvement (Lightroom and Visual Studio didn't run any faster). The downside is the extra cost (and greater power consumption), which isn't terribly significant, hence my suggestion to go for it in spite of my beliefs.

They won't run faster than the fastest they already run, but they will start going slower a lot later if that makes any sense. Also, for things like photoshop you can set your "allowed memory" percentage much higher and then they really can go faster on multi-layer complicated images. If you are hitting your limit, you'll know it because performance goes in the dumper. I hit it all the time.

Also, upgrading your boot drive is actually quite easy now -- I did two of them just a week or so and it only took an hour or so. The basic thing is your new target drive has to have enough space to fit everything that is on your current boot drive. With many trying to migrate to an SSD boot drive which is often smaller that what they had been using, this involves getting stuff off that drive so it can be cloned. If you are just storing a lot of stuff, it can easily just be copied to a new storage drive or external drive (upgrade your secondary "big" drive first so you have plenty of space to put things off your current system drive). If you've got a million installed programs on your boot drive that have to actually be uninstalled (only needed if they are taking up too much space and can't be easily moved without uninstalling), that can be a bigger pain, but most people aren't using that much space or it is all for storage that can be easily moved. For instance, moving your lightroom catalog to another drive isn't that hard if needed.

If anyone is interested in the nitty-gritty details of cloning/migrating your system drive (I'm talking about Windows here), I can provide more info.

[RAART]

So honestly, the laptop I bought seems to fit what has been described as needed and then some.

It's got a 6tg gen i5 processor
1080 display but will need to be verified acceptable.
An SSD
1tb HD
8gb ddr4 ram expandable to 32. Which will happen.

So I think it will be good so long as the screen can be made acceptable. Correct?

Yes, but if you have an TN display there then forget it... You will need IPS screen as they are much better but they are usually in higher $$$$ range.
Color accurate displays in the laptop range are not easy to find... As I mention before MSI is one of the best and then Acer with V15/V17 Nitro series but they both have poor battery life. Dell XPS is a compromise but display is not so good as on MSI PE60 and Acer V15.

[W.j.christy]

with your budget is not easy to get a good laptop with color-accurate screen.

You will need at least:
1. IPS Screen
2. i5 or i7 CPU
3.16GB or higher RAM or look if upgradable and do it yourself later as it is usually cheaper.
4. SSD drive or if upgradable and do it yourself later

Look at Dell XPS series, MSI with true color technology (like PE60) and while you have Acer look at their Nitro series (V15 or V17).

Those are having good displays and are excellent to work with.

i looked into the V series from Acer and they share the same screen as the E series, so if those are good then I think it will be good. I will have to look at msi, the dell xps might be out of my price range.

[RAART]

i looked into the V series from Acer and they share the same screen as the E series, so if those are good then I think it will be good. I will have to look at msi, the dell xps might be out of my price range.

I think that yo didn't look correctly as the Nitro series 15'' have different displays. It should be written there that they have IPS display. I just looked at your model and it does not have an IPS display...

What it might confused you is that I wrote V15 but I meant V Nitro 15''... Look here: Laptops | View All Our Laptops | Acer Solutions

[vonBaloney]

IPS is a must otherwise the viewing angle must be exactly straight on or the colors look wonky. I'm surprised they aren't all IPS these days...

[TomTom]

As someone who has been working mostly on a laptop for the ~2 years that I've been shooting with a DSLR, disk space is a major concern. If I was smart I would have come up with a good workflow early on instead of having repeatedly to move images off of the laptop. I'm in the 25,000 image neighborhood and things have gotten much worse since I started shooting with a K-1. I was thinking in the last few days that I would get a 17" laptop next time since many have two HDD bays in them. SSD for booting, large conventional drive for storage. Or maybe spend money now on NAS storage and not keep images on the laptop. I don't know.

[Riggomatic]

i5 2 core = 4 threads 3MB-4MB cache
i5 4 core = 4 threads 6MB cache


More cache is better. It's like bacon.

2 core CPU sips the power, while the 4 core will use more power.

If that is your budget, I would consider the Acer that is $619

Acer Aspire V15 V5-591G-56AS Laptop 6th Generation Intel Core i5 6300HQ (2.30 GHz) 8 GB Memory 1 TB HDD 128 GB SSD NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M 2 GB GDDR3 15.6" Windows 10 Home - Newegg.com

This is the quad core version with 6MB cache. (i5- 6200u vs i5-6300hq)

Something else to muddy the water.

Also, I read that Paintshop x8 has issues with crashing even big desktop systems.

[W.j.christy]

I think that yo didn't look correctly as the Nitro series 15'' have different displays. It should be written there that they have IPS display. I just looked at your model and it does not have an IPS display...

What it might confused you is that I wrote V15 but I meant V Nitro 15''... Look here: Laptops | View All Our Laptops | Acer Solutions

thanks for sending that link. I looked at the laptop and it seems to fit exactly my needs. The only nit will be the that it cant support anymore than 16Gb of ram. However, seeing as how I am more of casual user than a power user, this will be fine. Plus, I can rob my current laptop for the ram I recently put in it since its a really good set! bonus!


I appreciate the input. thanks guys!

[RAART]

thanks for sending that link. I looked at the laptop and it seems to fit exactly my needs. The only nit will be the that it cant support anymore than 16Gb of ram. However, seeing as how I am more of casual user than a power user, this will be fine. Plus, I can rob my current laptop for the ram I recently put in it since its a really good set! bonus!


I appreciate the input. thanks guys!

Glad your find what you are looking for... I have one more suggestion. Look at the laptop (same link) which is 799$ but do not have SSD. It has better CPU and supports up to 32GB RAM. Samsung EVO SSD can be had for less than 100$ and if you get the case only and install the internal drive that you removed from laptop you will have another 1TB storage.

This is the one I am talking about... VN7-572G-75N7 | Laptops - Tech Specs & Reviews - Acer