There's quite a few details you've left out in what you need since
laptops have come in so many flavors and prices, but seeing that
you 'd like more than 1Gb RAM potential, it appears you would have
to lean at the top of the line series for any brand out there on
the market.
For the best performance laptop you should focus on these factors:
1)
Get best graphics card you can. The common laptop out there
usually packs a 64MB or 128 MB graphics card. Upgrade to the 256
MB card at least. This will help your rendering and images fast
and very smoothly, especially with PS CS and wont cache to your
hard disk as much. These cards are not usually upgradeable in
laptops so pick the best while you can.
2)
Get the best Screen you can, depending on your needs. Again, the
new glass-like screens with Brite View or XBrite technology
depending on the brand is really sweet, plus the 17" oftters so
much work apace. It renders colors like the Epson 2000 storage
device or even better. These screens are not upgradeable later.
3) Get the fastest RPM hard drive you can. The best for laptop
drive RPM on the market now is at least 7200 RPM which is often an
upgrade request. Your bottle-neck is often your drive. And PS CS
always cache to the disk sooooooooo much.
4) If you get a laptop that can handle 2 GB, you can upgrade to
the max later. BUT remember that laptops have only 2 slots total.
Cough it up at first and get the 1GB module up front. else, if you
get anything less, you'll wind up throwing one memory bank aside or
you wont reach the full 2GB. You pay so much much more for the 1GB
module rather than two 512 MB modules, but then they sort of
figured they got you already with laptops.
5) My setups. I try to think real life performance. You dont
need to get the largest hard drive on your laptop if you do what I
do. My laptop holds ONLY my running softwares, no data at all,
unless its very temporary workspace. With D2X pictures you will
face the fact that sooner or later you will need much more drive
space unless you faithfully burn DVD's weekly. External USB 2
drives are very cheap and come in many sizes for your needs.
They're more reliable too since large format drives are more stable
than the compressed hard drives of the same GB size. Externals are
nice in that when you move PC's your file locations are saved where
you set the folders up.
The MOST important thing is, if you're online, you're prone to
potential attack like virus or whatever. Even software upgrades
can cause a deadly crash. So my laptop is truly a work horse that
saves everything to my external drives. If I get hacked or
software conflict occurs, I just slap in my recovery disk with no
worries. Of Course I may lose a bit time reinstalling my software
but my photo directories will always be where they are on my
externals. I can just work right on another PC. This will save
you alot of pain ... but unless you encounter the disasters of a
dead laptop, you may not see much to appreciate its value.
Finally, I think this model is a great bang for the buck (HP ZD8000
series) and you can customize it online:
http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/computer_series.do?series_name=zd8000_series&seeAllSpec=true&tab_switch=true&tab=specs&catLevel=2&category=notebooks/hp_pavilion&storeName=computer_store
