[wlachan]

I've been shopping for another laptop lately for Mrs. M8o to use, and I'll tell you... I'm kinda disgusted at most of the major manufacturers now days. Seems screen resolution has taken a back-seat to everything else lately. The large majority of them are back to only 768 vertical resolution (sometimes even lower!) and no path to upgrade unless you get a 17" screen or larger. You hardly see any of a web page, or portrait image with that. If you're looking for a 4 or 5 lb laptop with 14" or 15" display, you're mostly out'a luck with a few exceptions; unless you get a Lenovo who seem to be an exception to this rule, and which I may be getting another one of for this reason for a thrifty $760.

Now when I was in the market a year ago, and a year before that, and a year before that, it was quite common in a 15" display to find 850, 900 and 1050 (you get the idea) vertical resolutions; or at least perhaps a 768 base, and an upgrade option to something higher. Not so much today. Blame that on your computer being "HD 720 complaint" as being something good... hey computer makers, those in the know know it's not! Some of the laptops don't even advertise, not anywhere I can find, what the resolution actually is. And I hope it goes without saying, the more screen real-estate you have, the better PP experience we RAW shooters are going to have.

I too was surprised the vertical resolution of most 15" notebooks have dropped from 800 to 768. I guess they were trying to match the 720p standard (1366x768).

I'll tell you one thing about this Thinkpad I've been typing to you all with all this time, not only are some letters worn off the keyboard, some of them are actually just about dished out to where you can see the stems of them through the top. This was some company's fleet computer before I got hold of the fellow, too. Can't fault the old IBMs for durability. It's probably part of why my dear one went with the Lenovo, really. The only thing was we were looking pretty priced-out of the brand when I shared my bit of research, so 'The monitors on some of these are substandard' just didn't get big attention.

Most notebook keyboards are relatively easy to replace. A brand new one can be obtained for around US$20 on eBay. OEM will be at least $50+ though.

Go with a mac! I think the 13" mac pro would be right up your alley. great design light weight and amazing machine. plus if you really want, you can run windows on it. doesn't get any better then thatt.

I checked out the Macbooks at Bestbuy weeks ago and was surprised how warm they ran, even the hottest PC based notebooks weren't that warm. I think they were passively cooled. Is this normal?

[Ex Finn.]

I've been shopping for another laptop lately for Mrs. M8o to use, and I'll tell you... I'm kinda disgusted at most of the major manufacturers now days. Seems screen resolution has taken a back-seat to everything else lately. The large majority of them are back to only 768 vertical resolution (sometimes even lower!) and no path to upgrade unless you get a 17" screen or larger. You hardly see any of a web page, or portrait image with that. If you're looking for a 4 or 5 lb laptop with 14" or 15" display, you're mostly out'a luck with a few exceptions; unless you get a Lenovo who seem to be an exception to this rule, and which I may be getting another one of for this reason for a thrifty $760.

Now when I was in the market a year ago, and a year before that, and a year before that, it was quite common in a 15" display to find 850, 900 and 1050 (you get the idea) vertical resolutions; or at least perhaps a 768 base, and an upgrade option to something higher. Not so much today. Blame that on your computer being "HD 720 complaint" as being something good... hey computer makers, those in the know know it's not! Some of the laptops don't even advertise, not anywhere I can find, what the resolution actually is. And I hope it goes without saying, the more screen real-estate you have, the better PP experience we RAW shooters are going to have.

So ok, that's one thing. Screen resolution. And if you're on this forum, you'd probably be happiest having the highest rez you can have.

Color accuracy is right up there. But I don't have any really good way of knowing which displays are the best "PP-friendly" screens. I do know my corporate issued Dell Latitude E6500 is the best screen I've ever seen; even better than on my Dell Inspiron w/upgraded 1920x1200 rez. The screen on the Latitude is the only screen I have that clearly tells me when I've over-sharpened an image. The halo created from over-sharpening "pops", and I know I need to re-do it and back-off the sharpening. Problem is I don't PP on my work-issued laptop for obvious reasons, so it's very tedious to discover instances of over-sharpening as I'm sure you can imagine, when I only discover it after the fact.

Next, of course, memory. 3 Gigs at least. If you run 64-bit, more more more.

The other thing is, CPU. Use this as a guide to get the most for your money:
PassMark Intel vs AMD CPU Benchmarks - High End
PassMark CPU Benchmarks - High Mid Range CPU's

The rest is per your needs.

Thank you for that intel vs. amd highend cpu link.
Depressing to see what happens in a little more than a year as far as processors go..
I thought I had something. Well, I did for two months.
Cheers, Mike.

[brofkand]

I checked out the Macbooks at Bestbuy weeks ago and was surprised how warm they ran, even the hottest PC based notebooks weren't that warm. I think they were passively cooled. Is this normal?

They aren't passively cooled, but they do get warm. It's a side effect of using high-performance Intel chips in a very slim and lightweight enclosure.

If HP or Dell had an inch-thin laptop with everything inside it that Apple puts in their machines, they would be just as warm if not warmer.

[m8o]

They aren't passively cooled, but they do get warm. It's a side effect of using high-performance Intel chips in a very slim and lightweight enclosure.

If HP or Dell had an inch-thin laptop with everything inside it that Apple puts in their machines, they would be just as warm if not warmer.

Err, um.... they do! I have at least two laptops under an inch (not counting the screen); one when removed from its dock is quite thin. No doubt the Mac is sleeker still. but...

Which CPUs do they use? I don't usually find that sort of thing that readily available from Mac; tho I admit I only looked into it once.

It really can' t have to do with the thickness -- a WinTel PC with the same gen Intel CPU as in a Mac will dissipate the power from the CPU the same amount for the same number of MIPS used -- but rather with how diffuse the ventilation port is. My IBM X61 is much hotter in the lap than my Dell E6500 [w/a T9400] for example, even tho the CPU in the E6500 dissipates more power than the one in my X61. The X61 has a much smaller vent. In addition the X61 not being as wide the vent will sit on the inside of the thigh in my lap; the E6500 on the outside. So I don't feel the heat as much from it.

@Ex Finn. I feel your pain. I have monster cabinet, dual core AMD CPU, with dual NVidia GPU, all water cooled, that is pretty much only on par with most of my current laptops... which I never use anymore since it's inconvenient to be @ my desk to use it. ...lol.

[George Lama]

I wish people would stop throwing Mac v Windows / Windows v Mac drivel around.

Face it - both have advantages and disadvantages but as years go by the differences overall are more about the "feel" of the OS and the hardware and not what runs under the hood.

-Used to be you could only do decent graphic design on Macs. That hasn't been true in nearly a decade since Adobe began supporting PCs equally.

-Used to be you could not find an enterprise-accepted office suite for Macs. Microsoft solved that nearly a decade ago.

-Used to be Macs were much more expensive than an equal PC (power/expandability/etc) but that changed when Apple began using Intel chips.

What doesn't change is this - Go cheap and you will bump into some difficulty sooner or later, mostly due to underpowered hardware.